Paul Cézanne
French Impressionist
Born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, France.
What is Still life?
Still Life is a painting or drawing of an arrangement of objects.
Interesting Facts
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Paul Cezanne was rich, unlike his contemporaries.
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Cezanne’s death was caused due to his dedication for his work.
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Paul Cezanne is the creator of the 2nd most expensive work of art sold till date “The Card Players”. It was sold for more than $250 million in 2011.
Maurits Escher
Born on 17 June 1898 in Leeuwarden, Netherlands.
What is Tessellations?
A tessellation is created when a shape is repeated over and over again covering a plane without any gaps or overlaps.
Interesting Facts
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His full name is Maurits Cornelis Escher and he was left-handed.
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For many years Escher found it difficult to earn enough from graphic art.
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Escher is referred to as the Father of Modern Tessellations.
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Escher was a pioneer of Impossible Reality art.
Joan Miro
Born on 20 April 1893 in Barcelona, Spain.
What is Composition?
In the visual arts, composition is the placement or arrangement of visual elements or ingredients in a work of art, as distinct from the subject.
Interesting Facts
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His family wanted him to give up art.
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During World War II, he narrowly escaped the German forces.
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Many works of Miro had political symbolisms.
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9-11 attacks destroyed his World Trade Center Tapestry.
5. Miro’s most expensive painting ever sold is Peinture (Blue Star)was sold for more than £23.5 ($37) million in London and to date it remains a record price for the artist at auction. The previous record was $26.6 million for his 1925 work Painting-Poem.
Claude Monet
Born on 14 November 1840 in Paris, France.
What is Plein-Air painting?
Plein Air - This is French for "open air". This is the term often used for painting outdoors.
Interesting Facts
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Monet was an atheist.
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In his childhood, Claude made caricatures of his teachers.
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His first wife Camille Doncieux is featured in several of his paintings
5. His painting Impression, Sunrise, gave name to the Impressionist movement.
6. Water Lilies Series is considered Monet’s masterpiece. Monet’s series of the “Nympheas” or Water Lilies have been described as “The Sistine Chapel of Impressionism”. The series consists of approximately 250 oil paintings which were painted by Monet during the last thirty years of his life.
Vincent Van Gogh
Born on 30 March 1853 in Groot-Zundert, Netherlands.
What is Self Portrait?
Self-portrait - A painting or drawing that the artist makes of himself.
Interesting Facts
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He produced his most famous artwork while in a mental hospital
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Van Gogh created his most famous work “The Starry Night” while staying in an asylum in Saint-Remy-de-Provence, France.
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Vincent only sold one painting during his lifetime and only became famous after his death.
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In a short period of ten years, Van Gogh created approximately 900 paintings.
Rembrandt
Born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, Netherlands.
What is artist Baroque?
The Baroque style started with the Catholic Church.
Interesting Facts
He is known to have produced about 90 self-portraits, including paintings, etchings and drawings.
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According to a recent theory, Rembrandt may have suffered from ‘stereo blindness’, making him see everything flat – perhaps an advantage for a painter.
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He was a big spender and liked to collect art and other items. For this reason he never had a lot of money despite his paintings being fairly popular. He liked dogs and put them in several of his paintings.
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He was declared bankrupt in 1656, when he even had to sell his wife’s grave.
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He died penniless in 1669. His son Titus had died a year before him.
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Rembrandt’s paintings rarely come up for auction, but his Portrait Of A Lady, Aged 62, sold for £19.8million in 2000, still a record for a Rembrandt.
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The life work of Rembrandt comprises 317 known paintings, 285 etchings and more than 100 drawings.
Edgar Degas
Born on 19 July 1834 in Paris, France.
What is Perspective?
Perspective - A way of painting or drawing that makes some objects appear closer than others.
Interesting Facts
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He was primarily raised by his father as his mother died when he was 13.
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The Bellelli Family is considered his early masterpiece.
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A Cotton Office in New Orleans brought him fame and financial success.
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His most famous painting is L’Absinthe.
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Degas is most famous for his paintings which depict dancers.
Valentin Serov
Born on 19 January 1865 in Sant-Petersburg, Russia.
What is Texture?
Texture - The look and feel of the canvas in painting. This can vary on how the paint is applied. Other materials may be added to change the texture.
Interesting Facts
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The greatest works of Serov's early period were portraits: The Girl with Peaches (1887), and The Girl Covered by the Sun (1888), both in the Tretyakov Gallery.
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At the start of the 20th century, Serov was at a stylistic turning point: features of impressionism disappeared from his work, and his modernistic style developed, but the characteristic truthful and realistic comprehension of the nature of his subjects remained constant.
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The last years of Serov's life were marked by works on themes from classical mythology.
Salvador Dali
Born on 11 May 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
What is Surrealism?
Surrealism began as a philosophical movement that said the way to find truth in the world was through the subconscious mind and dreams, rather than through logical thought. The movement included many artists, poets, and writers who expressed their theories in their work.
Interesting Facts
1. His brother, also called Salvador, had died nine months before Dali was born. Dali, encouraged by his parents, believed he was the reincarnation of his brother, and this theme is sometimes featured in his work.
2. Salvador Dali produced more than 1500 paintings in his lifetime. He also created numerous drawings, illustrations, sculptures, short films, books and lithographs.
3. Dali designed the Chupa Chups logo.
4. He painted The Persistence of Memory, one his most famous works, in 1931. It features the classic surrealist image of the melting clock.
5. Dali bought his wife a castle – but needed her written permission to visit
6. (2) Salvador Dali's parents built him an art studio as a child, even before he went to art school.
7. Salvador Dali was infatuated with Hitler and often painted him.
8. There are museums and galleries dedicated to Salvador Dali on Spain, U.S., Italy, Germany, and Belgium.
9. He once claimed that his well known moustache was an antanae that could receive alien signals.
10. Dali died of heart failure on 23rd January 1989. He was 84.
Leonardo Da Vinci
Born on 15 April 1452 in Vinci, Italy.
What is Scientific Method?
Scientific Method Steps are steps you take when using the scientific method. Here is an example of the steps:
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Ask a question
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Gather information and observe (research)
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Make a hypothesis (guess the answer)
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Experiment and test your hypothesis
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Analyze your test results
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Present a conclusion
Interesting Facts
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Leonardo was raised by his single father.
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Leonardo was one of the first Italians to use oil paint .
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Leonardo da Vinci left many paintings unfinished and destroyed most of his work.
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Two of his works, the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, are the most famous, most reproduced, most parodied portrait, and religious painting of all time.
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Leonardo was a vegetarian who loved animals and despised war, yet he worked as a military engineer to invent advanced and deadly weapons.
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Leonardo drew the plans for the first armored car in 1485!
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He invented the bicycle 300 years before it appeared on the road.
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Leonardo da Vinci created an inflatable tube so people could float in the water.
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Leonardo da Vinci had dyslexia. When he made notes on his inventions it was all written in reverse, which made it hard for others to dig through his notes and steal his ideas.
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It took da Vinci about ten years to paint Mona Lisa's lips.
Andy Warhol
Born on 6 August 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
What is Pop Art?
Pop Art uses images and icons that are popular in the modern world. This includes famous celebrities like movie stars and rock stars, commercial items like soup cans and soft drinks, comic books, and any other items that are popular in the commercial world. There are a number of ways that artists use these items to create art such as repeating the item over and over again, changing the color or texture of the item, and putting different items together to make a picture.
Interesting Facts
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He is known for his pop art and his work focuses on the crossover between celebrity, advertising and artistic expression.
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He worked with many forms of media, including: painting, printmaking, photography, drawing, sculpture, film and music. He also started a magazine (called Interview Magazine) and he wrote several books.
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He called his studio The Factory and it became a famous meeting place for creative people and celebrities.
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Warhol was a hypochondriac and was scared of hospitals and doctors.
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In the 1960s, he produced a series of paintings of iconic American images and objects, these included: Campbell’s Soup cans, dollar bills, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley and Coca-Cola bottles.
Pablo Picasso
Born on 25 October 1881 in Málaga, Spain
What is Cubism?
Cubism was an innovative art movement pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. In Cubism, artists began to look at subjects in new ways in an effort to depict three-dimensions on a flat canvas. They would break up the subject into many different shapes and then repaint it from different angles. Cubism paved the way for many different modern movements of art in the 20th century.
Interesting Facts
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His full name is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso. Wow!
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His mother once told him when he was a child that "If you become a soldier, you'll be a general. If you become a monk you'll end up as the pope."
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In the 1930s Picasso became fascinated with the mythical creature the Minotaur. This creature had the body of a man and the head of a bull. It appeared in many of his pieces of art.
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He produced over 1,800 paintings and 1,200 sculptures.
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Many of his paintings have been sold for over $100 million!
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He was married twice and had four children.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo
Born in Milan, Italy in 1526
What is Surrealism?
The work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo influenced the work of the surrealist painters, such as Salvador Dali. Surrealism began as a philosophical movement that said the way to find truth in the world was through the subconscious mind and dreams, rather than through logical thought.
The movement included many artists, poets, and writers who expressed their theories in their work.
Interesting Facts
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Giuseppe Arcimboldo was born in Milan, Italy in 1526 or 1527.
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His father was an artist.
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When he was in his early twenties, Giuseppe Arcimboldo designed stained glass and painted frescoes.
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In 1562, Arcimboldo was made the portraitist to Ferdinand I. He served at the Habsburg Court in Vienna.
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He later fulfilled the same role for Maximillian II and Rudolf II in the court in Prague.
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During his life, Giuseppe Arcimboldo produced many works of art on religious subjects, but he is most well known for his portraits of people made up of fruit, vegetables and other objects from nature.
Interesting Facts
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It was instantly a big hit.
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American Gothic made Wood famous.
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American Gothic's inspiration was a real and really distinctive home.
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It combined Americana with European technique.
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The farmer was really a dentist.
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Wood found the wife close to home.
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None of the models posed together.
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Wood's signature is hidden.
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American Gothic fueled the rise of "Regionalism."
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American Gothic's house is now a tourist attraction.
Grant WOOD
Born near Anamosa, Iowa.
February13, 1891 - February12, 1942
What is AMERICAN GOTHIC?
Few paintings are as iconic as Grant Wood's American Gothic.
The piece's staging is so embedded into American culture that even its countless parodies and homages are instantly recognizable. While this deceptively simple portrait has clearly captured the imagination of the nation, the story behind its creation and rise to fame makes it all the more compelling.
The history & life
of these famous artists
Our students enjoy learning about the Fine Artists of our past.
Our history has many wonderful artist.
In our classes, we cover an artists life and famous artworks, technique and their contributions to fine art.