Fine Art Prints, Posters And Artist Biographies

Fine Art Prints, Posters And Painting Reproductions

Ansel Adams

Adams, Ansel (Easton)
(b San Francisco, CA, 20 Feb 1902; d Carmel, CA, 22 April 1984). American photographer. He trained as a musician and supported himself by teaching the piano until 1930. He became involved with photography in 1916 when his parents presented him with a Kodak Box Brownie camera during a summer vacation in Yosemite National Park. In 1917–18 he worked part-time in a photo-finishing business. From 1920 to 1927 he served as custodian of the LeConte Memorial in Yosemite, the Sierra Club’s headquarters. His duties included leading weekly expeditions through the valley and rims, during which he continued to photograph the landscape. He considered his snapshots of Yosemite and the Sierra Nevada Mountains, taken during the early 1920s, to be a visual diary, the work of an ardent hobbyist. By 1923 he used a 61/2*81/2-inch Korona view camera on his pack trips, and in 1927 he spent an afternoon making one of his most famous images, Monolith, the Face of Half Dome, Yosemite National Park (Chicago, IL, A. Inst.; see fig.). Adams planned his photograph, waited for the exact sunlight he desired and used a red filter to darken the sky against the monumental cliff. He later referred to this image as his ‘first true visualization’ of the subject, not as it appeared ‘in reality but how it felt to me and how it must appear in the finished print. Ansel Adams Posters and Prints

James Blakeway

James Blakeway is founder, president and chief panoramic photographer for Blakeway Worldwide Panoramas, Inc., in Eden Prairie, Minnesota.

Blakeway was born and raised in Fargo, North Dakota, and received a B.S. in marketing from the University of North Dakota. After holding several marketing positions with Procter & Gamble, he decided to start his own business. Unsure which direction his business should take, he seized an opportunity to travel to Australia, thinking that he might find a business idea there. Indeed he did: he met two men who had created a phenomenal panoramic photograph of the Sydney Harbor. Blakeway worked with them until his visa expired, sold them his share of the business in exchange for a few hundred posters and returned to the United States to start his own panoramic photo business.

In California, Blakeway and a partner began selling photos from Blakeway's garage and from the trunk of his car. Later, he moved the business to Minneapolis and then to Eden Prairie, where the company is now located. Today Blakeway and his team travel the globe creating some of the most beautiful cityscapes made by anyone in the world. James Blakeway Poaters and Prints

Pierre Bonnard

(b Fontenay-aux-Roses, nr Paris, 3 Oct 1867; d Le Cannet, 27 Jan 1947). French painter, printmaker and photographer. He is known particularly for the decorative qualities of his paintings and his individual use of colour. During his life he was associated with other artists, Edouard Vuillard being a good friend, and he was a member of the NABIS. Pierre Bonnard Posters and Prints

Ralph Burch

Famous for Martini Art Prints and Posters
Ralph Burch Posters and Prints

Leonetto Cappiello

Born in the Italian resort town of Livorno, Cappiello (1875 – 1942) had a natural talent for drawing and his first ambition was to be a great painter. His technique evolved fundamentally from that of British posterists like Hassal, Hardy and the Beggarstaff Brothers, who used simple drawings and flat colors-only Cappiello added dynamic zest and dramatic impact they had never dreamed of. The designs, for the first few attempts, are firmly rooted in his caricature style; but gradually, he frees his imagination and begins to develop a poster language even more compelling. Leonetto Cappiello Posters and Prints

Mary Cassatt

Cassatt, Mary (Stevenson)
(b Allegheny City [now in Pittsburgh], 25 May 1844; d Le Mesnil-Théribus, France, 14 June 1926). American painter and printmaker, active in France. Having settled in Paris, she became a member of the Impressionist circle. The quality of her draughtsmanship is evident in all the media in which she worked, notably pastel. She is particularly associated with the theme of mother and child. Mary Cassatt Posters and Prints

Paul Cezanne

Cézanne, Paul
b Aix-en-Provence, 19 Jan 1839; d Aix-en-Provence, 23 Oct 1906). French painter. He was one of the most important painters of the second half of the 19th century. In many of his early works, up to about 1870, he depicted dark, imaginary subjects in a violent, expressive manner. In the 1870s he came under the influence of IMPRESSIONISM, particularly as practised by Camille Pissarro, and he participated in the First (1874) and Third (1877) Impressionist Exhibitions. Though he considered the study of nature essential to painting, he nevertheless opposed many aspects of the Impressionist aesthetic. He epitomized the reaction against it when he declared: ‘I wanted to make of Impressionism something solid and enduring, like the art in museums.’ Believing colour and form to be inseparable, he tried to emphasize structure and solidity in his work, features he thought neglected by Impressionism. For this reason he was a central figure in POST-IMPRESSIONISM. He rarely dated his works (and often did not sign them either), which makes it hard to ascertain the chronology of his oeuvre with any precision. Until the end of his life he received little public success and was repeatedly rejected by the Paris Salon. In his last years his work began to influence many younger artists, including both the Fauves and the Cubists, and he is therefore often seen as a precursor of 20th-century art.
Paul Cezanne Posters and Prints

Marc Chagall

Chagall, Marc [Shagal, Mark (Zakharovich); Shagal, Moses]
b Vitebsk [now Viciebsk], Belarus’, 7 July 1887; d Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, 28 March 1985). French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, designer, sculptor, ceramicist and writer of Belarussian birth. A prolific artist, Chagall excelled in the European tradition of subject painting and distinguished himself as an expressive colourist. His work is noted for its consistent use of folkloric imagery and its sweetness of colour, and it is characterized by a style that, although developed in the years before World War I, underwent little progression throughout his long career. Though he preferred to be known as a Belarussian artist, following his exile from the Soviet Union in 1923 he was recognized as a major figure of the Ecole de Paris, especially in the later 1920s and the 1930s. In his last years he was regarded as a leading artist in stained glass.
Marc Chagall Posters and Prints

Salvador Dali

Dalí (Domènech), Salvador (Felip Jacint)
(b Figueres, 11 May 1904; d Figueres, 25 Jan 1989). Spanish Catalan painter, draughtsman, illustrator, sculptor, writer and film maker. One of the most prolific artists of the 20th century, his fantastic imagery and flamboyant personality also made him one of the best known. His most significant artistic contribution, however, was through his association with SURREALISM. Salvador Dali Posters and Prints

Leonardo da Vinci

Leonardo DA VINCI (b. 1452, Vinci, Republic of Florence [now in Italy]--d. May 2, 1519, Cloux, Fr.), Italian painter, draftsman, sculptor, architect, and engineer whose genius, perhaps more than that of any other figure, epitomized the Renaissance humanist ideal. His Last Supper (1495-97) and Mona Lisa (1503-06) are among the most widely popular and influential paintings of the Renaissance. His notebooks reveal a spirit of scientific inquiry and a mechanical inventiveness that were centuries ahead of his time.
Leonardo da Vinci Posters and Prints

Edgar Degas

Degas, (Hilaire Germain) Edgar
(b Paris, 19 July 1834; d Paris, 27 Sept 1917). French painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, pastellist, photographer and collector. He was a founder-member of the Impressionist group and the leader within it of the Realist tendency. He organized several of the group’s exhibitions, but after 1886 he showed his works very rarely and largely withdrew from the Parisian art world. As he was sufficiently wealthy, he was not constricted by the need to sell his work, and even his late pieces retain a vigour and a power to shock that is lacking in the contemporary productions of his Impressionist colleagues. Edgar Degas Posters and Prints

Raoul Dufy

b Le Havre, 3 June 1877; d Forcalquier, Basses-Alpes, 23 March 1953). French painter, printmaker and decorative artist. From the age of 14 he was employed as a book-keeper, but at the same time he developed his innate gift for drawing at evening classes at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Le Havre,given by the Neo-classical painter Charles Lhuillier (?1824–98). He discovered the work of Eugène Boudin, Poussin and Delacroix, whose Justice of Trajan (1840; Rouen, Mus. B.-A.) was ‘a revelation and certainly one of the most violent impressions’ of his life (Lassaigne, Eng. trans., p. 16). In 1900, with a grant from Le Havre, he joined his friend Othon Friesz in Paris and enrolled at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in the studio of Léon Bonnat. At the Musée du Louvre he studied the art of Claude Lorrain, to whom he painted several Homages between 1927 and 1947 (e.g. 1927; Nice, Mus. Masséna). His encounter with works by van Gogh at the Galerie Bernheim-Jeune and with Impressionism at Durand-Ruel is reflected in such early works as Beach at St Adresse (1904; Paris, Pompidou).
Raoul Dufy Posters and Prints

M.C. Escher

Escher, M(aurits) C(ornelis)
(b Leeuwarden, 17 June 1898; d Hilversum, 27 March 1972). Dutch printmaker. After studying at the School voor Kunstnijverheid (School of Applied Arts) in Haarlem (1919–22) he lived in Italy until 1935. There he refined his printmaking skills in woodcuts, wood-engravings and lithographs. His figurative work consisted mainly of representations of nature and had a severe, stylized aloofness, exaggerated by techniques such as the scratch drawings in which he made incisions into an inked surface on parchment-type paper, as in Self-portrait (1943; Tokyo, priv. col.). After a visit in May 1936 to the Alhambra, Granada, where he was fascinated by the regular divisions of the plane characteristic of Moorish art, he was prompted to change their abstract patterns into recognizable representation. M.C. Escher Posters and Prints

Marco Fabiano

Fabiano finds the classic Renaissance and Romanesque periods engaging, believing that they are at once a mystery, and, magnificent.

Culture and landmarks. Romance. History. Aspects of every day life that Marco Fabiano finds inspirational. Fabiano is fascinated with “Historic cultures," finding them mesmerising and insisting that, "They are our past and a gateway from where we have come.

Marco studied fine art and ceramics. He lives in British Columbia and is married with children. Fabiano is most famous for his coffee series, featured below in this collection of fine art prints.
Marco Fabiano Posters and Prints

Paul Gauguin

Gauguin, Paul
(b Paris, 7 June 1848; d Atuona, Marquesas Islands, 8 May 1903). French painter, printmaker, sculptor and ceramicist. His style developed from Impressionism through a brief cloisonnist phase (in partnership with Emile Bernard) towards a highly personal brand of Symbolism, which sought within the tradition of Pierre Puvis de Chavannes to combine and contrast an idealized vision of primitive Polynesian culture with the sceptical pessimism of an educated European. A selfconsciously outspoken personality and an aggressively asserted position as the leader of the Pont-Aven group made him a dominant figure in Parisian intellectual circles in the late 1880s. His use of non-naturalistic colour and formal distortion for expressive ends was widely influential on early 20th-century avant-garde artists.
Paul Gauguin Posters and Prints

H R Giger

H.R. GIGER was born in the small city of Chur, Switzerland in February, 1940. Giger grew up in a rather normal, middle class family environment. His father was the local pharmacist. When he was quite young his father received a human skull as a professional promotion from a pharmaceutical firm, and the young Hansruedi was taken spellbound.

He fast developed a fascination with all things dark and strange, and later found inspiration from postcards and magazine photos featuring the works of Salvador Dali and Jean Cocteau. Giger's mother Melli was a great encouragement to him, though she did not always understand the strange fascinations of her young son. As a pre-teen, Giger would invite neighborhood friends over to watch his presentation of 'Ghost Train' rides, and other portrayals of the dark fantastic.

After high school (gymnasium) Giger went on to study architecture and industrial design at Zurich's School of Applied Arts. He soon expanded his network of friends to include those in involved in various aspects of the arts, and began drawing creatively.

In 1966 Giger began work as an interior designer, and at the same time, completed some early paintings. In 1968 Giger began working exclusively as an artist, as well as filmmaker. Giger has his first posters published in 1969 and also has some of his first exhibitions outside of Zurich.

Giger begins using the airbrush in the next decade, and his works take on a unique otherworldly quality. He grows to be considered the leading airbrush artist in the world and proved that fine art could be produced via the device. Working in large formats, Giger's paintings are meticulously rendered and possess a blend of erotic mystery and alien elegance.

In 1978 Giger began work on the film ALIEN, and ended up sculpting much of the creatures and sets. In 1980 the artist is awarded an Oscar for his stunning work on the classic film.

Giger began work on The H.R. Giger Museum in the middle 1990s and this continues today, as the medieval castle in Gruyere, Switzerland is being continually expanded. The museum houses Giger's personal collection of art from around the world, as well as a substantial collection of his own paintings and sculptural work.
H R Giger Posters and Prints

Alfred Gockel

Alfred Alexander Gockel was born in Ludinghausen, Germany in 1952. From his earliest days on, he was fascinated by the magic of colors on paper. This talent and enthusiasm resulted in the release of this first art work by a German publisher at the age of 8. After he graduated from high school, he commenced his studies at the Polytechnic Academy in Munster in 1973. His main emphasis was typography, graphic design and advertising. He graduated in 1977, and in the following years he was active as a freelance artist, designer and lecturer of typography and graphic design at the Polytechnic Academy in Munster. In 1981 his work of art had developed so strongly, that he had to stop with all additional activities and become a full-time artist. This was the beginning of a long and successful career. In 1983 he and his wife Ingrid founded an art publishing company; Avant Art, today a top ranked player in the abstract segment of the market, with customers in more than 50 countries worldwide.

The bright colors and the graceful motion of his characters mark Alfred’s compositions. This is a perfect reflection of his appearance and inner-self. His hyperactivity is the basis for the large number of different projects he has fulfilled, and his striving for perfection results in the highest quality for each and every one. The competitive nature of his character has led him to an accomplished career, and after 22 years he still gets inspired by society. His creations keep improving, stimulated by a large number of fans, that also keeps increasing. The few spare hours this hasty life gives him, he plays tennis, walks in the German forests with his two dogs, or jumps on two Harley Davidsons with his wife, and drives to their favorite spot at the island Sylt.

Alfred Alexander Gockel’s art collection is subdivided into two major categories: unique art work and graphics. This unique art mostly is oil on canvas, and in some periods he also creates aquarelles. His art is composed with the most beautiful lighted colors, trimmed with powerful black figures and accents. The separate colors and the black trims all fade together, and create an individual image for every spectator, no matter what culture or social position. The graphics are etchings, screen prints and lithographs, and are artistically connected to the unique sector. The distinctive style is automatically recognized as a true Gockel. However, with graphics the production and printing process is just as considerable as the artistic performance. In his collection we can notice the craftsmanship and dedication of a man who started his career at this field of study, and still can seduce his audience with his own passion.

The unique identification of his art, and the ability to load your own emotional batteries with his power, are the most heard purchase arguments. Over the past 20 years, Alfred Alexander Gockel has tried to enrich the world with his artistic view, without influencing his public with deeper messages. He keeps his art pure, the way it’s supposed to be. Alfred Gockel Posters and Prints

Katsushika Hokusai

Hokusai, full name Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849), Japanese painter and wood engraver, born in Edo (now Tokyo). He is considered one of the outstanding figures of the Ukiyo-e, or "pictures of the floating world" (everyday life), school of printmaking.

Hokusai entered the studio of his countryman Katsukawa Shunsho in 1775 and there learned the new, popular technique of woodcut printmaking. Between 1796 and 1802 he produced a vast number of book illustrations and color prints, perhaps as many as 30,000, that drew their inspiration from the traditions, legends, and lives of the Japanese people. Hokusai's most typical wood-block prints, silkscreens, and landscape paintings were done between 1830 and 1840. The free curved lines characteristic of his style gradually developed into a series of spirals that imparted the utmost freedom and grace to his work, as in Raiden, the Spirit of Thunder.

In his late works Hokusai used large, broken strokes and a method of coloring that imparted a more somber mood to his work, as in his massive Group of Workmen Building a Boat. Among his best-known works are the 13-volume sketchbook Hokusai manga (begun 1814) and the series of block prints known as the Thirty-Six Views of Mount Fuji (circa 1826-33).

Hokusai is generally more appreciated in the West than in Japan. His prints, as well as those by other Japanese printmakers, were imported to Paris in the mid-19th century. They were enthusiastically collected, especially by such impressionist artists as Claude Monet, Edgar Degas, and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, whose work was profoundly influenced by them.
Hokusai Posters and Prints

Edward Hopper

Hopper, Edward
(b Nyack, NY, 22 July 1882; d New York, 15 May 1967). American painter, printmaker and illustrator. He was brought up in a town on the Hudson River, where he developed an enduring love of nautical life. When he graduated from Nyack Union High School in 1899, his parents, although supportive of his artistic aspirations, implored him to study commercial illustration rather than pursue an economically uncertain career in fine art. He studied with the Correspondence School of Illustrating in New York City (1899–1900). He continued to study illustration at the New York School of Art (1900–1906), under Arthur Keller (1866–1925) and Frank Vincent Du Mond (1865–1951), but began to study painting and drawing after a year. Hopper began in the portrait and still-life classes of William Merrit Chase, to whose teaching he later referred only infrequently and disparagingly. He preferred the classes he took with Kenneth Hayes Miller and especially those of Robert Henri. Hopper’s skill won his fellow students’ respect, as well as honours in the school where, by 1905, he was teaching Saturday classes. Edward Hopper Posters and Prints

Wassily Kandinsky

Kandinsky, Vasily [Vassily; Wassily] (Vasil’yevich)
(b Moscow, 4 Dec 1866; d Neuilly-sur-Seine, 13 Dec 1944). Russian painter, printmaker, stage designer, decorative artist and theorist. A central figure in the development of 20th-century art and specifically in the transition from representational to abstract art, Kandinsky worked in a wide variety of media and was an important teacher and theoretician. He worked mainly outside Russia, but his Russian heritage continued to be an important factor in his development. Wassily Kandinsky Posters and Prints

Erickson Kerne

A graduate of the prestigious Los Angeles Art Center College of Design, Kerne Erickson spent years as a freelance graphic artist compiling an arsenal from the innumerable and varying demands exerted by his considerable clientele, the culmination of this freelance experience is a style that bares rich evidence of the hand, brush and paint, but without distracting from the total impact of a completed image.

For the last three years Erickson has applied his talents to the gradual expansion of the vivid Travel and Aloha images offered by Greg Young Publishing. Although close to twenty of Erickson’s pieces in the line now focus on travel to the Hawaiian Islands, there is an almost equal share of the line that depicts among the most recognizable landmarks from all over the United States and the world, the New York skyline and the Eiffel Tower being just two examples of these.

A meticulous researcher, Erickson tracks the slightest details—from license plates to period clothing—to render them historically accurate for a finished work which appeals to both the aviation-travel historian and any admirer of fine art.

Erickson is a member of the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Society recipient of the Most Innovative Painting Award at the National Oil and Acrylic Painters Exhibit in Osage Beach, MO. Other recent awards among his numerous honors include the Patron Purchase Award at the 1997 Watercolor USA Juried Show in Springfield, MO., as well as the Gold Award at the 1994 California Discovery Awards Juried Competition. Erickson Kerne Posters and Prints

Paul Klee

Klee, Paul
(b Münchenbuchsee, nr Berne, 18 Dec 1879; d Muralto, nr Locarno, 29 June 1940). Swiss painter, draughtsman, printmaker, teacher and writer. Klee’s work forms a major contribution to the history of 20th-century art. He is associated most commonly with the Bauhaus school in Weimar and Dessau. He is regarded as a major theoretician among modern artists and as a master of humour and mystery. In much of his work, he aspired to achieve a naive and untutored quality, but his art is also among the most cerebral of any of the 20th century. Klee’s wide-ranging intellectual curiosity is evident in an art profoundly informed by structures and themes drawn from music, nature and poetry.
Paul Klee Posters and Prints

Gustav Klimt

Klimt, Gustav
(b Baumgarten, nr Vienna, 14 July 1862; d Vienna, 6 Feb 1918). Austrian painter and draughtsman. A leading exponent of Art Nouveau, Klimt is considered one of the greatest decorative painters of the 20th century. His depictions of the femme fatale and his drawings treating the theme of female sexuality have assured him a place in the history of erotic art. He is remembered for his role in the formation of the Vienna Secession, the radical group of Austrian artists of which he became the first president in 1897 (see SECESSION, §3), and also for the frequent scandals and protests that marked his later career. These contrast strikingly with the public and official approval that marked him out as a young artist of promise, even before he graduated from the Vienna Kunstgewerbeschule in 1883.
Gustav Klimt Posters and Prints

John Lennon

Born October 9, 1940 John Winston Lennon Assassinated December 8, 1980 - Famous Beatle, composer and was also into art. John Lennon Posters and Prints

Roy Lichtenstein

Lichtenstein, Roy
(b New York, 28 Oct 1923; d New York, 29 Sept 1997). American painter, sculptor, printmaker and decorative artist. His paintings based on the motifs and procedures of comic strips and advertisements made him one of the central figures of American POP ART. Roy Lichtenstein Posters and Prints

Don Li-Leger

Don Li-Legers art has been featured in exhibitions throughout the United States and Canada and has traveled with the prestigious Leigh-Yawkey Woodson exhibit. The art of Don Li-Leger can also be found in many private collections. Li-Leger's original works of art can also be found at the Petley-Jones Gallery in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Don Li-Leger has been painting since he was a child. He focused initially on the birds and animals of his native British Columbia where he was born and raised. Li-Leger studied art at the Simon Fraser University, the Banff Centre School of Fine Art and Vancouver School of Art,.

Li-Leger lives and works in Crescent Beach, British Columbia. His home is his studio which he shares with his wife and children.
Don Li-Leger Posters and Prints

Dennis Loren

Dennis is a accomplished graphic designer specializing in music related marketing materials and publication design. He has created album covers, posters, and print ads for Jimi Hendrix, Muddy Waters, Paul McCartney, The Velvet Underground, Rick James and many others.

Dennis was born in Detroit in 1946. After graduating from high school in 1964 he worked full time while attending art classes until he was drafted in 1965. In the spring of 1967 he was briefly stationed at the Presidio in San Francisco. He was discharged there and decided to stay since it was really happening there. that time. Excited by the music scene he decided to form a band with guitarist Joe Toschi called "Mercury Vapor". His musical high point was jamming with BB King and Charlie Musselwhite at the Fillmore West in February of 1970.

He returned to Detroit in 1971 where he continued his art and music. He recorded a album with Ted Lucas in 1976. He also worked with Stanley Mouse on a Ted Lucas solo album cover design. Also in 1976 he began working at the Detroit Sun with Gary Grimshaw and John Sinclair. In 1978 Dennis became the Art Director for Goldmine magazine. During this time he also began to work for indie labels as a freelance designer. Throughout the 70's and 80's he did hundreds of flyers, posters, record covers for Detroit area bands.

In 1986 he again worked with Gary at Creem magazine. When Cambray Publishing, which owned Creem, decided to relocate to Los Angeles Dennis became the Art Director. That lasted until Creem was sold in 1991. Dennis started freelancing fulltime with labels like Rhino, Bomp, Ichiban, Del-Fi, and Curb among others. He has also done a couple of posters for the House Of Blues in LA. The Whisky-A-Go-Go has asked him to design a commemorative series of posters which will be available soon. These will feature all the major artists that played the historic venue! He is currently working on the packaging for a collection of Frank Zappa's early recordings for Del-Fi records.

Dennis has produced a series of Vintage Jazz poster reprints. By painstakingy restoring the original poster by hand he has been able to produce authentic reprints of these long lost posters.
Dennis Loren Posters and Prints

Rene Magritte

Magritte, René(-François-Ghislain)
(b Lessines, Hainaut, 21 Nov 1898; d Schaerbeek, Brussels, 15 Aug 1967). Belgian painter, draughtsman, printmaker, sculptor, photographer and film maker. He was one of the major figures of SURREALISM and perhaps the greatest Belgian artist of the 20th century. His work, while lacking the drama of conventional stylistic development, continued to be admired during the later years of his life, in spite of changes in fashion, and can be said to have continued to grow in popularity and critical esteem after his death. Rene Magritte Posters and Prints

Henri Matisse

Matisse, Henri (Emile Benoît)
(b Le Cateau-Cambrésis [now Le Cateau], nr Cambrai, Picardy, 31 Dec 1869; d Nice, 3 Nov 1954). French painter, draughtsman, sculptor, printmaker, designer and writer. He came to art comparatively late in life and made his reputation as the principal protagonist of FAUVISM, the first avant-garde movement at the turn of the century. He went on to develop a monumental decorative art, which was innovative both in its treatment of the human figure and in the constructive and expressive role accorded to colour. His long career culminated in a highly original series of works made of paper cut-outs, which confirmed his reputation, with Picasso, as one of the major artists of the 20th century
Henri Matisse Posters and Prints

Buonarroti Michelangelo

Michelangelo (Buonarroti) [Michelagnolo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni]
(b Caprese, ?6 March 1475; d Rome, 18 Feb 1564). Italian sculptor, painter, draughtsman and architect. The elaborate exequies held in Florence after Michelangelo’s death celebrated him as the greatest practitioner of the three visual arts of sculpture, painting and architecture and as a respected poet. He is a central figure in the history of art: one of the chief creators of the Roman High Renaissance, and the supreme representative of the Florentine valuation of disegno (see DISEGNO E COLORE). As a poet and a student of anatomy, he is often cited as an example of the ‘universal genius’ supposedly typical of the period. His professional career lasted over 70 years, during which he participated in, and often stimulated, great stylistic changes. The characteristic most closely associated with him is terribilità, a term indicative of heroic and awe-inspiring grandeur. Reproductions of the Creation of Adam from the Sistine Chapel Ceiling (Rome, Vatican) or the Moses from the tomb of Julius II (Rome, S Pietro in Vincoli) have broadcast an image of his art as one almost exclusively expressive of superhuman power. The man himself has been assimilated to this image and represented as the archetype of the brooding, irascible, lonely and tragic figure of the artist. This popular view is drastically oversimplified, except in one respect: the power and originality of his art have guaranteed his prominence as a historical figure for over 400 years since his death, even among those who have not liked the example he gave. For such different artists as Gianlorenzo Bernini, Eugène Delacroix and Henry Moore, he provided a touchstone of integrity and aesthetic value. Although his reputation as a poet has not been so high, his poetry has been praised by such diverse figures as William Wordsworth (1770–1850) and Eugenio Montale (1896–1981). Buonarroti Michelangelo Posters and Prints

Joan Miro

Miró, Joan
(b Barcelona, 20 April 1893; d Palma de Mallorca, 25 Dec 1983). Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and decorative artist. He was never closely aligned with any movement and was too retiring in his manner to be the object of a personality cult, like his compatriot Picasso, but the formal and technical innovations that he sustained over a very long career guaranteed his influence on 20th-century art. A pre-eminent figure in the history of abstraction and an important example to several generations of artists around the world, he remained profoundly attached to the specific circumstances and environment that shaped his art in his early years. An acute balance of sophistication and innocence and a deeply rooted conviction about the relationship between art and nature lie behind all his work and account in good measure for the wide appeal that his art has continued to exercise across many of the usual barriers of style. Joan Miro Posters and Prints

Claude Monet

Monet, (Oscar-)Claude
(b Paris, 14 Nov 1840; d Giverny, 6 Dec 1926). French painter. He was the leader of the Impressionist movement in France; indeed the movement’s name, IMPRESSIONISM, is derived from his Impression, Sunrise (1873; Paris, Mus. Marmottan). Throughout his long career, and especially in his series from the 1890s onwards, he explored the constantly changing quality of light and colour in different atmospheric conditions and at various times of the day.
Claude Monet Posters and Prints

Alphonse Mucha

Mucha, Alphonse [Alfons]
(b Ivancice, Moravia, 24 July 1860; d Prague, 14 July 1939). Czech graphic artist and painter, active in France. In 1877 he attempted unsuccessfully to enter the Academy of Fine Arts, Prague, and afterwards set about travelling and working. He went first to Vienna, where he worked for a company that produced stage sets, and where he discovered the work of Hans Makart. After being made redundant he left in 1882 for Mikulov, where he earned a living painting portraits of important local figures. He met Count Khuen-Belassi, who invited him to paint murals at his home (1882–4; some panels in Brno, Mus. City), later sending him to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich (1885–7) and to Paris in autumn 1888. Mucha enrolled at the Académie Julian and worked in the studios of Jules Lefebvre and Jean-Paul Laurens. When his grant was cut off at the end of 1889, he stayed in Paris and briefly attended the Académie Colarossi; to finance himself he produced a variety of illustrations, collaborating on La Vie populaire and the children’s review Le Petit Français illustré. Alphonse Mucha Posters and Prints

Edvard Munch

Munch, Edvard
(b Løten, Hedmark, 12 Dec 1863; d Oslo, 23 Jan 1944). Norwegian painter, printmaker and draughtsman. Especially concerned with the expressive representation of emotions and personal relationships, he was associated with the international development of Symbolism during the 1890s and recognized as a precursor of Expressionism, particularly in his paintings and woodcuts.
Edvard Munch Posters and Prints

Georgia O'keeffe

O’Keeffe, Georgia
(b Sun Prairie, WI, 15 Nov 1887; d Santa Fe, NM, 6 March 1986). American painter and draughtsman. She decided to become an artist when she was 12. From 1905 to 1906 she attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she went to New York to study oil, pastel and watercolour painting at the Art Students League. She worked there for a year with William Merritt Chase and won the Chase Still Life Scholarship. In 1908 she saw the first American exhibitions of the work of Auguste Rodin (watercolours) and of Henri Matisse at the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession, known as 291, run by Alfred Stieglitz. Georgia O'keeffe Posters and Prints

Pablo Picasso

Picasso [Ruiz Picasso], Pablo
(b Málaga, 25 Oct 1881; d Mougins, France, 8 April 1973). Spanish painter, sculptor, draughtsman, printmaker, decorative artist and writer, active in France. He dominated 20th-century European art and was central in the development of the image of the modern artist. Episodes of his life were recounted in intimate detail, his comments on art were published and his working methods recorded on film. Painting was his principal medium, but his sculptures, prints, theatre designs and ceramics all had an impact on their respective disciplines. Even artists not influenced by the style or appearance of his work had to come to terms with its implications. Pablo Picasso Posters and Prints

Jackson Pollock

Pollock, (Paul) Jackson
(b Cody, WY, 28 Jan 1912; d East Hampton, NY, 11 Aug 1956). American painter.
He was the youngest of five sons and in his first 16 years moved 9 times with his family between California and Arizona. In 1928 he settled in Los Angeles, where he studied at the Manual Arts High School under the painter and illustrator Frederick John de St Vrain Schwankowsky. He learnt the rudiments of art and learnt about European and Mexican modernism. His teacher introduced him to the doctrines of Theosophy and of its former messiah, Jiddu Krishnamurti, which prepared Pollock, who had been brought up as an agnostic, to be open to contemporary spiritual concepts: the unconscious, Carl Gustav Jung’s analytical psychology and Surrealist automatism. Jackson Pollock Posters and Prints

Will Rafuse, Pierre

Born in Calgary, Alberta, Will spent many years living on the Prairies. He received a diploma in Graphic Arts and Illustration from Capilano College in Vancouver, then went on to receive his diploma in Computer Graphics and Multimedia at Vancouver Community College.

Intrigued by the works of Gauguin, Modigliani, and Balthus, Rafuse works mostly in oils and is known for his bright colors and the slightly animated twist of the subjects he paints. Rafuse's art appears in the collections of corporations and individuals around the world.

It was only in 1994 when Will decided to pursue his interest in painting. Will began his professional painting career in Stanley Park's Painter's Corner, not knowing that his colorful characters will soon become a permanent fixture in the Vancouver art scene and in both private and corporate collections worldwide. His art has a universal appeal to those who are looking to add a light hearted, witty image to their environment. His work ranges from loveable animals to animated characters to delectable pastries and cocktails, but his trademark style remains unmistakable.
Will Rafuse Posters and Prints

Auguste Renoir

Renoir, (Pierre-)Auguste
(b Limoges, 25 Feb 1841; d Cagnes-sur-Mer, 3 Dec 1919). French painter, printmaker and sculptor. He was one of the founders and leading exponents of IMPRESSIONISM from the late 1860s, producing some of the movement’s most famous images of carefree leisure. He broke with his Impressionist colleagues to exhibit at the Salon from 1878, and from c. 1884 he adopted a more linear style indebted to the Old Masters. His critical reputation has suffered from the many minor works he produced during his later years. Pierre Auguste Renoir Posters and Prints

Diego Rivera

Rivera (y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez), Diego (María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la)
(b Guanajuato, 13 Dec 1886; d Mexico City, 24 Nov 1957). Mexican painter and draughtsman. He was one of the most important figures in the Mexican mural movement and won international acclaim for his vast public wall paintings, in which he created a new iconography based on socialist ideas and exalted the indigenous and popular heritage in Mexican culture. He also executed large quantities of easel paintings and graphic work.
Diego Rivera Posters and Prints

Mark Rothko

Rothko, Mark [Rothkowitz, Marcus]
(b Dvinsk, Russia [now Daugavpils, Latvia], 25 Sept 1903; d New York, 25 Feb 1970). American painter and draughtsman of Russian birth. He was one of the major figures of ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM and an important influence on the development of COLOUR FIELD PAINTING. Mark Rothko Posters and Prints

Egon Schiele

Schiele, Egon
(b Tulln an der Donau, nr Vienna, 12 June 1890; d Vienna, 31 Oct 1918). Austrian painter, draughtsman and printmaker. He is, with Oskar Kokoschka, one of the major figures of Austrian EXPRESSIONISM, in spite of the brevity of his artistic career, which lasted only about ten years. While remaining faithful to the initial influences on his work of the Vienna Secession and in particular of the art of Gustav Klimt, he developed a highly personal and expressive style and introduced psychologically and sexually intense subject-matter that was radical in its subjectivity and highly influential on later generations of artists.
Egon Schiele Posters and Prints

Henri Silberman

Born in Paris, the city of lights, Silberman fell in love with photography. From an early age, he was fascinated by how film could capture and freeze the effects of light. Today, fans, tourists, and lovers of the Big Apple eagerly collect his masterful portraits of New York City's landmarks. Henri Silberman Posters and Prints

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Toulouse-Lautrec (Montfa), Henri(-Marie-Raymond) de
(b Albi, Tarn, 24 Nov 1864; d Château de Malromé, nr Langon, Gironde, 9 Sept 1901). French painter and printmaker. He is best known for his portrayals of late 19th-century Parisian life, particularly working-class, cabaret, circus, nightclub and brothel scenes. He was admired then as he is today for his unsentimental evocations of personalities and social mores. While he belonged to no theoretical school, he is sometimes classified as Post-Impressionist. His greatest contemporary impact was his series of 30 posters (1891–1901), which transformed the aesthetics of poster art.
Henri Toulouse-Lautrec Posters and Prints

J M W Turner

A prolific artist, better known as just "Turner", produced over 20,000 paintings and drawings in his lifetime. Joseph Mallord William Turner, often called "the painter of light", as well as "the great pyrotechnist", was born in London, England on April 23, 1775, at his parents home on 21 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden.

Turner always considered his painting of the "Dido Building in Carthage" one of his best works...although it was one of his more traditional pieces, and a far cry from the style of his later paintings. Turner died on December 19, 1851, overlooking the Thames river.
J M W Turner Posters and Prints

Henri Toulouse-Lautrec

Turner, J(oseph) M(allord) W(illiam)
(b London, 23 April 1775; d Chelsea [now in London], 19 Dec 1851). British painter and printmaker. He dominated British landscape painting throughout the first half of the 19th century. He established a reputation in the Royal Academy, London, first as a topographical watercolourist and then within a few years as a painter of Sublime and historical landscapes Henri Toulouse-Lautrec Posters and Prints

Vincent Van Gogh

Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van
(b Zundert, 30 March 1853; d Auvers-sur-Oise, 29 July 1890). Dutch painter. His life and work are legendary in the history of 19th- and 20th-century art. In the popular view, van Gogh has become the prototype of the misunderstood, tormented artist, who sold only one work in his lifetime—but whose Irises (sold New York, Sotheby’s, 11 Nov 1987) achieved a record auction sale price of £49 million. Romantic clichés suggest that van Gogh paid with insanity for his genius, which was understood only by his supportive brother Theo (1857–91). Van Gogh was active as an artist for only ten years, during which time he produced some 1000 watercolours, drawings and sketches and about 1250 paintings ranging from a dark, Realist style to an intense, expressionistic one. Almost more than on his oeuvre, his fame has been based on the extensive, diary-like correspondence he maintained, in particular with his brother. Vincent Van Gogh Posters and Prints

Jack Vettriano

Born in Scotland in 1953 of Italian parents, Jack Vettriano began his career as a mining engineer in the Scottish coalfields, painting only in his spare time. In 1988, Vettriano gave up his job as a mining engineer in order to paint full-time.

To date Vettriano has enjoyed great success in spite of his lack of formal training. His career has flourished, with exhibitions in Edinburgh, London, Johannesburg and Hong Kong. He submitted two paintings to the Royal Scottish Academy, which were selected, hung and immediately sold. Vettriano's success at the Academy led to a joint show during the 1991 Edinburgh festival at the Solstice Gallery. In 1992, three works were accepted by The Royal Academy in London for the Summer Exhibition and later in the same year his first solo exhibition was a sell-out.

Vettriano's paintings hint at stories of seduction and betrayal in a style that has been compared to some of the great realist painters of America and England. His work has been likened to that of Walter Sickert, Edward Hopper and the photographer Brassai, and to some show influences from Scotland's distinctive Colourist tradition. Jack Vettriano Posters and Prints

Andy Warhol

Warhol, Andy [Warhola, Andrew]
(b Pittsburgh, PA, 6 Aug 1928; d New York, 22 Feb 1987). American painter, printmaker, sculptor, draughtsman, illustrator, film maker, writer and collector. After studying at the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh from 1945 to 1949, he moved to New York and began working as a commercial artist and illustrator for magazines and newspapers. His work of the 1950s, much of it commissioned by fashion houses, was charming and often whimsical in tone, typified by outline drawings using a delicate blotted line that gave even the originals a printed appearance; a campaign of advertisements for the shoe manufacturers I. Miller & Sons in 1955–6 (Kornbluth, pp. 113–21) was particularly admired, helping to earn him major awards from the Art Directors Club. Andy Warhol Posters and Prints

John Williams Waterhouse

Waterhouse, John William
(b Rome, 6 April 1849; d London, 10 Feb 1917). English painter. His father was a minor English painter working in Rome. Waterhouse entered the Royal Academy Schools in London in 1870. He exhibited at the Society of British Artists from 1872 and at the Royal Academy from 1874. From 1877 to the 1880s he regularly travelled abroad, particularly to Italy. In the early 1870s he had produced a few uncharacteristic Orientalist ‘keepsake’ paintings, but most of his works in this period are scenes from ancient history or classical genre subjects, similar to the work of Lawrence Alma-Tadema (e.g. Consulting the Oracle, c. 1882; London, Tate). However, Waterhouse consistently painted on a larger scale than Alma-Tadema. His brushwork is bolder, his sunlight casts harsher shadows and his history paintings are more dramatic. John Williams Waterhouse Posters and Prints

Andrew Wyeth

Wyeth, Andrew (Newell)
(b Chadds Ford, PA, 12 July 1917). American painter. Owing to his fragile health he was taught at home as a child by tutors and by his father Newell Convers Wyeth (1882–1945), a distinguished illustrator who gave him a rigorous training in draughtsmanship. In about 1933 he first saw the watercolours of Winslow Homer, prompting him to paint impressionistic watercolours that captured fleeting effects of light and movement, as in the Coot Hunter (1941; Chicago, IL, A. Inst.). He first exhibited in 1936 at the Art Alliance of Philadelphia and the following year had his first one-man show, of watercolours, at the Macbeth Gallery in New York, which sold out on the first day. In 1943 Wyeth received a lucrative offer to paint occasional covers for the Saturday Evening Post, as his father had done, but he refused, wishing to devote himself to more independent art.
Andrew Wyeth Posters and Prints

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