Contemporary art Nouveau Réalisme
César (born Cesare Baldaccini) was a noted French sculptor.
César was at the forefront of the Nouveau Réalisme movement with his radical compressions (compacted automobiles, discarded metal, or rubbish), expansions (polyurethane foam sculptures), and fantastic representations of animals and insects.
Armand Pierre Fernandez, widely known by his mononym Arman, was a French-born American artist celebrated for his innovative contributions to the Nouveau Réalisme movement and his radical use of everyday objects in art. Born in Nice, France, on November 17, 1928, Arman's early exposure to art came from his father, an antiques dealer and amateur artist, which deeply influenced his later artistic endeavors.
Arman moved beyond traditional painting techniques early in his career, instead creating his signature "Accumulations" and "Poubelles" (trash) sculptures. These works involved assembling and compacting everyday items like watches, clocks, and even automobiles, embedding these objects in layers of concrete or encasing them in Plexiglas. One of his most notable large-scale works is "Long Term Parking," a 60-foot high sculpture made of concrete-encased cars, situated in Jouy-en-Josas, France.
His work is an essential bridge between European and American trends in Pop art and has been widely exhibited in major institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Arman's innovative techniques and philosophical approach to materials challenged conventional categorizations of art and inspired future generations of artists.
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Norbert Kricke is a German sculptor.
He studied at the Higher School of Art in Berlin and from 1947 began creating abstract sculptures using wire, steel, glass and concrete. Kricke is also known as an innovator of the use of running water in art.
Norbert Kricke was one of the most important artists in the group L'Art Informel and was actively engaged with members of the ZERO and Nouveau Réalisme movements.
Peter Nagel is a German painter. From 1985 to 2004 he was professor of painting at the Muthesius Academy of Fine Arts in Kiel.
Nagel's painting can be classified in the New Realism current, the appearance of his art as a result between photography and graphic art.
Larry Rivers (born Yitzroch Loiza Grossberg) was an American artist, musician, filmmaker, and occasional actor. Considered by many scholars to be the "Godfather" and "Grandfather" of Pop art, he was one of the first artists to merge non-objective, non-narrative art with narrative and objective abstraction.
Domenico (Mimmo) Rotella was an Italian artist considered an important figure in post-war European art. Best known for his works of décollage and psychogeographics, made from torn advertising posters. He was associated to the Ultra-Lettrists an offshoot of Lettrism and later was a member of the Nouveau Réalisme, founded in 1960 by the art critic Pierre Restany.
Niki de Saint Phalle was a French-American sculptor, painter, filmmaker, and author of colorful hand-illustrated books. Widely noted as one of the few female monumental sculptors, Saint Phalle was also known for her social commitment and work.
Alexandre Joseph Sosnowsky, better known by the name Sacha Sosno, was an internationally renowned French sculptor and painter. Working most of the time in Nice, in his last decades Sosno achieved international recognition for his monumental outdoor sculptures in Côte d'Azur, France. Along with Yves Klein, Arman and Cesar he was part of the New Realist (Nouveau réalisme) movement. Sosno had a singular artistic approach: the concept of obliteration. His sculptures are masked by empty or full space, inviting the viewer to use his own imagination.
Daniel Spoerri was a Swiss artist of Romanian-Jewish descent, renowned for his contributions to the art world as a key figure in the Nouveau Réalisme (New Realism) movement. Born in Romania in 1930, Spoerri made significant strides in visual art, particularly in his development of "snare-pictures," a method where he captured a group of objects, such as table settings and the remnants of meals, in a state of apparent disorder yet meticulously fixed to the tabletop.
His works are celebrated for turning ordinary moments into a tableau of frozen time, capturing life's ephemeral qualities through the permanence of art. Notably, his piece "Tableau piège" involves the fixation of objects to a board or table, which is then displayed vertically, challenging traditional art display norms and viewer perceptions. This innovative approach allowed him to explore themes of consumption, waste, and the mundane, making the everyday profound.
Daniel Spoerri's art is housed in many esteemed institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris. His work continues to influence contemporary art, offering a unique perspective on the art of assemblage and the beauty in the banal.
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Eberhard Viegener was a German expressionist painter, decorator, and printmaker.
In the 1930s his expressionist works were deemed "degenerate," and during the Nazi "Degenerate Art" campaign a considerable number of them were removed from state collections and destroyed.
Later Figener shifted abruptly from the expressionist style to the style of New Objectivity, or Neue Sachlichkeit. He began to paint, in particular, architectural still lifes with ceramic objects.
Eberhard Figener was the brother of the painter and sculptor Fritz Figener.
