Italian Expressionist Painter and Sculptor, 1884-1920
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani (July 12, 1884 ?C January 24, 1920) was an Italian artist of Jewish heritage, practicing both painting and sculpture, who pursued his career for the most part in France. Modigliani was born in Livorno (historically referred to in English as Leghorn), in northwestern Italy and began his artistic studies in Italy before moving to Paris in 1906. Influenced by the artists in his circle of friends and associates, by a range of genres and art movements, and by primitive art, Modigliani's œuvre was nonetheless unique and idiosyncratic. He died in Paris of tubercular meningitis, exacerbated by poverty, overworking, and an excessive use of alcohol and narcotics, at the age of 35. Related Paintings of Amedeo Modigliani :. | Junger Bauer | Seated man with orange background | Pierrot (mk39) | Caryatid | Ritratto di ragazza or Portrait of a young Woman (mk39) | Related Artists:
Gentile BelliniItalian
c1429-1507
Gentile Bellini Gallery
(b Venice, ?1429; d Venice, 23 Feb 1507). Painter and draughtsman, son of (1) Jacopo Bellini. An official painter of the Venetian Republic, he was a dominant figure in Venetian art for several decades in the latter half of the 15th century, known particularly for portraits and large narrative paintings in which the city and its inhabitants are depicted in great detail.
Grant Wood1891-1942
Grant Wood Locations
His family moved to Cedar Rapids after his father died in 1901. Soon thereafter he began as an apprentice in a local metal shop. After graduating from Washington High School (Cedar Rapids, Iowa) , Wood enrolled in an art school in Minneapolis in 1910, and returned a year later to teach in a one-room schoolhouse. In 1913 he enrolled at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and did some work as a silversmith.
From 1920 to 1928 he made four trips to Europe, where he studied many styles of painting, especially impressionism and post-impressionism. But it was the work of Jan Van Eyck that influenced him to take on the clarity of this new technique and to incorporate it in his new works. From 1924 to 1935 Wood lived in the loft of a carriage house that he turned into his personal studio at "5 Turner Alley" (the studio had no address until Wood made one up himself). In 1932, Wood helped found the Stone City Art Colony near his hometown to help artists get through the Great Depression. He became a great proponent of regionalism in the arts, lecturing throughout the country on the topic.
Wood taught painting at the University of Iowa's School of Art beginning in 1934. During that time, he supervised mural painting projects, mentored students, produced a variety of his own works, and became a key part of the University's cultural community. On February 12, 1942, one day before his 51st birthday, Wood died at the university hospital of liver cancer.
When Wood died, his estate went to his sister, Nan Wood Graham, the woman portrayed in American Gothic. When she died in 1990, her estate, along with Wood's personal effects and various works of art, became the property of the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa.
Wood was an active painter from an extremely young age until his death, and although he is best known for his paintings, he worked in a large number of media, including ink, charcoal, ceramics, metal, wood and found objects.
Throughout his life he hired out his talents to many Iowa-based businesses as a steady source of income. This included painting advertisements, sketching rooms of a mortuary house for promotional flyers and, in one case, designing the corn-themed decor (including chandelier) for the dining room of a hotel. In addition, his 1928 trip to Munich was to oversee the making of the stained-glass windows he had designed for a Veterans Memorial Building in Cedar Rapids. He again returned to Cedar Rapids to teach Junior High students after serving in the army as a camouflage painter.
CELESTI, Andrea Italian painter, Venetian school b. 1637, Venezia, d. 1712, Venezia,Italian painter. He trained first with Matteo Ponzoni, then with Sebastiano Mazzoni; Mazzoni encouraged the development of a Baroque style, but Celesti was also attracted by the naturalism of the tenebrists. The first known works by Celesti are mature in style, and he had already achieved considerable fame in Venice when the Doge Alvise Contarini honoured him with the title of Cavaliere in 1681. The complexity of his sources is evident in two canvases, Moses Destroying the Golden Calf and Moses Chastising the Hebrew People for their Idolatry, both painted c. 1681 for the Palazzo Ducale, Venice, and signed Cavaliere; they are influenced by Luca Giordano and by the narrative techniques of Jacopo Tintoretto. The most distinguished works of Celesti's early period are two large lunettes that show three scenes: Benedict III Visiting St Zacharias, A Doge Presented with the Body of a Saint, and the Virtues Surrounding a Doge Holding the Model of St Zacharias (c. 1684; Venice, S Zaccaria). These luxuriant compositions represent a remarkable leap in quality from the paintings of the Palazzo Ducale, with lighter colours and a more flickering touch. A little later Celesti left Venice for Brescia, perhaps by way of Rovigo; exactly when he arrived is not known, but he established himself and his studio there for several years. Panfilo Nuvolone and Francesco Paglia (1636-1713) had encouraged the development of a more exuberant Baroque style in Brescia, and in response Celesti created more decorative, lyrical works, such as his ecstatic St Rose of Lima (Brescia, S Clemente) with its brilliant display of glorious light. Most of Celesti's paintings done in and around Brescia were religious canvases, but he also painted portraits, such as the two entitled Condottiero (Ljubljana, Slov. Acad. Sci. & A.) and the portrait of Conte Alberto di Baone (Dublin, N.G.), executed in a dazzling array of colours. In 1688 Celesti was active at Toscolano on Lake Garda, where he painted canvases of scenes from the Life of St Peter (Toscolano Cathedral) and in 1689 decorated the salone of the Palazzo Delay (now Palazzo Mafizzoli) with Old Testament scenes. In 1696 he was at Treviso, where he executed a Last Judgement for the cathedral (untraced) and in 1697, 1698 and 1699 pictures for the abbey of S Floriano at Linz, where his Paradise, for the high altar, remains in situ. By 1700 Celesti was back in Venice, where he set up his studio; Venetian artists of this period, led by Giovanni Coli and Filippo Gherardi, were reviving the style of Veronese, and Celesti, following this trend, produced late works that employed more dazzling effects of colour and light. These works include the frescoed decoration of the Villa Rinaldi Barbini at Casella d'Asolo, where Celesti created a series of exotic and theatrical mythological and biblical scenes, distinguished by their luminosity and by their light and airy touch. His last works were three dramatic night scenes: the Birth of the Virgin, the Assumption of the Virgin and the Martyrdom of St Lawrence (1706-11; Verolanuova Cathedral). Celesti was much admired by Charles-Nicholas Cochin (i) and by Jean-Honor? Fragonard, and his colour influenced the Rococo art of the early 18th century in Venice and in Austria.