Portfolios Archive - Page 5 sur 9 - Robin Rosenberg Fine Art

Patrick Hughes

Patrick Hughes was born in Birmingham, England in 1939. He is recognized as a major painter in contemporary British art, known primarily for his creation of reverspective – an optical illusion painted on a three-dimensional surface in which parts of the picture that are seemingly the farthest away are in reality physically the closest.

His first major subject, which sparked immense popularity in the 1970s, was the rainbow. He painted them emerging from trashcans, leaning on the sky, coming through windows, hanging on clothing lines, and pouring out of paint buckets. These were so popular and well received that they were often featured on postcards and prints. Despite the popularity of his rainbows, Hughes is best known for his reverspective paintings. These sculpted paintings of interiors, landscapes, and buildings deceive the viewer’s mind with an experience of unreality. As a visual optical illusion, these works express the science of perception along with artistic representation of space.

In addition to his artistic work, Hughes is a designer, teacher, and writer. He has written numerous essays and books on the visual rhetoric of the paradox of his work and on the subject of oxymorons and paradoxes.

Today, Hughes lives and works in London. His work has been exhibited in Europe, Asia, and North America, and is part of public collections at the British Library and the Tate in London, England, the Gallery of Modern Art in Glasgow, Scotland, the Deutsche National Bibliothek in Frankfurt, Germany, and the Denver Art Museum in Colorado.

Alexander Young Jackson

Alexander Young Jackson was a Canadian landscape painter and printmaker. He was a founding member of the Group of Seven, the famed group of Canadian landscape painters who believed art could be developed through direct exposure to nature. Jackson, along with the other members of the group, made significant contributions to the historical development of twentieth century Canadian art.

Jackson was born in 1882 in Montreal, Quebec. He received his first training in the arts while working at lithography firms in both Montreal and Chicago during his youth. From 1896-1899, he studied art at night school at the Conseil des arts et manufactures and at the Art Institute of Chicago from 1906-1907. He also studied Impressionism at the Académie Julian in Paris in 1907.

Upon his return to Canada, Jackson began painting Neo-Impressionist landscapes. His reputation in the art world was steadily growing, however, his career was interrupted by his enlistment in World War I. During the war, he was wounded and transferred to the Canadian War Records branch to work as an official war artist.

After his return from the war, Jackson became dissatisfied with the art scene in Montreal, prompting his move to Toronto where he shared a studio with Canadian painter Tom Thomson. The two, along with other members of the Group of Seven, took many trips to Canada’s wilderness to paint. During this time, Jackson created his famous winter scenes, specifically his paintings of the Arctic. His works were considered daring since, at the time, the wilderness was assumed to be too rugged and wild to be captured on canvas.

Jackson’s paintings of the Canadian wilderness helped shape the perception of Canadian art. His landscapes were, and continue to be, shown throughout Canada and are considered an important part of the country’s art identity and history. He received three honourary doctorates from McMaster University, the University of Saskatchewan, and the University of British Columbia. In 1967, Jackson was awarded the title of a Companion of the Order of Canada and received the medal for lifetime achievement from the Royal Canadian Academy. Jackson spent his last years as an artist-in-residence at the McMichael Gallery (now the McMichael Canadian Art Collection) in Ontario, where he is buried. His work is included in many prestigious private and public collections across the country.

Sarah Anne Johnson

Sarah Anne Johnson is a multidisciplinary artist who currently lives and works in Winnipeg, Manitoba where she was born in 1976. She uses photography as a primary medium to fabricate imagery that not only showcases a moment in time, but evokes the feelings she has towards the various subjects she depicts. She is celebrated for her ability to incorporate unique materials to her photographs, including paints, re-touching inks and glitter, as well as her various destructive methods such as burning, scratching and gouging.

She completed a BFA at the University of Manitoba in 2002 and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 2004. Her graduating exhibition, “Tree Planting”, consisted of 64 colour photographs that depict her experiences tree planting in a replenishing project in Northern Manitoba. Notably, The Solomon R Guggenheim Museum purchased the exhibition for their permanent collection.

Upon her Yale graduation, she was awarded with the Schickle-Collingwood Prize, which helped fund her following artistic projects, all of which engage with the relationship between photography and memory. House on Fire is one of Johnson’s most notable ongoing projects, which centers on the artist’s memory of her grandmother who underwent gruesome experimental treatments for depression.

Johnson has since received many awards and grants, including the inaugural Grange Prize and a Canada Council Major Grant in 2008. She has participated in various residencies and has taught at the Yale School of Art, Emily Carr University and the University of Manitoba. Her work has been featured in solo and group exhibitions worldwide, most notably at the Met Breuer in New York a total of three times.

Anish Kapoor

Anish Kapoor is a British-Indian sculptor, internationally recognized for his Post-minimalist and large-scale public artworks. Born in Mumbai, India in 1954, Kapoor briefly studied engineering in Israel before attending the Hornsey College of Art, London in 1973 where he studied under British sculptor Paul Neagu. After enrolling in the Chelsea School of Art for postgraduate studies, Kapoor returned to India, feeling that his work had strong ties to his home country. During this period, he created his first major pigment sculpture and he quickly gained an international reputation.

Throughout his career, Kapoor has experimented with a variety of materials including mirrors, stone, wax, PVC, and vantablack and has created works of both geometric and biomorphic forms. His works aim to create voids; pieces that are not holes, but spaces full of absences. He has created several iconic public works in cities around the world including Sky Mirror in Nottingham, England and Cloud Gate, a site-specific sculpture in Millennium Park, Chicago that is lovingly nicknamed, ‘The Bean’ by locals.

Kapoor represented Britain at the Venice Biennale in 1990 and won the Turner Prize the following year. He was named a Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire in 2003 and he was awarded Knighthood for his contribution to the visual arts in 2013. A major retrospective of his work was held at the Museo Universiatrio Arte Contemporáneo, Mexico City in 2016.

Today, Kapoor lives and works in London. His work can be found in the collections of the MoMA in New York, NY, the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C., and the Tate in London, England among many other prestigious international institutions.

Alex Katz

Alex Katz is an American painter recognized for his distinctive style of portraiture. He was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1927. As a teenager, he attended the Woodrow Wilson High School for its art program and in 1946, he began his studies at The Cooper Union Art School in Manhattan, where he was trained primarily in Modernist art theories and techniques.

Katz’s paintings are almost equally divided into the genres of portraiture and landscape, though his portraiture is more well-known and celebrated. In his early career, he strived for realism in his paintings. He painted his friends and his wife, Ada, in his characteristic style of flat, planes of colour. He often worked from painted cut-outs of canvas which were mounted on contoured wood and, later, he would paint these shapes directly on cut wood and aluminum. In the 1960s, Katz painted large-scale paintings, often of faces, and began painting groups of people. He depicted the lives of artist, poets, critics and other colleagues. In 1965, he began printmaking. Throughout his career he has produced many editions in silkscreen, lithography, etching, woodcut and linoleum cut. In the late 1980s and into the 1990s, he focused on large landscape paintings which envelope the viewer in nature.

Today, Katz lives and works in SoHo, New York City. His work has been shown in more than two hundred solo exhibitions and five hundred group exhibitions internationally and is included in the collections of more than one hundred public institutions worldwide. He has received many awards and recognitions throughout his lifetime including the 2007 Lifetime Achievement Award from the National Academy Museum, New York.

KAWS

KAWS, whose real name is Brian Donnelly, is a New York-based artist who has made his name as one of the foremost graffiti artists in the world. Born in 1974 in Jersey City, New Jersey, he graduated from the School of Visual Arts in New York where he obtained a Bachelor of Fine Arts specializing in illustration.

He settled in New York City in the 1990s post-graduation and began his career as a graffiti artist in addition to working freelance in animation design for Disney. His artistry started out with subverting the images and advertisements featured on bus shelters, phone booths and billboards. He would remove the existing advertisements from their casings and add his own unique artistic elements before putting them back. The artworld quickly took notice and his notoriety and popularity reached unexpected heights.

In the late 90s, KAWS designed and produced limited edition vinyl toys that instantly became a big hit with the global art toy collecting community, particularly in Japan. He also began collaborating on different toys which redesigned iconic cartoon characters including Mickey Mouse, the Michelin Man and SpongeBob SquarePants. The artist is also known for his prolific print series and paintings, which have done exceedingly well at auction, more often than not selling significantly more than the high estimates. Similar to his sculptures, his paintings feature unique caricature figures and frequently portray subverted versions of famous American cartoons. His unique iconography has also made its way into the commercial sphere, as KAWS has collaborated with many fashion and cosmetic brands including Marc Jacobs, Comme des Garçons, Nike, Uniqlo, Kiehl’s and Vans.

KAWS’ museum shows include solo exhibitions at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, the Modern Art Museum in Texas and the Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum in Connecticut. Other international eminent galleries include Galerie Perrotin with locations in New York, Paris, Hong Kong and Tokyo, as well as Skarstedt Gallery in New York. The artist currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

William Kentridge

William Kentridge is a South African artist born in Johannesburg in 1955. He is best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. In these films, Kentridge draws and erases with charcoal, recording his process at each state. He then displays a projection of the looped images with the final, highly worked drawing. These images are deeply engaged with the trauma of Apartheid. The process of recording history is constructed from reconfigured fragments to arrive at a fluid understanding of the past. “My work is about the provisionality of the moment,” the artist has said.

Kentridge studied politics and African history at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg before continuing his education in Fine Art at the Johannesburg Art Foundation and the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris. His interest in theatre is apparent in his style and desire to connect film and drawing. His work is also inspired by artistic satirists like Honoré Daumier, Francisco de Goya, and William Hogarth. Kentridge gained international acclaim for his short film series 9 Drawings for Projection (1989-2003). In 2016, his solo exhibition “Thick Time” opened at White Chapel Gallery in London, evoking 1920s technology and Dadaist collage. He has also directed several operas, most notably Wozzeck in 2017.

He is the recipient of honorary doctorates from several universities including Yale and the University of London. He has lectured at Harvard and served as visiting professor in Contemporary Art at Oxford University. His works are held in the collections of The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Tate Gallery in London, and the Goetz Collection in Munich, among others. Kentridge continues to live and work in Johannesburg.

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 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 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.