Anslem Kiefer

Anslem Kiefer

Anselm Kiefer is a German painter and sculptor known for his political and often controversial work. He was born in Donaueschingen, Germany just two months before the end of World War II. He studied pre-law and Romance Languages at the University of Freiburg but, after a few semesters, switched to study art. In 1971, Kiefer established a studio in Hornbach, Germany where he worked until 1992. He since has lived and worked in France.

In the early years of his career, he focused on performance art. He mimicked Nazi salutes while in costume throughout various cities in Europe with the intention of reminding people of the consequences of the Third Reich. In 1969, his first solo exhibition – Besetzungen (Occupations) at Galerie Kaiserplatz – displayed photographs of these performances, as well as a host of other controversial subjects.

In the 1970s, Kiefer began experimenting with unconventional materials in his painting and sculptural practice including dried plants, ash, broken glass, lead, and shellac. His paintings expanded on the themes of his work of the previous decade as he continued to confront his country’s dark past with themes surrounding the Nazi rule. Kiefer’s work is also inspired by Germany’s history and culture including Paul Celan’s poetry and spiritual concepts of Kabbalah, a school of thought originating from Judaism. Kiefer also works in book design, set design, woodcuts, and watercolors.

Kiefer was chosen to represent Germany at the 1980 Venice Biennale and again in 1997. Numerous solo exhibitions of his work have been held throughout Europe, the United States, and Japan. He was the recipient of the Wolf Prize in 1990 and the Premium Imperiale from the Japan Art Association in 1999. Kiefer’s work is held in the collections of the Hamburger Bahnhof in Berlin, Germany, the MoMA, the Guggenheim Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, NY, the Detroit Institute of Arts in Michigan, Tate Modern in London, England, the Art Gallery of Ontario in Ottawa, the National Gallery of Australia in Parkes, Canberra, and many more.

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons

Jeff Koons was born in York, Pennsylvania in 1955 and is regarded as one of the most famous contemporary artists, widely known for his Neo-Pop sculptures. Throughout his career, he has challenged notions of traditional art, encouraging top collectors to revise their notions of what a fine collection looks like. He is a champion of kitsch as well as of the appropriation of tacky objects amassed from popular culture, rendering him a controversial figure in the artworld. He is also considered a relentless self-promoter and marketing genius. 

Koons studied at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore as well as the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduating, he moved to New York and worked at the membership desk at the Museum of Modern Art. During this period, he began experimenting with sculpture, deriving inspiration from a miscellaneous array of objects you might find at a garage sale such as garish inflatable rabbits and flowers. In 1980, he left the museum and sold mutual funds and stocks at First Investors Corporation in order to finance artwork that eventually became part of The New Series, which consisted of vacuum cleaners and shampoo polishers displayed in plexiglass vitrines. Continuing in the vein of creating sculptures of unexpected objects, he embarked on The Equilibrium Series, consisting of a series of basketballs floating in tanks of water. He is most recognized for his colossal inflatable balloon dog sculptures. 

Koons has been the subject of various blockbuster exhibitions. Notably, in 2014, The Whitney Museum in New York held a major retrospective of his body of work. He has also done solo shows at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago, The Helsinki City Art Museum and the Astrup Fearnley Museum of Modern Art in Oslo. In addition to his high-profile exhibitions, he has received many prestigious awards and accolades including the State Department’s Medal of Arts and being named an honorary member of the Royal Academy in London. Impressively, he holds the title for the most expensive artwork sold at auction by a living artist. His stainless steel sculpture of a rabbit created in 1986 sold at Christie’s New York for $91.1 million with fees. He continues to live and work in New York City.

Fernand Léger

Fernand Léger

Fernand Leger was born in Argentan, France, in 1881. Most known for cubism, his work spanned many varied focuses and styles, with different inspirations. Bright primary colours and large rounded forms act as distinctive components within most works, Leger’s style is iconic and easy to recognize.

Leger’s early work shows impressionism influence, which soon transitioned into a stronger cubist vision. Leger exhibited paintings at the Salon Des Independants in 1911, which encouraged his recognition as a major name in Cubism. In 1914, he was drafted into the war, the experience of which inspired interest in the human figure, as is displayed in many works and paintings by Leger.  Leger’s later work mirrored his interest in social equality and his paintings often depicted large groups of people, such as union workers in industrial landscapes. After relocating to New York In 1931, his work influenced many New York School painters.

The artist’s legacy lives on through cubist forms, bold colours, and art as something that ‘everyone can understand.’ In 1952, he created two murals that were installed in the United Nations headquarters in New York City. Today, his works can be found in the Museum Of Modern Art in New York, in the Art Institute Of Chicago, London’s Tate Gallery, Centre Pompidou in Paris, and the Albertina in Vienna.

Jean Paul Lemieux

Jean Paul Lemieux

Jean-Paul Lemieux is one of the most well-known and illustrious Quebec painters of the twentieth century. He is remembered for his depictions of desolate, infinite landscapes and cities of the Quebec region in a renewed figurative style.

Lemieux was born in Quebec City in 1904. He studied under Edwin Holgate at the École des Beaux-Arts de Montréal. There, he met Paul-Émile Borduas, Jean-Charles Faucher, and Louis Muhlstock. Like many of his comrades at this time, Lemieux joined in on the prevailing trend during the 1930s and 1940s in Quebec, that of the renewal of figurative art. In 1929, when the great depression hit, Lemieux made the move to Europe to study advertising and art in Paris where he met fellow French-Canadian artist, Clarence Gagnon.

Lemieux has received numerous awards and accolades for his contribution to Quebecois art. The artist’s work was one of a select few chosen to represent Canada at the Venice Biennale in 1960. In 1968, he became a Companion of the Order of Canada and was a member of the Royal Canadian Academy. He received the Molson Prize for the Canada Council of the Arts in 1974. In addition to painting, Lemieux illustrated several books including La Petite Poule d’eau by Gabrielle Roy in 1971 and Maria Chapdelaine by Louis Hémon in 1981. Major retrospectives of his work have been held at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal, and the Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec in Quebec City.

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was an American pop artist famously known for his comic-inspired work which played a vital role in the Pop Art movement of the 1960s.

Lichtenstein was born in Manhattan, New York in 1923. He left New York for Ohio State University to study Fine Arts, though his studies were interrupted for three years due to his Army enlistment in World War II. After the war, he finished his Bachelor’s degree and went on to obtain a Master of Fine Arts at Ohio State University. He was later hired by the university as an art instructor. 

After nearly a decade of working and living between Ohio and New York City, Lichtenstein moved to upstate New York where he adopted an art practice in reaction to the Abstract Expressionist style. Instead of painting abstract works devoid of subjects, Lichtenstein took his imagery directly from comic books and advertisements.

The 1960s marked the height of Lichtenstein’s international fame. He moved back to New York City and painted his most famous works including Drowning Girl (1963), painted from a story in DC Comic’s Secret Hearts #83. Many critics questioned Lichtenstein’s originality since his works were near replicas of existing comic book panels. He always stood by his work and legitimized it by claiming its ability to take low art and elevate it to a high art context.

In 1964, Lichtenstein was the first American to exhibit at the Tate. In the following years he exhibited at other institutions throughout Europe. During this period, Lichtenstein also reproduced masterpieces by Picasso, Cézanne and Mondrian, recreating them with his own unique, hard-edge style. Later in his career he also reproduced works by Van Gogh, as he was continually inspired by art history.

Lichtenstein worked on many commissions as well including a Pop Art bedroom suite at the Palace Hotel in St. Mortiz, a BMW Art Car, the DreamWorks Records logo as well as public works in Barcelona, New York and other cities throughout the United States. Today, his work can be found in the collections the of the National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum Ludwig in Cologne and the National Gallery of Australia. In 1999, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation was founded which holds hundreds of his works.

John Little

John Little

John Little is a Canadian artist celebrated for his unique paintings of urban scenes from his hometown of Montreal. He studied at the Musée des beaux-arts in Montreal under Arthur Lismer and Goodridge Roberts. Later on, Little studied at the Art Students League in New York. Upon his return to Montreal in 1951, he joined his father’s architecture firm and worked as a draftsman.

In 1953, Little began working as full-time artist, though his interest in architecture did carry through into his art practice. He primarily painted Montreal’s historic buildings and neighborhoods – which have since drastically changed – with the intention of preserving their integrity and history. He is especially known and celebrated for his skill in capturing winter light and cold atmospheres. 

Little’s work is part of collections at the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Beaverbrook Art Gallery in New Brunswick, and the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal. Little became an Associate of the Royal Canadian Academy in 1961 and a full member of the Academy in 1973.

Robert Longo

Robert Longo

Robert Longo is an American artist best known for his large-scale, realistic charcoal drawings imbued with political and societal themes. He was born in Brooklyn, New York and was raised in Long Island. In his youth, Longo was inspired to become involved in politics after the 1970 Kent State University Massacre, an event which prompted the protests against the US invasion of Cambodia. A deceased student in the massacre, who was pictured in a popular press photo, was a former classmate of Longo’s. Ever since, Longo’s work has been centered on political themes such as power, authority, and social injustice.

He began his studies at the University of North Texas. However right before completing his degree, he left to study in Florence, Italy. From 1973-1975, Longo studied Fine Arts at the State University College in Buffalo, New York. In 1977, along with his life-long friend Cindy Sherman, he moved to New York City to participate in the underground art scene. Throughout the late 1970s and into the 1980s, Longo showed his work in numerous exhibitions and was involved in the underground culture of performances, alternative magazines, rock bands, and non-profit creative spaces. In 1986, he worked on commercial music videos and directed his first film.

His artworks are part of several important public collections such as the Guggenheim Museum, the MoMA, and the Jewish Museum in New York, NY, the Tate in London, England, and many more. Today, Longo lives and works in New York City.

Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold

Robert Mangold is an American minimalist painter, whose artistic representations of shapes and geometric objects unexpectedly derive from Abstract Expressionism. Mangold employs the characteristics of abstraction as a genesis, in the sense that his paintings contain abstract compositions as means to produce a contemplative response. Unlike typical abstract and expressionist art which emphasizes colour and gesture, however, Mangold’s minimalist pieces explore the weight of a work and use material as a means to dictate the aesthetic and feeling of a work by endowing either lightness or heaviness. 

 Mangold was born in 1937 and spent most of his childhood in New York State. He studied painting, sculpture and drawing at the Cleveland Institute of Art, and upon graduating in 1959, was awarded a fellowship at the Yale Summer School of Music and Art. The fellowship proved to be of great influence, as he continued to study at Yale to pursue his Master’s degree. After completing his formal education, he moved to New York City and was hired as a guard at the Museum of Modern Art. During this time, he met a variety of other aspiring artists such as Robert Ryman and Sol LeWitt. After several months, he was promoted to an assistant’s position in the museum’s library, and later, ended up having his own artwork being exhibited on the MoMA’s walls.

 Mangold’s first solo exhibition as a minimalist painter occurred in 1964. Since then, major exhibitions of his work have occurred at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the the Musée D’Orsay in Paris.

Jean McEwen

Jean McEwen

Jean McEwen is considered to be one of Canada’s most influential Abstract painters, more specifically, as a ‘lyrical abstractionist’. He was born in Montreal, Quebec in 1923. He started painting while studying pharmacology at the University of Montreal. He published poetry while at school, but his artistic style changed when he was introduced to a film about Paul Gauguin in 1946, after which he taught himself to paint in a Figurative style – all the while completing his program. His first solo exhibition at the Galerie Agnès Lefort, Montreal took place in 1951. In the same year, he traveled to Paris where he met a fellow Quebecois painter, Jean Paul Riopelle. He spent two years in Europe where he painted and exhibited alongside Riopelle and American artist, Sam Francis.

After returning to Montreal, he worked for a pharmaceutical company but continued to paint and participate in various solo and group exhibitions in Quebec, Ontario, and New York. In 1972, a retrospective of his work was held at the Musée d’art contemporain in Montreal entitled, McEwen 1953-1973. A second retrospective was held at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Montreal in 1987 entitled, Jean McEwen: Colour in Depth.

McEwen received many awards during his career including the Concours Artistique for the Province of Quebec in 1961, as well as an honourable mention during the Sondage 68 show at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in 1968. In 1977, he received the Victor Lynch-Staunton Scholarship from the Canada Council of the Arts and was also awarded the prestigious Paul-Émile Borduas Award by the Province of Quebec in 1998. His work is held in prestigious public collections, galleries, and institutions across the country.