Arts of Modernity: Artists

Paul Signac

A celebrated Post-Impressionist and Divisionist painter, Paul Signac is known for his luminous depiction of subjects ranging from cabaret performers to seascapes. Signac is famous for his use of Divisionism (the central practice of Neo-Impressionism), a rigorous method invented in 1884 by his close friend Georges Seurat, in which colors are applied to the canvas separately in dots or dabs, blended later through the viewer's own visual process—a technique Signac exploited to particularly radiant effect. Before the advent of Divisionism, Signac's style more closely resembled the Impressionism of Camille Pisarro and Claude Monet, the latter's work significantly influencing Signac in his early career. Signac's bold sense of color would in turn be an inspiration to the Fauvists André Derain and Henri Matisse, as well as Vincent Van Gogh, whom he counted among his friends. French, 1863-1935, Paris, France

Andrè Derain

A founding member of Fauvism, Andre Derain is known for his innovative landscape and cityscape paintings in which he transforms the subject with bold and largely unrealistic colors. Early in his career Derain worked closely with fellow Fauves Maurice de Vlaminck and Henri Matisse, the latter helping convince Derain's family to let him pursue a career in painting. In Derain's celebrated depictions of London's Thames River and Tower Bridge, he applied each color separately in dots or dabs, inviting associations with the Divisionist technique of Paul Signac and Georges Seurat. Derain's later work features more subtle tones and new subjects, including portraiture and still life. Inspired by his friendship with Pablo Picasso, Derain's post-Fauve works show an engagement with both classicism and Cubism, and this so called "classical" style earned him widespread recognition throughout Europe and the United States. French, 1880-1954, Chatou, France, based in Garches, France

Claude Monet

A founding member of the Impressionist movement in the late 1800s, Claude Monet was interested in direct observation and perceptual study, particularly depicting the effects of light and shadow on color. A proponent of en plein air painting, Monet is most famous for his series depicting haystacks (1891), poplars (1892), the Rouen Cathedral (1894), and water lilies (1910-20). In each series, Monet painted the same site repeatedly, recording how the appearance changed as the light shifted. His final mural-sized paintings depicting the pond on his Giverny estate feature water lilies and water emerging from almost-abstract compositions of broad strokes of bright color and intricately built-up textures. Shortly after Monet died at age 86, the French government installed his last water-lilies series in specially constructed galleries at the Orangerie in Paris, where they remain today. French, 1840-1926, Paris, France, based in Argenteuil, France, Vétheuil, France and Giverny, France

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner

A leading figure in the early-20th-century German Expressionist group Die Brücke, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner produced paintings, prints, and sculptures that opposed the conventions of academic art. His nudes, landscapes, and scenes of urban life on the eve of World War I are known for their unsettling effects of psychological tension and eroticism, while his powerful, crudely executed black-and-white woodcuts illustrated many books and magazines, including Germany's leading avant-garde periodical Der Sturm. Albrecht Dürer was a lifelong influence on Kirchner, but painters such as Edvard Munch and Vincent van Gogh, as well as African and Polynesian art, inspired his use of bright colors, simplified forms, and malevolent, mask-like faces. His art was labeled as "degenerate" by the Nazis in the 1930s, and he would commit suicide in 1937. German, 1880-1938, Aschaffenburg, Germany, based in Dresden, Germany

Paul Gauguin

A pioneer of the Symbolist art movement in France, Paul Gauguin is renowned for his "savage" art depicting sumptuous Tahitian women, nude bathers and haystacks in the Breton landscape, and decorative door panels around his hut on the Marquesas Islands in French Polynesia. Although Gauguin began his artistic career with the Impressionists in Paris, during the 1880s he sought to escape from Western civilization—first moving to Brittany and Arles in France, where he met Van Gogh, and then to French Polynesia—in search of a paradise were he could create pure, "primitive" art. "There is no such thing as exaggeration in art," wrote Gauguin in 1885. "And I even believe that there is salvation only in extremes." French, 1848-1903, Paris, France, based in Paris, Papeete, Tahiti, French Polynesia and Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia

Edvard Munch

A recognized forerunner of Expressionism, Norwegian painter and printmaker Edvard Munch is renowned for his representations of emotion. Associated with the international development of Symbolism, Munch experimented with many different themes, palettes, and styles of drawing. Though stylistically influenced by Paul Gauguin and the Nabis, Munch's subjects are drawn from his Scandinavian roots and his own tortured psyche. His most famous painting, The Scream (1893), illustrates a tormented cry translated into waves of color that resonate across the landscape. Though based on Munch's own experience, The Scream has become an instantly recognizable symbol of anxiety and alienation. Often reworking his paintings into etchings and lithographs, Munch was also one of the major graphic artists of the 20th century—he took an experimental approach to printmaking and contributed to the revival of the woodcut. Norwegian, 1863-1944, Løten, Norway, based in Oslo, Norway

Emil Nolde

A wood carver and draftsman, Emil Nolde studied arts and crafts early on and eventually took up painting and printmaking as a full time profession at the age of 31. His intensely colored, gestural oil paintings of urban nightlife, biblical scenes, flower motifs, and landscapes are considered among the best examples of German Expressionism and admired for their intense psychological power. Traces of Primitivism are evident in his incorporation of exotic figures and masks, especially in his later watercolors inspired by a journey to the South Pacific. Likewise, among Die Brücke, a group of German Expressionists with whom he was associated, Nolde was considered the preeminent intaglio printmaker. He achieved rich tonal effects and textural results with a unique treatment of the copper plate. German, 1867-1956, Nolde, South Jutland, Denmark

Alfred Sisley

Alfred Sisley is renowned for creating the atmospheric and inviting landscapes that typify the Impressionist movement. Born in Paris to British parents, Sisley remained in France for most of his life, working closely with fellow Impressionists Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He preferred to paint outdoors rather than in the studio, the plain air method enabling him to more directly observe and transcribe the natural light of the French countryside. Sisley visited the UK several times between 1880 and 1900, where he painted scenes of the British coastline, an interesting subject choice given that he rarely if ever produced seascapes while in France. While some place Sisley in a tradition of British landscapists following John Constable and J.M.W. Turner, his limited time spent in the UK makes these artists' influence on his work uncertain. British, 1839-1899, Paris, France, based in Paris, France

Wassily Kandinsky

An early champion of abstract painting, Wassily Kandinsky is known for his lyrical style and innovative theories on nonfigurative art. In his 1910 treatise Concerning the Spiritual In Art, Kandinsky made famous his belief that abstract colors and forms can be used to express the "inner life" of the artist. Kandinsky taught this and other lessons at the Bauhaus, the historic Weimar institution that brought together artists including Joseph Albers, Lazlo Maholy-Nagy, and Piet Mondrian, amongst others. Kandinsky had a strong interest in the relationship between art and classical music, this theme apparent in his orchestral Composition VI (1913), where colliding forms and colors move across the canvas. In 1911 Kandinsky played a central role in organizing Der Blaue Reiter, a group of artists named in part after Kandinsky's favorite color, blue. Russian, 1866-1944, Moscow, Russia

Antoine-Jean Gros

An influential Romantic painter who made a considerable contribution to the mythology surrounding Napoleon, Antoine-Jean Gros is best known for historical works depicting events in the French revolutionary's military campaigns. First trained under his father (a painter of miniatures), Gros began work in the studio of his friend Jacques-Louis David in 1785, though David's restrained Neoclassicism was at odds with Gros's artistic impulses. In 1793 Gros traveled to northern Italy, where he studied the work of Peter Paul Rubens and the Venetian School, artists whose energetic and vibrant styles were more aligned with his own work. After meeting his hero, Napoleon, Gros joined his army on campaigns and, given the rank of inspecteur aux revues, rendered events in an idealized and dramatic style that would later influence the works of Théodore Géricault and Eugène Delacroix. After the fall of Napoleon, David was forced into exile and Gros became the head of his studio. His work deteriorated and, mired in a sense of failure, Gros eventually committed suicide. French, 1771-1835

Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Best known for portraiture, figurative work, and his series of voluptuous bathing women, Pierre-Auguste Renoir was among the first group of French Impressionist painters. In the 1860s, he painted en plein air with Claude Monet, Frédéric Bazille, and Alfred Sisley in the forest of Fontainebleau. Rejecting traditional methods of building paintings with layers of thin glazes, the Impressionists worked spontaneously to capture the fleeting effects of light using bright pigments, large brushstrokes, and thick impasto. By the late 1870s, dissatisfied with the spontaneity of Impressionism, Renoir moved toward a more traditional, less experimental approach. By the 1890s, Renoir's paintings recall the rich color of Titian and Rubens and the sensual beauty of 18th-century French art. Renoir was celebrated in the early 20th century as one of the greatest modern French painters. French, 1841-1919, Limoges, France, based in Paris, France

Georges Braque

French painter, collagist and sculptor Georges Braque is, along with Pablo Picasso, renowned as the co-founder of Cubism, which revolutionized 20th-century painting. In his work, objects are fragmented and reconstructed into geometric forms, fracturing the picture plane in order to explore a variety of viewpoints. "The hard-and-fast rules of perspective ... were a ghastly mistake which...has taken four centuries to redress," he said in 1957. Merging aspects of the sculptural with the pictorial, Braque was also an innovator in the use of collage, inventing a technique known as papier collé, which he first explored in one early work Fruit Dish and Glass (1912) by attaching pieces of wallpaper to a charcoal drawing. This approach deeply influenced not only his contemporaries but generations of artists from Modernism to the present. French, 1882-1963, Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France, based in Paris, France

Georges Seurat

Georges Seurat was a founder of Post-Impressionism, a movement that arose in France between 1886 and 1906. Seurat rejected the spontaneity of Impressionism in favor of a more methodical technique grounded in science and the study of optics, known as Pointillism. Included in the last Impressionist exhibition in Paris in 1886, Seurat's most famous painting, A Sunday on La Grande Jatte (1884), features the small, layered brushstrokes of complementary and contrasting hues that he championed. French, 1859-1891, Paris, France, based in Paris, France

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was a leading figure of Fauvism and, along with Pablo Picasso, one of the most influential artists of the modern era. In his paintings, sculptures, and works on paper, Matisse experimented with vivid colors, Pointillist techniques, and reduced, flat shapes. "What I dream of is an art of balance, of purity and serenity, devoid of troubling or depressing subject matter," he once said; his subjects of choice included nudes, dancers, still lifes, and interior scenes. Matisse's animated brushwork and seemingly arbitrary application of bright colors, as in Woman with a Hat (1905), would prove foundational to Fauvism, while his similarly radical The Red Studio (1911) was a seminal, nearly monochromatic study in perspective. Later in life, physically debilitated, Matisse would turn to making bold, cut-paper collages. He has influenced a wide range of important 20th-century painters, from Hans Hofmann and Milton Avery to Tom Wesselmann and David Hockney. French, 1869-1954, Le Cateau-Cambrésis, France, based in Paris and Nice, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Gustave Courbet

Iconoclastic and influential Realist painter Gustave Courbet is often regarded as the 19th century's pioneering artist. Courbet rejected academic traditionalism and bourgeois convention, seeking conflict both artistically and socially with an aim to, as he has said, "change the public's taste and way of seeing." Instead of idealizing his subjects like his Romanticist contemporaries, he dedicated himself to showing things as they are, bluntly addressing themes like rural poverty, as in The Stone Breakers (1849), and human sexuality; his erotically portrayed nudes were received with scandal and even police attention. Courbet also emphasized the painting process, visible brush and palette work displacing the customarily seamless varnished canvas. Younger artists including Édouard Manet and James McNeill Whistler, among many others, enthusiastically adopted these technical liberties. By exhibiting independently of the government-sponsored Paris Salon, Courbet paved the way for upcoming avant-garde movements, particularly Impressionism. French, 1819-1877, Ornans, Franche-Comté, France

Joseph Mallord William (J.M.W.) Turner

Joseph Mallor William Turner was one of the leading British artists of his time, who over the six decades of his career changed the public regard for landscape and watercolor painting. Though he received little formal education, Turner was a prodigiously talented child. He eventually enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art Schools and exhibited his first watercolor there at the age of 15. He also studied in the studio of the architectural draftsman and topographer Thomas Malton. Turner eventually became known as a widely regarded as topographical watercolorist, though he was equally adept in oil and experimented widely with techniques. He received the most acclaim for his depictions of sublime storms and atmospheric, narrative landscapes. Many of his works referenced literature, mythology, and history. British, 1775-1851, London, United Kingdom, based in London, United Kingdom

Andy Warhol

Obsessed with celebrity, consumer culture, and mechanical (re)production, Pop artist Andy Warhol created some of the most iconic images of the 20th century. As famous for his quips as for his art—he variously mused that "art is what you can get away with" and "everyone will be famous for 15 minutes"—Warhol drew widely from popular culture and everyday subject matter, creating works like his 32 Campbell's Soup Cans (1962), Brillo pad box sculptures, and portraits of Marilyn Monroe, using the medium of silk-screen printmaking to achieve his characteristic hard edges and flat areas of color. Known for his cultivation of celebrity, Factory studio (a radical social and creative melting pot), and avant-garde films like Chelsea Girls (1966), Warhol was also a mentor to artists like Keith Haring and Jean-Michel Basquiat. His Pop sensibility is now standard practice, taken up by major contemporary artists Richard Prince, Takashi Murakami, and Jeff Koons, among countless others. American, 1928-1987, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, based in New York, New York

Camille Pissarro

Often regarded as the first Impressionist, Camille Pisarro is known both for his revelatory plein air landscape pictures, such as in The Path to Les Puilleaux, Pontoise (1881), and for mentoring artists including Paul Cézanne and Paul Gauguin. Pisarro himself was inspired by the rural scenes of Realists Jean Francois Millet and Gustave Courbet. He also received artistic guidance from Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, who instructed him in outdoor painting after Pisarro's move to Paris in 1855. Pisarro, however, placed greater emphasis than Corot on spontaneity, saying "paint generously and unhesitatingly, for it is best not to lose the first impression." From 1885-1889 Pisarro worked with Divisionist artists Paul Signac and Georges Seurat, but their meticulous method proved too rigid for Pisarro, who felt that it could not capture the movement and randomness of nature. French, 1830-1903, Charlotte Amalie, St Thomas, based in Paris, France

Otto Mueller

Otto Mueller's Expressionist paintings and prints developed from an earlier style deeply rooted in Post-Impressionism, Symbolism, and Jugendstil (Art Nouveau), maintaining the latter's emphasis on graceful silhouettes. Mueller distinguished himself from his Die Brücke peers by focusing more on harmonious simplification of color than expressing raw emotion, as exemplified by Reclining Nude in the Dunes (1923). Representative of the classically elegant female nudes in landscapes for which he is most celebrated, the tempera painting depicts a woman lying face down in the sand—the strong contours of her body echo the desert topography and evoke the communion of humans and nature, rather than intense emotion more typical of Expressionism. The pinnacle of his graphic art is "Gypsy-Portfolio" (1927), a series of nine boldly colored lithographs. German, 1874-1930, Libawka, Poland

Henri Rousseau

Painter Henri Julien Félix Rousseau was ridiculed during much of his lifetime for painting in a naïve or primitive manner, but eventually, with the endorsement of Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and other younger artists, was considered a self-taught genius. His best-known work depicts imaginary jungle scenes inspired by illustrated books and the botanical gardens in Paris, but he also painted smaller scenes of the city and its suburbs. His most famous painting is La Bohémienne endormie (1897). French, 1844-1910, Laval, France, based in Paris, France

Paul Cèzanne

Paul Cézanne is one of the great Post-Impressionist painters of the 19th century, renowned for his radiant landscapes, intense portraits, and complex still lifes. His influence extends to every aspect of Post-Impressionist inquiry, from the search for empirical truth in painting, which he saw as including imbalance and lacunae, to the capturing of the instantaneity of vision, and the calling of attention to the dimensionality of the canvas space. His paintings of apples, card players, and the landscape of Mount Sainte Victoire, which he saw from his window in Provence, France, are some of the best-known images in Western art. His mature works are striking for their vivid palette, sensitive brushstrokes, and swirling, unstable compositions full of impetuosity and vigor that paved the way for the advent of Cubism and abstract painting. French, 1839-1906, Aix-en-Provence, France, based in Paris and Aix-en-Provence, France

Vincent van Gogh

Primarily self-taught and unappreciated during his lifetime, Vincent van Gogh made over 900 paintings and 1,100 works on paper during the decade that he worked as an artist. Influenced by Jean-Francois Millet and the Barbizon School artists, van Gogh's early work comprises dour portraits of Dutch peasants and depressing rural landscapes. In 1886-88 he moved to Paris, where Impressionism and Neo-Impressionism had a big impact on his painting. He brightened his palette, experimented with shorter brushstrokes, impasto, and complementary colors. The paintings he made in Paris announce the bolder Post-Impressionist style that he is best known for today. Emotionally unstable, humorless, and argumentative, van Gogh eventually had a breakdown and moved to an asylum in the south of France where he painted landscapes, portraits, interiors and still lifes steeped with personal symbolism. Dutch, 1853-1890, Zundert, Netherlands, based in Arles, France, Saint-Rémy, France and Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Jean-Francois Millet

Renowned for his Realist subject matter, Jean-Francois Millet was moved by social injustice to paint peasants and agricultural laborers, capturing both the poverty and dignity of rural French life. "The human side of art is what touches me most," he once said. Though the artist was considered a socialist revolutionary by much of the establishment, Millet's painting The Winnower (1848), praised by one critic as possessing "everything it takes to horrify the bourgeois," sold at the Paris Salon in 1848. In 1849, Millet moved to Barbizon, where he painted many of his most famous works, and, with Théodore Rousseau, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, and others, founded the Barbizon School of landscape painters. In one of his most famous works, The Gleaners (1857), women and children bathed in Millet's characteristic soft, golden light (meant to convey the sanctity of their relationship to the land) collect grain from the fields after harvest. French, 1814-1875, Gruchy, France, based in Barbizon, France

Eugène Victor Ferdinand Delacroix

Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix was once described by the French poet Charles Baudelaire as "a volcanic crater artistically concealed beneath bouquets of flowers." While drawing on Classical history and mythology—a favorite theme of Neoclassical artists—Delacroix was praised for his work's spontaneity and power, vivid color, and pathos of movement. In Death of Sardanapalus (1827), figures and animals seem to writhe across the picture plane. Like Ingres, Delacroix was fascinated by the Orient, which includes present-day Turkey, Greece, and North Africa, visiting Morocco in 1832. Yet, instead of highlighting the seductive quality of his exotic subjects, Delacroix took an avid interest in the violence and cruelty in Oriental subjects. His lush palette and passionate brushwork would later greatly influence the development of both Impressionism and Post-Impressionism French, 1798-1863, Charenton-Saint-Maurice, France, based in Paris, France

Honorè Daumier

The "Michelangelo of caricature," Honoré Daumier famously satirized France's bourgeoisie and justice system, and masterfully exposed the misery of the masses through the emerging medium of lithography. Grotesque caricatures of government officials endeared him to the public, although one-too-many scathing renderings of King Louis-Philippe also landed him six months in prison. Thereafter, he stuck to the safer ground of deriding archetypal professionals such as doctors, professors, and especially lawyers and judges, whom he deemed cruel and pretentious. While his output of lithographs and illustrative drawings was most prodigious (circa 4,000 of each), Daumier also sculpted busts of members of parliament and painted religious and historical themes in the naturalist style, including many notable images of Don Quixote riding his horse. These late works were hardly recognized during his lifetime, yet are acclaimed today for their experimental techniques. French, 1808-1879, Marseille, France, based in Valmondois, France

Edgar Degas

Though he rejected the label, Edgar Degas contributed significantly to Impressionism with his depictions of fleeting moments and images of modern Parisian life—in theaters, cafés, and, most iconically, ballet studios. "It is much better to draw what you can't see anymore but is in your memory," he said. "You only reproduce what struck you, that is to say the necessary." Degas was trained in a traditional academic style, which is particularly evident in the classical subjects of his early works, and he was a master draftsman and capturer of emotions. As his practice evolved, he developed a profound interest in the poses and physicality of ballet, producing approximately 1,500 depictions of dancers over the course of his career. Like many of his contemporaries, Degas was influenced by Japanese prints, which inspired him to experiment with asymmetrical compositions and unusual vantage points. He also worked in a wide range of mediums and techniques, and was particularly known for his use of pastel to depict the figure with an almost sculptural solidity. French, 1834-1917, Paris, France, based in Paris, France

Thèodore Gèricault

Théodore Géricault created one of the most iconic masterpieces of French Romanticism, the Raft of the Medusa (1818-19). Depicted on a monumental scale, Géricault portrayed in horrifying explicitness scenes of a shipwreck based on a contemporary event in which the captain had deserted his crew and passengers, leaving them to die. The painting's allusions to governmental negligence and corruption ignited great controversy and brought Géricault widespread attention. Although he died young, his candid representations and bold style influenced many of his contemporaries, including Eugène Delacroix, who served as one of the models for the Raft of the Medusa. French, 1791-1824, Rouen, France, based in Paris, France