Designers
Louise Abbéma was a French artist of the late 19th century and the first third of the 20th century. She is known as a painter, printmaker, illustrator and sculptor of the so-called "Belle Epoque" of European history and was considered "the official painter of the Third Republic.
As a painter, Louise Abbema worked primarily in portrait and thematic genres in oil and watercolor techniques. As a designer, she created decorative panels for theaters and administrative buildings. The artist also collaborated with art magazines, publishing drawings and articles in them.
Vito Acconci was an American artist, designer, and architect. He is best known for his pioneering work in the field of performance art and for his provocative installations that explore the relationship between the human body and space.
Acconci received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Holy Cross College in 1962. He later earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Iowa.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Acconci became known for his groundbreaking performance works, which often involved the artist subjecting his own body to various forms of physical and psychological stress.
In the 1980s and 1990s, Acconci shifted his focus to installation art, creating immersive environments that challenged viewers' perceptions of space and their own bodies. He also worked as a designer and architect, creating public sculptures and buildings around the world.
Acconci's work has been exhibited in major museums and galleries worldwide, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Venice Biennale. He received numerous awards and honors for his contributions to contemporary art, including the Skowhegan Medal for Sculpture in 1995.
His legacy as an influential and provocative artist continues to be felt in the contemporary art world today.
Michel Victor Acier was a French porcelain sculptor and model-maker who worked at the famous Saxon porcelain manufactory in Meissen from 1765 to 1779. With his work in the activities of the manufactory is associated with the period of neoclassicism. Michel-Victor was the maternal great-grandfather of the composer Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky.
Peter Ackermann was a German painter and graphic artist. He became known for his alienation of architectural subjects. Ackermann was a representative of fantastic realism. The preferred subject of his work was classical Italian architecture, which he drew on site. He put together columns, portals and walls with machine parts, ruins and desolate parts of the city, which were piled up threateningly and thus alienated. In his etchings he showed references to the techniques of the old masters, his pictorial conception is compared with that of Giovanni Battista Piranesi and Canaletto.
Craig Alan is an American artist whose work displays a technical sophistication as well as a rich imagination.
After moving with his family to New Orleans, Alan worked as a street artist in his youth, creating portraits. Through his exceptional talent and through his own research, he eventually developed an admirable understanding and sense of textures, compositions and colors. Today, Craig Alan represents a wide range of artistic styles, from book illustration to naturalistic oil painting and his Populus Art.
Josef Albers was a German-born artist and educator. The first living artist to be given a solo shows at MoMA and at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, he taught at the Bauhaus and Black Mountain College, headed Yale University's department of design, and is considered one of the most influential teachers of the visual arts in the twentieth century.
As an artist, Albers worked in several disciplines, including photography, typography, murals and printmaking. He is best known for his work as an abstract painter and a theorist. His book Interaction of Color was published in 1963.
Wobbe Alkema is a Dutch artist, graphic artist, architect, designer and sculptor. He is known for his abstract and geometric works, often combining elements of constructivism and De Stijl.
Alkema was trained as an architect and then turned to art, studying at the Academy of Fine Arts in Groningen. In the 1920s he was involved with the artist collective De Ploeg, which was active in the northern Netherlands and promoted modernist art and culture.
Throughout his career, Alkema continued to explore the principles of abstraction and geometry in his work. His paintings often feature simple geometric shapes such as squares, circles and triangles arranged in complex compositions that suggest movement and depth. He was also interested in the interaction of colour, using bright, bold hues to create dynamic contrasts and harmony.
In addition to painting, Alkema created a number of sculptural works, including abstract reliefs and freestanding sculptures. He also designed furniture and other functional objects, applying his principles of abstraction and geometric form to everyday objects.
Alkema's work is held in the collections of several museums in the Netherlands, including the Groninger Museum and the Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum. He is considered an important figure in the development of abstract art in the Netherlands, and his work continues to be admired for its innovative use of form and colour.
Valery Vladimirovich Androsov (Russian: Валерий Владимирович Андросов) is a Soviet and contemporary Russian artist. He is known as a sculptor, architect, designer, painter, graphic artist and teacher.
Valery Androsov creates landscapes, still lifes and portraits, as well as fantasy works. He is also known as the author of a large collection of ex-libris that accurately convey the character and interests of book owners. At different periods he served as chief artist of the Mosstroiplastmass Combine and director of the Mytishchi Picture Gallery. He also created monuments to those who died in the Great Patriotic War and to the pilots of the Mytishchi Aero Club, showing his skill in various artistic directions.
Richard Joseph Anuszkiewicz was an American painter, printmaker, and sculptor.
Anuszkiewicz was concerned with the optical changes that occur when different high-intensity colors are applied to the same geometric configurations. Most of his work comprises visual investigations of formal structural and color effects, many of them nested square forms similar to the work of his mentor Josef Albers.
Ron Arad (Hebrew: רון ארד) is a contemporary Israeli-born artist, architect, and designer known for his innovative and boundary-pushing creations.
Throughout his career, Arad has explored various materials and techniques, embracing both handcrafted and technological processes. His designs often blur the boundaries between art and design, challenging conventional notions of form and function. Arad's furniture pieces are characterized by their sculptural qualities, organic shapes, and a sense of fluidity.
Gerd Arntz was a 20th-century German artist known for his skillful woodcut prints. A member of the Cologne Progressives—a group concerned not just with social and political issues, but also with the public’s ability to understand these concepts—Arntz sought to use his art as a method of delivering crucial information to the masses. Over the course of his life, he designed approximately 4,000 pictograms known as ISOTYPEs, or International System of Typographic Picture Education, a unique form of symbolized data from industries, politics, and economic phenomena intended for use by those who could not read.
Daniel Arsham is an American artist and sculptor, co-founder and partner of the design firm Snarkitecture. Lives and works in New York. His projects include collaborations with James Franco, Hajime Sorayama, Merce Cunningham, Heidi Slimane and Pharrell Williams. He has also done commissions for brands such as Calvin Klein and Louis Vuitton.
Helen Ashbee is a British artist, sculptor and jeweller. Daughter of renowned architect, designer and social reformer Charles Robert Ashbee.
Helen Ashbee was a textile designer and after the death of her husband, Italian painter Francesco Cristofanetti, she finds her real business in Paris - 'abstract sculpture' and related jewellery, for which she always did many preparatory drawings.
Erik Gunnar Asplund was a Swedish architect, mostly known as a key representative of Nordic Classicism of the 1920s, and during the last decade of his life as a major proponent of the modernist style which made its breakthrough in Sweden at the Stockholm International Exhibition (1930). Asplund was professor of architecture at the Royal Institute of Technology from 1931. His appointment was marked by a lecture, later published under the title "Our architectonic concept of space." The Woodland Crematorium at Stockholm South Cemetery (1935-1940) is considered his finest work and one of the masterpieces of modern architecture.
Gaetana (Gae) Aulenti was an Italian architect and designer who was active in furniture design, graphic design, stage design, lighting design, exhibition and interior design. She was known for her contributions to the design of important museums such as the Musée d'Orsay in Paris (in collaboration with ACT Architecture), the Contemporary Art Gallery at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the restoration of Palazzo Grassi in Venice, and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (in collaboration with HOK Architects). Aulenti was one of only a few women architects and designers who gained notoriety in their own right during the post-war period in Italy, where Italian designers sought to make meaningful connections to production principles, and influenced culture far beyond Italy. This avant-garde design movement blossomed into an entirely new type of architecture and design, one full of imaginary utopias leaving standardization to the past.
Richard Avedon was an American photographer and artist known for his iconic portraits and fashion photography.
Avedon began his career as a photographer in the late 1940s, working as a freelance photographer for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar and Vogue. He soon became known for his distinctive style, which was characterized by his use of simple, uncluttered backgrounds and his ability to capture the essence of his subjects.
Throughout his career, Avedon photographed some of the most famous people of his time, including Marilyn Monroe, Andy Warhol, and The Beatles. He was also known for his fashion photography, and his work appeared in many fashion magazines, including Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
Avedon's work was often controversial, as he challenged traditional notions of beauty and fashion. He was known for his willingness to push boundaries, and his work was often seen as a reflection of the social and political issues of his time.
Today, Avedon is regarded as one of the most important photographers of the 20th century, and his work continues to inspire artists and photographers around the world.
Hermann Bachmann is a German artist, graphic designer and teacher.
Hermann studied at the School of Applied Arts Offenbach am Main and served in the army during World War II. In 1945, Bachmann returned to his hometown and joined the artists of the Halle School. And in 1953 he fled to West Berlin, whose creative atmosphere was closer to him.
In 1957 Hermann Bachmann became a teacher and later a professor at the University of Fine Arts in Berlin, among his students many famous artists. He was a member of the Association of German Artists.
Trisha Baga is an American artist working in various media, including video installations, sculpture, painting and audio installations. She is known for her experiments with technology and often uses voice and body in her work.
Her work is often interactive and a combination of different elements such as projections, sounds, objects and movement. She is also known for her use of private elements such as mobile phones to create unique and personal works of art.
Trisha Baga draws on the heritage of sculpture, painting, music, photography and literature in her practice. Among the subjects and themes she explores are contemporary events, the worship of heroes and celebrities, and collective history. Baga's installations often include film, consisting of montages and collages of found footage and photographs, stacked in such a way that some images obscure others; the films are projected directly onto the wall, over personal items and rubbish from her studio so that they cast shadows on the projection.
Her work has been exhibited in many museums and galleries around the world, including the Museum of Modern Art in Los Angeles, the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Venice Biennale.
Leon Bakst (Lev Samoylovich Bakst) was a Russian painter and scene and costume designer of Jewish origin. He was a member of the Sergei Diaghilev circle and the Ballets Russes, for which he designed exotic, richly coloured sets and costumes. He designed the décor for such productions as Carnaval (1910), Spectre de la rose (1911), Daphnis and Chloe (1912), The Sleeping Princess (1921) and others.
Margit Balla is a Hungarian artist, graphic artist, illustrator, director, stage designer and costume designer.
She studied typography at the Academy of Applied Arts in Budapest, mainly making posters, book illustrations, later working more and more with pictorial graphics. In her posters Margit Balla combines impressions from old prints with contemporary trends such as pop art. Her figurative compositions are easily recognizable by her special surrealistic drawing style.
Since 2000, Margit Balla has been working as a production designer for the Budapest Puppet Theater.
Vladimir Davidovich Baranov-Rossine (Russian: Владимир Давидович Баранов-Россине) was a Russian, Soviet and French artist. He is known as a painter, sculptor, and inventor who explored the possibility of synthesizing color and music.
Throughout his career, Vladimir Baranov-Rossine found himself at the forefront of a variety of avant-garde movements - Cubism, Surrealism, Futurism, Expressionism, etc. He designed an optophonic piano and gave the first light-music concerts. In revolutionary Russia, he participated in the design of uniforms for the Red Army. And in France he patented the "chameleon method" as a way to camouflage troops, which formed the basis of spotted camouflage.
George Barbier was a French artist and illustrator, fashion designer, who influenced the development of the Art Deco movement.
George Barbier studied painting at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Initially he worked as an illustrator for several famous Parisian fashion magazines, and gradually his drawings began to define the style of women's clothing. The emergence of the Art Nouveau style moved Barbier to create luxurious fashions for cabarets, theaters, and movies. He depicted extravagant theatrical costumes with sparkling rhinestones, high headdresses and huge plumes. Barbier created stage costume designs for Diaghilev's famous Russian Ballet.
He also illustrated catalogs and many literary works, including works by Charles Baudelaire and P. Verlaine, and was an author and designer of jewelry.
Ercole Barovier is an Italian glass artist and designer.
In 1936 he founded Ferro Toso Barovier together with his brothers Dezio and Artemio Toso, which became Barovier — Toso & Co. in 1939 and Barovier & Toso in 1942.
He was also artistic director of the glassworks until 1972.
Carlo Bartoli is an Italian architect and designer. Author of numerous projects, such as the Gaia chair, included in the permanent design collection of the MoMA in New York and the Milan Triennale Design Museum, and the 4875 chair for Kartell, the world's first made of polypropylene, as well as part of the design collection of the Pompidou Center in Paris.
Mary Hildegard Ruth Bauermeister was a German artist who worked in sculpture, drawing, installation, performance, and music. Influenced by Fluxus artists and Nouveau Réalisme, her work addresses esoteric issues of how information is transferable through society. Beginning in the 1970s, her work concentrated on the themes surrounding New Age spirituality, specifically geomancy, the divine interpretation of lines on the ground.
Marcel-Louis Baugniet was a Belgian painter, theorist, furniture designer, creator of posters, costumes and stage sets, and one of the main advocates of the concept of pure plasticity.
He studied painting at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Brussels, where he communicated with Paul Delvaux, René Magritte, Victor Servranck and Pierre-Louis Flouquet.
Zdzisław Beksiński was a Polish painter, photographer, and sculptor, specializing in the field of dystopian surrealism.
Beksiński made his paintings and drawings in what he called either a Baroque or a Gothic manner. His creations were made mainly in two periods. The first period of work is generally considered to contain expressionistic color, with a strong style of «utopian realism» and surreal architecture, like a doomsday scenario. The second period contained more abstract style, with the main features of formalism.
Veniamin Pavlovich Belkin (Russian: Вениамин Павлович Белкин) was a Russian and Soviet artist. He is known as a painter, graphic artist, book illustrator, stage designer, arts and crafts artist and teacher, representative of the Leningrad school of painting.
Veniamin Belkin worked in different styles - from expressionism and art nouveau to realism. He executed sketches of paintings of agitation plates for the porcelain factory, made panels, painted portraits, landscapes and still-lifes. From 1908 to 1941, he participated in 19 exhibitions. His book and magazine illustrations are of particular interest to graphic art lovers.
Mario Bellini is an Italian architect and designer. After graduating from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1959, Bellini pursued a career as an architect, exhibition designer, product designer, and furniture designer, during the Italian economic boom of the late 20th century. Bellini has received several accolades in a variety of design fields, including eight Compasso d'Oro awards, and the Gold Medal for Lifetime Achievement by the Triennale di Milano. In 2019, the Italian President of the Chamber of Deputies, Roberto Fico, awarded Bellini a career medal, in recognition of his contributions to Italian architecture and design.
Suzanne Belperron was an influential 20th-century jewellery designer based in Paris. She worked for the Boivin and Herz jewellery houses before the outbreak of World War II. Subsequently, she took over the Herz company, renaming it Herz-Belperron. Belperron had many important client, from royalty, arts and show business on both sides of the Atlantic.
Gerald Adrian Sallis Benney was a British silver and goldsmith who along with David Mellor and Robert Welch popularised stainless steel designs in post-war British homes. Like Mellor and Welch he was influenced by modern Scandinavian design and in particular Georg Jensen.
Sadie T. Benning is an American artist, who has worked primarily in video, painting, drawing, sculpture, photography and sound. Benning creates experimental films and explores a variety of themes including surveillance, gender, ambiguity, transgression, play, intimacy, and identity. They became a known artist as a teenager, with their short films made with a PixelVision camera that have been described as "video diaries".
Christian Bérard, also known as Bebè, was a French artist, fashion illustrator and designer.
Bérard and his lover Boris Kochno, who worked for the Ballets Russes and was also co-founder of the Ballets des Champs-Elysées, were one of the most prominent openly homosexual couples in French theater during the 1930s and 1940s.
Igor Borisovich Berezovsky was a Soviet and Russian artist, graphic artist and designer.
Igor Berezovsky was interested in the texture of television images; he reproduced magazine photographs and brought them to the brink of extinction with the help of large screen prints; he introduced unexpected textures into images using all kinds of "rubbish"; he paraphrased Folon and Dibbets, Warhol and Dürer.
Harry Bertoia was an American artist, sculptor and furniture designer of Italian origin. He is best known for his innovative metal sculptures and iconic furniture designs.
In the 1940s and 1950s, Bertoia worked with Charles and Ray Eames in the moulded plywood division of Evans Products Company. It was at this time that he began experimenting with wire as a medium for sculpture and furniture design. The Bertoia Diamond wire mesh chair, introduced in 1952, was one of his most iconic and influential designs. Made by bending and welding wire, the chair combined aesthetic appeal with comfort and functionality.
In his sculptural work, Bertoia often created complex and abstract forms using metal rods and wire. He explored the sonic properties of his sculptures, which led to the creation of his famous 'Sounding Sculptures' series. These large-scale metal sculptures produced ethereal sounds when touched or exposed to the wind.
Roger Bezombes was a 20th century French painter, sculptor, medallist and designer. He studied in Paris at the École des Beaux-Arts and was greatly influenced by his friendship with Maurice Denis. Bezomb worked mainly as a painter, adopting Henri Matisse's rich colours in landscapes and figures, often based on observations of 'exotic' cultures, particularly those of the Mediterranean and North Africa.
Boris Konstantinovich Bilinsky (Russian: Борис Константинович Билинский) was a twentieth-century French artist of Russian origin who lived and worked in Germany, France, and Italy. He is known as a graphic artist and painter as well as a scenographer and designer who worked for theaters and movies.
Boris Bilinsky has collaborated with various theater companies and cabarets in Berlin, Paris, London, and New York. He also participated in the production of more than three dozen films, creating sets, costume designs and film posters for them.
Joseph Binder, full name Joseph Friedrich Gustav Binder, was a German avant-garde painter, designer and graphic artist.
In the early 1930s, Joseph Binder worked on major brand commissions for Knorr, Reemtsma, Tekrum, Elida, Minera, Dujardin, Stella and Mercedes-Benz and earned fame as a style-defining industrial designer. In all, by the early 1960s, Binder had created more than 2,000 stamps and posters.
In painting, Binder favored cubism: geometrically stylized form is of great importance to the painter. He was also influenced by the Bauhaus school of art and the Blue Rider group.
Alexandra Bircken is a German artist, designer and installer who graduated from the Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design.
The main theme in Alexandra Birkcen's work is the shell. She explores and combines a variety of materials - wool, concrete, wood, bone, everyday objects and clothing, and creates sculptural objects from them. The artist also uses objects that she encounters in everyday life: cars, motorcycles, surgical shirts, rocking horses, skis. However, she strips them of their familiar contexts and surprises us with unusual combinations.
Gottlieb Bodmer was a German painter of the first half of the nineteenth century. He is known as a portrait painter, designer and lithographer.
Bodmer practiced portrait painting for several years, then took up lithography. His most important work of the time was a lithograph of the Sistine Madonna. For some time the artist stayed in Paris, where he improved his technique. He copied engravings, and was especially fond of reproducing paintings by artists of the Munich art school. Bodmer's achievements in lithography laid the foundation for the Bavarian lithographic school, which made Munich famous as the "lithographic capital of Germany".
Kseniya Leonidovna Boguslavskaya (Russian: Ксения Леонидовна Богуславская) was a twentieth-century Russian artist who lived and worked in Germany and France for most of her career. She is known as a painter, graphic artist, theatrical artist and designer, and poetess.
Kseniya Boguslavskaya was a representative of the avant-garde school. She created semi-abstract cubo-futuristic compositions, including landscapes, still lifes, genre scenes, and images of interiors. In the same style, the artist drew sketches for articles of applied art. She also illustrated covers of publications and worked as a scenographer.
Andreas Böhm is a German painter, graphic artist and art teacher at Brunsbüttel Upper Secondary School from 1980. He lives and works in Dingen, Schleswig-Holstein.
For a long time Andreas Bem was known for his stencil drawings, which are like silhouettes with just two or three thick layers of paint. As an artist, he continued to play with shapes, but now adapted the free lines of wildlife.
Mario Botta is a Swiss architect who flourished at the turn of the 20th and 21st centuries. He is considered one of the world's leading authors of iconic buildings built during this period.
Mario Botta is, in particular, the architect of large Christian churches in Switzerland, France and Italy as well as a synagogue in Israel. He was involved in the renovation of the Teatro La Scala in Milan and the Mariinsky Theater in St. Petersburg. His work (which also includes private homes, museums, libraries and company headquarters) is often attributed to the rationalist trend in post-modernism: many projects combine a modernist aesthetic with motifs of antique architecture and Romanesque style.
Botta has also been involved in the object design of well-known brands.
André-Charles Boulle - French artist, woodcarver, engraver, draftsman, gilder, the greatest furniture maker of his era, creator of a particular technique and style of artistic furniture, called by his name - "technique Boule", "style Boule". For the elegance of his style and technique, he was known as the "jeweller of furniture" (le joailler du meuble).
Michel Boyer was one of the last great interior designers who remained true to the principles of modernity.
Boyer collaborated with Dior, Lanvin, Balmain and designed interiors for hotels, embassies and numerous corporate headquarters. His private clients have included Elie de Rothschild, Liliane Betancourt and Karim Aga Khan.
Christian Brandl is a German artist who lives and works in Leipzig.
He studied painting at the Leipzig Academy of Fine Arts.
Brandl's static paintings are reminiscent of 1950s psychological thrillers or even cartoons. They depict people without emotion, often in situations that are difficult to explain, the events on the canvases and the subjects are difficult to recognize.
Marianne Brandt was a German painter, sculptor, photographer, metalsmith, and designer who studied at the Bauhaus art school in Weimar and later became head of the Bauhaus Metall-Werkstatt (Metal Workshop) in Dessau in 1928. Today, Brandt's designs for household objects such as lamps and ashtrays are considered timeless examples of modern industrial design. She also created photomontages.
Frank William Brangwyn was a Welsh artist, painter, watercolourist, printmaker, illustrator, and designer.
As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, glass tableware, buildings and interiors, was a lithographer and woodcutter and was a book illustrator. It has been estimated that during his lifetime Brangwyn produced over 12,000 works. His mural commissions would cover over 22,000 sq ft of canvas, he painted over 1,000 oils, over 660 mixed media works (watercolours, gouache), over 500 etchings, about 400 wood-engravings and woodcuts, 280 lithographs, 40 architectural and interior designs, 230 designs for items of furniture and 20 stained glass panels and windows.
Marcel Lajos Breuer was a Hungarian American modernist architect and furniture designer. He moved to the United States in 1937 and became a naturalized American citizen in 1944.
At the Bauhaus he designed the Wassily Chair and the Cesca Chair, which The New York Times have called some of the most important chairs of the 20th century. Breuer extended the sculpture vocabulary he had developed in the carpentry shop at the Bauhaus into a personal architecture that made him one of the world's most popular architects at the peak of 20th-century design. His work includes art museums, libraries, college buildings, office buildings, and residences. Many are in a Brutalist architecture style, including the former IBM Research and Development facility which was the birthplace of the first personal computer. He is regarded as one of the great innovators of modern furniture design and one of the most-influential exponents of the International Style.
Benjamin Bronni is a German artist, sculptor, and architect.
He studied at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design and works on a symbiosis of painting, sculpture and installations. Bronny has a strong interest in architecture, so he often develops site-specific works. In paper works, paintings and plastic wall objects, Benjamin Bronni explores the rhythmic fusion of form and space. The artist performs his work by hand, but also uses digital processes such as 3D rendering.
