Frank Stella is a key figure in minimalism and post-painterly abstraction. He began his career in the early 1960s in painting, moving on to printmaking and then to sculpture. During the mid 1980s Stella began to compose full three-dimensional sculptural forms derived from cones, pillars, French curves, waves, and decorative architectural elements. He is one of the most well-regarded postwar American painters still working today. His work belongs in the collections of the Guggenheim Museum, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, NY and the Tate Modern in London, among many others.
Jim Dine is an American painter, sculptor, printmaker, illustrator, performance artist, stage designer and poet. He is known for depicting and incorporating into his works common place objects like clothing and toothbrushes. Dine's commitment to a personally invested, image-dictated content and a continuing interest in the technical and expressive potential of every medium has characterized Dine's work as a whole. Thus, Dine has often been out-of-step with the major movements of the post-World War II period and must be considered a modern individualist. He is, however, viewed as a forerunner of the figurative and Neo-Expressionist trends. Among other collections, Dine's work is in the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art, NY.
Andy Warhol was an American painter, filmmaker and conceptual artist. He was a leading figure in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. After a successful career as a commercial illustrator, Warhol became famous worldwide for his work as an artist, and public figure known for his membership in wildly diverse social circles that included bohemian street people, distinguished intellectuals, Hollywood celebrities and wealthy aristocrats. His most famous works were screen printed images lifted from the mass media; images of soup cans, Marilyn Monroe and Coca-cola bottles. These works presented a calculated exclusion of all conventional signs of personality. In their apparent rejection of invention and in their blatant vulgarity Pop works were brutal and shocking, designed to offend the sensibilities of an audience accustomed to thinking of art as an intimate medium for conveying emotion. His influence on pop culture and art of today is undeniable.
Damien Hirst is an English sculptor, installation artist, painter and printmaker. He was a leading figure in the group of 'Young British Artists' who emerged, predominantly in London, in the 1990s. His works are explicitly concerned with the fundamental dilemmas of human existence; his constant themes have included the fragility of life, society's reluctance to confront death, and the nature of love and desire. The works typically make use of media that challenge conventional notions of high art and aesthetic value and subject-matter that critiques the values of late 20th-century culture. His work A Thousand Years, a bisected glass vitrine containing a flayed cow's head, maggots, flies and an Insectocutor, created much controversy when it was displayed in New York. Hirst's 'spin' paintings, created by pouring household gloss paint onto spinning circular canvases, rework Abstract Expressionist gestural painting in a mechanized pastiche borrowed from a fun-fair entertainment. Part of many important collections, Hirst's works are in the Saatchi Gallery and at the New Museum, NY. He was awarded the Turner Prize in 1995
Robert Indiana was born in New Castle, Indiana in 1928. He moved to New York City in 1954 and joined the pop art movement. Using distinctive imagery drawing on commercial art approaches blended with existentialism, Indiana's work often consists of bold, simple, iconic images, especially numbers and short words like EAT, HUG, and, his best known example, LOVE. Indiana's works are in the permanent collections of numerous museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, New York and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Roy Lichtenstein's work first captured the world's attention in the 1960s, when he became known as one of America's foremost Pop artists. Lichtenstein's signature style borrowed from mass culture - particularly comic books and advertising - bring the look and feel of commercial printing to fine art. Lichtenstein also often paraphrased the history of art in his paintings, referencing canonical masterpieces as well as the tools of art, such as stretchers and brushstrokes. Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies of comic-book panels. His work is in the collections of the Tate Modern, London, the Guggenheim Museum, NY and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY.
Chun Kwang Young began working with Korean mulberry paper in 1994, creating vast "aggregations" with individually wrapped triangular bundles. Born in 1944, Chun spent his childhood in the landscape of a rural town in South Korea during the Korean War. His past informs his artwork which resembles the mountainous terrain of Korea and the chaos of rubble formed by the Korean War. He is one of the key figures of Korean contemporary art, exhibiting works in The Leeum, Seoul and at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, Connecticut. His most recent exhibition is at the Mori Art Center in Tokyo.
Alexander Calder was an American sculptor and artist most famous for inventing the mobile. In addition to mobile and stabile sculpture, Alexander Calder also created paintings, lithographs, toys, tapestry and jewelry, and designed carpets. He began by developing a new method of sculpting: by bending and twisting wire, he essentially "drew" three-dimensional figures in space. Calder also devoted himself to making outdoor sculpture on a grand scale from bolted sheet steel. Today, these stately titans grace public plazas in cities throughout the world. His work belongs to the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, IL, the MoMA, NY and the Reina Sof?a National Museum, Spain.
Tom Wesselmann was an American pop artist who specialized in found art collages and paintings. His first solo exhibition was in New York in 1961. Many of his works feature female figures, including his 100-piece "The Great American Nude" series, made in the 1960s, for which he became famous. His paintings are distinguished by his relatively flat motifs painted in a simplified form, using only outlines. Wesselmann has also worked in collage and on shaped canvases. Wesselmann worked until his death in 2004, his work is in the MoMA, NY and the Tate Modern, London.
Ron Arad combines playful forms and experiments with advanced technologies, becoming one of the most influential designers of our time. Born in Tel Aviv, he moved to London in 1973 to study architecture and made his name in the early 1980s as a self-taught designer-maker of sculptural furniture. He now works across both design and architecture. Arad exploits the formal and functional possibilities of his materials to the fullest; producing innovative and experimental pieces. His work has been featured in many design/architectural books and magazines world-wide and he has exhibited at many major museums and galleries throughout the world like the Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NY and the Victoria & Albert Museum, London.
Le Corbusier was a Swiss-French architect, designer, and painter, who is famous for being one of the pioneers of what now is called Modern architecture or the International Style. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned five decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America.
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