In 1911, Mondrian moved to Paris and changed his name (dropping an ‘a’ from Mondriaan) to emphasize his departure from The Netherlands. This matched the changed signature on his works that is dated to before 1907. While in Paris, the influence of the Cubism style of Picasso and Georges Braque appeared almost immediately in Mondrian’s work.

Paintings such as The Sea (1912) and his various studies of trees from that year still contain a measure of representation, but increasingly, they are dominated by the geometric shapes and interlocking planes commonly found in Cubism. While Mondrian was eager to absorb the Cubist influence into his work, it seems clear that he saw Cubism as a ‘port of call’ on his artistic journey, rather than as a destination.

Unlike the Cubists, Mondrian still attempted to reconcile his painting with his spiritual pursuits, and in 1913, he began to fuse his art and his theosophical studies into a theory that signaled his final break from representational painting. World War I began while Mondrian was visiting home in 1914 and he was forced to remain in the Netherlands for the duration of the conflict.

During this period, he stayed at the Laren artist’s colony, there meeting Bart van der Leck and Theo van Doesburg. Both of these artists were undergoing their own personal journeys toward abstraction at the time. Van der Leck’s use of only primary colors in his art greatly influenced Mondrian.

After a meeting with Van der Leck in 1916, Mondrian wrote, “My technique which was more or less Cubist, and therefore more or less pictorial, came under the influence of his precise method.” With Van Doesburg, Mondrian founded De Stijl (The Style), a journal of the De Stijl group in which he published his first essays defining his theory, for which he adopted the term neoplasticism.

Mondrian published “De Nieuwe Beelding in de schilderkunst” (“The New Plastic in Painting”)[12] in twelve installments during 1917 and 1918. This was his first major attempt to express his artistic theory in writing. Mondrian’s best and most often-quoted expression of this theory, however, comes from a letter he wrote to H.P. Bremmer in 1914:

I construct lines and color combinations on a flat surface, in order to express general beauty with the utmost awareness. Nature (or, that which I see) inspires me, puts me, as with any painter, in an emotional state so that an urge comes about to make something, but I want to come as close as possible to the truth and abstract everything from that, until I reach the foundation (still just an external foundation!) of things… I believe it is possible that, through horizontal and vertical lines constructed with awareness, but not with calculation, led by high intuition, and brought to harmony and rhythm, these basic forms of beauty, supplemented if necessary by other direct lines or curves, can become a work of art, as strong as it is true.

]]> http://www.polosgallery.com/famous-piet-mondrian-paintings.html/feed 0 http://www.polosgallery.com/piet-mondriaan-biography.html http://www.polosgallery.com/piet-mondriaan-biography.html#comments Sat, 14 Jan 2012 06:11:29 +0000 ecka http://www.polosgallery.com/?p=693 Piet Mondriaan Biography

Pieter Cornelis “Piet” Mondriaan, after 1906 Mondrian (March 7, 1872 – February 1, 1944), was a Dutch painter.

He was an important contributor to the De Stijl art movement and group, which was founded by Theo van Doesburg. He evolved a non-representational form which he termed Neo-Plasticism. This consisted of white ground, upon which was painted a grid of vertical and horizontal black lines and the three primary colors.

Between his 1905 painting, The River Amstel, and his 1907 Amaryllis, Mondrian changed the spelling of his signature from Mondriaan to Mondrian.
Mondrian was born in Amersfoort in The Netherlands, the second of his parents’ children. He was descended from Christian Dirkzoon Monderyan who lived in the Hague as early as 1670.The family moved to Winterswijk when his father, Pieter Cornelius Mondriaan, was appointed head teacher at a local primary school. Mondrian was introduced to art from a very early age: his father was a qualified drawing teacher, and with his uncle, Fritz Mondriaan (a pupil of Willem Maris of The Hague School of artists), the younger Piet often painted and drew along the river Gein.

After a strictly Protestant upbringing, in 1892, Mondrian entered the Academy for Fine Art in Amsterdam. He already was qualified as a teacher. He began his career as a teacher in primary education, but while teaching he also practiced painting. Most of his work from this period is naturalistic or impressionistic, consisting largely of landscapes. These pastoral images of his native country depict windmills, fields, and rivers, initially in the Dutch Impressionist manner of the Hague School and then in a variety of styles and techniques documenting his search for a personal style. These paintings are most definitely representational, and illustrate the influence that various artistic movements had on Mondrian, including pointillism and the vivid colors of fauvism.

Piet Mondrian died of pneumonia on February 1, 1944 and was interred in the Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
On February 2, 1944, a memorial, attended by nearly 200, was held for Mondrian, at the Universal Chapel on Lexington Avenue and 52nd Street in Manhattan.

The Mondrian / Holtzman Trust functions as Mondrian’s official estate, and “aims to promote awareness of Mondrian’s artwork and to ensure the integrity of his work.”The U.S. copyright representative for the Mondrian / Holtzman Trust is HCR International.

Buying and collecting abstract painting can be a labor of love.  I love abstract paintings.  I think that my favorite medium is gouache.  I recently purchased a work from Oscar Bluemner.  The person I bought the abstract painting from had it in storage for over twenty years.  I am going to hang this piece in my office.

I found an oil abstract painting that was dated 1947 that was painted by Louis Bassi Siegriest.  I liked the composition, it felt oddly soothing.  The artist signed the back of the painting.  It was a little out of my price range, but I bought it anyway.

Trade Winds is the name of an abstract painting I bought from the artist Joanne Riddle while I was in Connecticut.  The piece was huge and I had to have it sent by freight to my home.  The blue in the painting was so vivid.  The whole composition was absolutely inspired.

I bought an abstract painting for my sister-in-law last year.  The artist of the piece was Leonardo Nierman and the medium he used was oil.  I bought the piece unframed and took my sister-in-law to framer to choose the frame.

I tried to buy an abstract painting from the mayor of our town.  I offered him two thousand dollars for the modernist abstract colorful figure.  The artist used red, white and blue and I wanted to acquire this for my stepmother.  She would have loved it, but the mayor was unwilling to part with it.

My mother has decorated her home in a style that she liked in Santa Fe.  I bought a large abstract painting for her from her favorite artist, Lou Monti.  She has seen his work in a number of homes and always raves about them.  She was so happy when she saw the painting I bought for her hanging on the wall of her living room.

I dated a guy once that had a signed abstract painting by Robert Gilberg on his wall.  I saw something different every time I saw it.  That painting had an attraction that I just can’t quite explain.  He was always buying art and changing out abstract paintings on his walls, but this particular piece always stayed.  I guess he was attracted to it as well.

The abstract painting that I bought for my older brother did not work in his apartment.  I ended up buying a painting that was a little too large for the room it was intended for.  The colors did not work in the only room that worked for its size.

I ended up selling that abstract painting the same place that I had bought it, on eBay!  I ended up making a profit on the abstract painting.  There was more information in my auction about the artist, Richard Diebenkorn, than there had been in the auction that I won.  I think the extra hour of research I spent made the abstract painting’s value increase.

I learned a long time ago that an abstract painting is worth exactly as much as someone is willing to pay for it.  I have friends that just cannot be convinced of this basic truth.  I think that if no one wants a particular abstract painting, then it is worth nothing.

My brother used the money from the sale of the unwanted abstract painting to find himself another abstract painting.  He ended up with an abstract collage that was made in the late 1930s.  I liked it when I saw it and it worked beautifully in his office.

By 1962, Rauschenberg’s paintings were beginning to incorporate not only found objects but found images as well – photographs transferred to the canvas by means of the silkscreen process. Previously used only in commercial applications, silkscreen allowed Rauschenberg to address the multiple reproducibility of images, and the consequent flattening of experience that implies. In this respect, his work is contemporaneous with that of Andy Warhol, and both Rauschenberg and Johns are frequently cited as important forerunners of American Pop Art.

In 1966, Billy Klüver and Rauschenberg officially launched Experiments in Art and Technology (E.A.T.) a non-profit organization established to promote collaborations between artists and engineers.

In 1984, Rauschenberg announced his Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange, or ROCI, at the United Nations. This would culminate in a seven year, ten country tour to encourage “world peace and understanding,” through Mexico, Chile, Venezuela, Beijing, Lhasa (Tibet), Japan, Cuba, Soviet Union, Berlin, and Malaysia in which he left a piece of art, and was influenced by the cultures he visited. Paintings, often on reflective surfaces, as well as drawings, photographs, assemblages and other multimedia were produced, inspired by these surroundings, and this was considered some of his strongest works. The ROCI venture, supported by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., went on view in 1991.

In 1986, he was commissioned by BMW to paint a full size BMW 635 CSi for the sixth installment of the famed BMW Art Car Project. Rauschenberg’s contribution was the first to include the wheels in the project, as well as incorporating previous works of art into the design.

In addition to painting and sculpture, Rauschenberg’s career has also included significant contributions to printmaking and Performance Art. He also won a Grammy Award for his album design of Talking Heads’ album Speaking in Tongues. As of 2003 he worked from his home and studio in Captiva, Florida.

In a famously cited incident of 1953, Rauschenberg erased a drawing by de Kooning, which he obtained from his colleague for the express purpose of erasing it as an artistic statement. The result is titled Erased de Kooning Drawing. In 1964 Rauschenberg was the first American artist to win the Grand Prize at the Venice Biennale (Mark Tobey and James Whistler had previously won the Painting Prize). After that time, he enjoyed a rare degree of institutional support. In 1951 Rauschenberg had his first one-man show at the Betty Parsons Gallery[24] and in 1954 had a second one-man show at the Charles Egan Gallery.[25] In 1955, at the Charles Egan Gallery, Rauschenberg showed Bed (1955), one of his first and certainly most famous Combine

(October 22, 1925 – May 12, 2008) was an American artist who came to prominence in the 1950s transition from Abstract Expressionism to Pop Art. Rauschenberg is well-known for his “Combines” of the 1950s, in which non-traditional materials and objects were employed in innovative combinations. Rauschenberg was both a painter and a sculptor and the Combines are a combination of both, but he also worked with photography, printmaking, papermaking, and performance. He was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1993.

Rauschenberg lived and worked in New York City as well as on Captiva Island, Florida until his death from heart failure on May 12, 2008. Rauschenberg was born as Milton Ernest Rauschenberg in Port Arthur, Texas, the son of Dora and Ernest Rauschenberg. His father was of German and Cherokee ancestry and his mother of Anglo-Saxon descent. His parents were Fundamentalist Christians. Rauschenberg studied at the Kansas City Art Institute and the Académie Julian in Paris, France, where he met the painter Susan Weil. In 1948 Rauschenberg and Weil decided to attend Black Mountain College in North Carolina.

Josef Albers originally of the Bauhaus school became Rauschenberg’s painting instructor at Black Mountain. Albers’ preliminary courses relied on strict discipline that did not allow for any “uninfluenced experimentation”. Rauschenberg described Albers as influencing him to do “exactly the reverse” of what he was being taught.

From 1949 to 1952 Rauschenberg studied with Vaclav Vytlacil and Morris Kantor at the Art Students League of New York, where he met fellow artists Knox Martin and Cy Twombly.

Rauschenberg married Susan Weil in 1950. Their only child, Christopher, was born July 16, 1951. They divorced in 1953. According to a 1987 oral history by the composer Morton Feldman, after the end of his marriage, Rauschenberg had romantic relationships with fellow artists Cy Twombly and Jasper Johns.[14] An article by Jonathan D. Katz states that Rauschenberg’s affair with Twombly began during his marriage to Susan Weil.

Rauschenberg died on May 12, 2008, on Captiva Island, Florida. He died of heart failure after a personal decision to go off life support,.Rauschenberg is survived by his partner of 25 years, artist Darryl Pottorf, his former assistant. Rauschenberg is also survived by his son, photographer Christopher Rauschenberg, and his sister, Janet Begneaud.

Rauschenberg’s will, filed in Probate Court on October 9, 2008, names his charitable foundation as a major beneficiary, along with Pottorf, Christopher Rauschenberg, Begneaud, his nephew Byron Richard Begneaud, and Susan Weil Kirschenbaum. The amounts to be given to the beneficiaries are not named, but the estate is “worth millions,” said Pottorf, who is also executor of the estate.

A memorial exhibition of photographs opened October 22, 2008, (on the occasion of what would have been his 83rd birthday) and closed November 5, 2008 at the Guggenheim Museum.

Many of the works in this exhibition reflect Gwathmey’s deep empathy for working people, black and white. Among them are Hoeing Tobacco, c. 1946; Cotton Picker, 1950; and one of his best known works Portrait of a Farmer’s Wife, c. 1951. In 1944, Gwathmey received a Rosenwald Foundation Fellowship, which he used to live on a North Carolina tobacco farm for a year. He worked with the sharecroppers three days a week, formed friendships, and also pursued his art. The exhibition curator August L. Freundlich has written that “in portraying the southern black farmer, Gwathmey achieved his best and strongest work.” In addition, he created such works as Poll Tax Country, c. 1945, and Belle, 1965, that strongly critique racial prejudice.

Even though he spent most of his adult years in the North, Gwathmey continued to return to the South, largely through his memories, for inspiration. As so many scholars have pointed out, the South has an incredibly strong sense of place that is nigh impossible to escape. The possible “narratives” found in Gwathmey’s work may be related, in part, to the South’s great storytelling tradition.

The geometric backgrounds in selected works also bring to mind some African textiles and African-American quilts, and some of the figures in his paintings recall African sculpture. The great African-American actor and singer Paul Robeson observed that Gwathmey’s “identification with the South brought him close to the culture of Africa and its classic sculpture.” It is easy to see why contemporary black artist Faith Ringgold, known for her story quilts, claims Gwathmey as an influence.

According to Dr. Kammen, Gwathmey’s other influences ranged from the Barbizon artist Jean-François Millet, known for his paintings of humble folk, to Honoré Daumier, especially his more satiric work and caricatures. He was also drawn to Rouault’s use of color and Picasso’s experimentation. Some of his paintings reveal his admiration for Cubism.

Gwathmey’s work fell out of favor during the heyday of Abstract Expressionism and Minimalism, but was rediscovered when the art world began to open up in the 1960s and 1970s. In addition to creating:his own art, Gwathmey taught at various colleges and universities throughout his life, including for twenty-five years at New Pork’s Cooper Union. In fact, he taught night classes after teaching or often painting nearly all day, and his son, architect Charles Gwathmey, remembers that “he [his father] believed that anyone who could work at a job by day and still have the energy to go to school at night to pursue art deserved this extra time and commitment.” He added: “I feel privileged and humbled by my father’s life example that is both inspirational and demanding. I love a man who always left more than he took and who remains my conscience and moral reinforcement.”

Gwathmey is represented in such major collections as the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Smithsonian Institution; the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Brooklyn Museum; the Philadelphia Museum of Art; and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, as well as The Butler Institute and Reynolda House, Museum of American Art.

Born in Richmond, Virginia, Robert Gwathmey became an artist known for his Social Realist depictions of life in the rural South. He was one of the first white artists to create dignified images of African-American people and did so in a style that was modernist with many geometric forms and bold colororation.

He spent most of his forty-five year career in New York City, but frequently returned to the South where he became concerned about the problems dividing blacks and whites.

His family were “old Virginia,” and he was raised in an environment where segregation was espoused. He moved north to study art, going first to the Maryland Institute of Art for a year and in 1930 earned a degree from the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. To earn money in Philadelphia, he worked in a settlement house and became much aware of tensions between people with diverse cultures. He was active politically to get money for federal support of projects to help needy individuals.

He married Rosalie Hook of Charlotte, North Carolina, an artist and photographer who did a documentary series on blacks in the South. These images became a source of inspiration for her husband’s paintings.

Gwathmey traveled in Europe for two years and then taught at Carnegie Institute of Technology and for twenty-six years at Cooper Union. In 1944, he received a Rosenwald Fellowship and lived and worked on a tobacco farm, another experience that motivated him to turn to rural south themes in his art. In 1973, he was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters and in 1976, to the National Academy of Design.

He is best known for his painting Flag (1954–55), which he painted after having a dream of the American flag. His work is often described as a Neo-Dadaist, as opposed to pop art, even though his subject matter often includes images and objects from popular culture.[citation needed] Still, many compilations on pop art include Jasper Johns as a pop artist because of his artistic use of classical iconography.

In 1998, the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York bought Johns’ White Flag. While the Met would not disclose how much was paid, “experts estimate [the painting's] value at more than $20 million.” In 2006, private collectors Anne and Kenneth Griffin (founder of the Chicago-based hedge fund Citadel LLC) bought Johns’ False Start for $80 million, making it the most expensive painting by a living artist.

The National Gallery of Art acquired about 1,700 of Johns’ proofs in 2007. This made the Gallery home to the largest number of Johns’ works held by a single institution. The exhibition showed works from many points in Johns’ career, including recent proofs of his prints.

See Also

“Mom and Pop Art”, a 1999 episode of the animated television series The Simpsons, in which Johns guest-stars as himself.

(born May 15, 1930) is an American contemporary artist who works primarily in painting and printmaking.
Born in Augusta, Georgia, Jasper Johns spent his early life in Allendale, South Carolina with his paternal grandparents after his parents’ marriage failed. He then spent a year living with his mother in Columbia, South Carolina and thereafter he spent several years living with his aunt Gladys in Lake Murray, South Carolina, twenty-two miles from Columbia. He completed high school in Sumter, South Carolina, where he once again lived with his mother. 

counting this period in his life, he says, “In the place where I was a child, there were no artists and there was no art, so I really didn’t know what that meant. I think I thought it meant that I would be in a situation different than the one that I was in.” He began drawing when he was three and has continued doing art ever since.

Johns studied at the University of South Carolina from 1947 to 1948, a total of three semesters.[3] He then moved to New York City and studied briefly at the Parsons School of Design in 1949.In 1952 and 1953 he was stationed in Sendai, Japan during the Korean War.

In 1954, after returning to New York, Johns met Robert Rauschenberg and they became long term lovers. In the same period he was strongly influenced by the gay couple Merce Cunningham (a choreographer) and John Cage (a composer). Working together they explored the contemporary art scene, and began developing their ideas on art. In 1958, gallery owner Leo Castelli discovered Johns while visiting Rauschenberg’s studio. Castelli gave him his first solo show. It was here that Alfred Barr, the founding director of New York’s Museum of Modern Art, purchased four works from his exhibition. In 1963, Johns and Cage founded Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts, now known as Foundation for Contemporary Arts in New York City. Johns currently lives in Sharon, Connecticut and the Island of Saint Martin. He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1984.

On February 15, 2011 he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Barack Obama, becoming the first painter or sculptor to receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom since Alexander Calder in 1977.

Rubens was a prolific artist. His commissioned works were mostly religious subjects, “history” paintings, which included mythological subjects, and hunt scenes. He painted portraits, especially of friends, and self-portraits, and in later life painted several landscapes. Rubens designed tapestries and prints, as well as his own house. He also oversaw the ephemeral decorations of the Joyous Entry into Antwerp by the Cardinal-Infante Ferdinand in 1635.

His drawings are mostly extremely forceful but not detailed; he also made great use of oil sketches as preparatory studies. He was one of the last major artists to make consistent use of wooden panels as a support medium, even for very large works, but he used canvas as well, especially when the work needed to be sent a long distance. For altarpieces he sometimes painted on slate to reduce reflection problems.

His fondness of painting full-figured women gave rise to the terms ‘Rubensian’ or ‘Rubenesque’ for plus-sized women. The term ‘Rubensiaans’ is also commonly used in Dutch to denote such women.

Here is the work of Peter Paul Rubens famous painting:

At a Sotheby’s auction on 10 July 2002, Rubens’ newly discovered painting Massacre of the Innocents sold for £49.5million ($76.2 million) to Lord Thomson. It is a current record for an Old Master painting.