Italian Baroque Era Painter, ca.1571-1610 Italian painter. After an early career as a painter of portraits, still-life and genre scenes he became the most persuasive religious painter of his time. His bold, naturalistic style, which emphasized the common humanity of the apostles and martyrs, flattered the aspirations of the Counter-Reformation Church, while his vivid chiaroscuro enhanced both three-dimensionality and drama, as well as evoking the mystery of the faith. He followed a militantly realist agenda, rejecting both Mannerism and the classicizing naturalism of his main rival, Annibale Carracci. In the first 30 years of the 17th century his naturalistic ambitions and revolutionary artistic procedures attracted a large following from all over Europe.  Related Paintings of Caravaggio :. | The Death of the Virgin | The Conversion on the Way to Damascus (detail) | Youth with a Flower Basket | The Raising of Lazarus fg | The Annunciation fdgf |
Related Artists:
Eric Hallstrom
1893-1946
William Strutt
English Painter, ca.1825-1915 was an English artist. Strutt was born in Teignmouth, Devon, England, and came from a family of artists, his grandfather, Joseph Strutt, was a well-known author and artist, his father, William Thomas Strutt, was a good miniature painter. William Strutt enjoyed a student life in Paris, France, and England, studying figurative and history painting. In response to a near-breakdown and problems with his eyes, Strutt decided to visit Australia, arriving 5 July 1850 on the Culloden, where he then married. In Melbourne, Strutt found employment as an illustrator on the short-lived Illustrated Australian Magazine, published by Thomas Ham, as there was little demand for the figurative and history paintings for which he was trained. Some of his designs did, however, lead to commissions, including a design for a new postage stamp, and an Anti-Transportation League card. Despite the lack of interest for major history paintings in Melbourne, Strutt continued to sketch suitable subjects, including the "Black Thursday" bushfires, which swept over the colony on 6 February 1851. It was from these sketches that Strutt composed one of his most notable paintings some 10 years later, Black Thursday, February 6th. 1851, 1864, which depicted animals and men fleeing from the fire. In February 1852, Strutt joined the growing tide of men travelling to the gold-fields surrounding Ballarat, Victoria. Despite working in the gold fields for eighteen months he found little success. He returned to Melbourne in mid-1853 and became actively involved in the city's cultural scene, undertaking a number of portrait commissions and joining the Victorian Society of Fine Arts as a founding member. William Strutt, Portrait of John Pascoe Fawkner, founder of Melbourne, 1856: oil on canvas; 61.3 x 51.2 cm. National Library of Australia.Strutt's interest in depicting the notable events of the colony was piqued by the events surrounding the Victorian Exploring Expedition led by Burke and Wills in 1860-61. He made several studies of their preparations at Royal Park, Melbourne, and followed the expedition to its first camp at Essendon, Victoria. Strutt also collected first-hand accounts from the rescue party and from John King,
Ljubov Popova
Russian Constructivist Painter and Designer, 1889-1924 Through a synthesis of styles Popova worked towards what she termed painterly architectonics. Exploring firstly Impressionism, by 1913, in Composition with Figures, she was experimenting with the particularly Russian development of Cubo-Futurism: a fusion of two equal influences from France and Italy. Portrait of a Philosopher (Artists's brother, Pavel Sergeyevich Popov), 1915From 1914-1915 her Moscow home became the meeting-place for artists and writers. In 1914-1916 Popova together with other avant-garde artists (Aleksandra Ekster, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova) contributed to the two Jack of Diamonds exhibitions, then in Petrograd Tramway V and the 0.10, The Store in Moscow. In 1916 she joined the Supremus group with Kazimir Malevich, the founder of Suprematism, Aleksandra Ekster, Ivan Kliun, Nadezhda Udaltsova, Olga Rozanova, Ivan Puni, Nina Genke, Ksenia Boguslavskaya and others who at this time worked in Verbovka Village Folk Centre. However there was a tension between those who like Malevich saw art as a spiritual quest and others who responded to the need for the artist to create a new physical world. Popova embraced both of these ideals but eventually identified herself entirely with the early aims of the Revolution working in poster, book design, fabric and theatre design, as well as teaching. Her painting The Violin of 1914 reveals the development from cubism towards the "painterly architectonics" of 1917- 1918. Before joining the Supremus group her paintings, the architectonic series defined her artistic trajectory, quite distinct from that of Malevich, Rozanova, Tatlin and Mondrian, in abstract form. The canvas surface is an energy field of overlapping and intersecting angular planes in a constant state of potential release. At the same time the elements are held in a balanced and proportioned whole as if linking the compositions of the classical past to the future. By 1918 colour is used as the iconic focus; the strong primary colour at the centre drawing the outer shapes together. In 1918 Popova married von Eding, and gave birth to a son, but von Eding died the following year of typhoid fever. She worked on Agitprop designs, and in 1919 she contributed to Tenth State Exhibition: Non Objective Creativity and Suprematism. She painted more advanced abstract works in 1919-21. In 1921 she exhibited in the 5 x 5 Exhibition. From 1921-24 Popova became active in Constructivist projects, sometimes in collaboration with the architect Alexander Vesnin. She was active in stage designs: Vsevolod Meyerhold's production of Fernand Crommeldynck's The Magnanamous Cuckold, 1922; and in teaching: Spatial Force Constructions were used as the basis of an art teaching theory. She designed typography of books, production art and textiles, and contributed designs for dresses to LEF. Popova died in Moscow. A large exhibition of her work opened in Moscow on 21 December 1924.