Category: figurative

Pierre Grivolas

Pierre Grivolas  “ Les Flagellants au XIVe Siècle (Procession of Flagellants in the Fourteenth Century)”, 1867, Oil on Canvas, 175 x 208 cm, Calvet Museum, Avignon, France

Born in Avignon, France, in September of 1823, Pierre Grivolas was a French painter known for portraits, landscapes and genre scenes. Recognizing Grivolas’s early talent for drawing, his parents enrolled him in art classes. He won first prize in the 1843 Biennial Design Contest, sponsored by Avignon’s art foundation, La Foundation Calvet, a collection of historical and art legacies. The prize included a cash award which enabled Grivolas to study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. 

At the École des Beaux-Arts, Grivolas met and was influenced by leader of the French Romantic movement Eugène Delacroix, neo-classical painter Dominique Ingres, and Hippolyte Flandrin, known today for his monumental decorative paintings. The outbreak of the February Revolution in 1848 forced Grivolas to return to his Avignon. Six years later, he became one of the first members of the Félibrige, a literary and cultural association founded by Frédéric Mistral and other writers to promote and defend the Provençal language.

In 1877, Pierre Grivolas became a founding member, along with writer Baptiste Bonnet, sculptor Jean Barnabé Amy, and others, of the Societa Belibrenco dé Paris. whose literary arm was the journal “Lou Viro-Souléu”, The monthly literary journal, published from 1889 to 1912, contained literary texts, and reports of the poetry Floral Games and other Parisian festivals. 

Pierre Grivolas became Director of the École des Beaux-Arts d’Avignon from 1878 until his death. During his tenure, he emphasized plain air, or outdoor, painting over the prevalent Academicism, and became credited with creating the art movement known now as “Novelle École d’Avignon”, In 1894 to 1896, Pierre Grivolas, sometimes accompanied by his younger brother Antoine, a still-life painter, traveled through the small villages of France, living like shepherds and capturing the colors of the mountain landscapes in their paintings. Provencal French painter 

Pierre Grivolas passed away in Avignon on February 5, 1906. His works are in many museums, including “Procession of Communiantes” at the Alauch Museum, the 1858 “Interior of a Spinning Mill” at the Louis Vouland Museum, and “Self-Portrait” at the Palace of the Roure.

Rainer Maria Rilke: “(Life) Holds You in Its Hand”

 

Photographers Unknown, A Collection: Life Holds You in Its Hand

“So don’t be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don’t know what work they are accomplishing within you?”

—Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

Born in Prague, Czechia, in December of 1875, Rainer Maria Rilke  was a Bohemian-Austrian poet and novelist, recognized as one of the most lyrically intense German-language poets. He was unique in his efforts to expand the realm of poetry through new uses of imagery and syntax and with an aesthetic philosophy that rejected the precepts of Christianity and worked to reconcile beauty and suffering. 

In 1899 Rilke made the first of two pivotal trips to Russia, discovering what he called his spiritual fatherland in both the Russian people and the landscape. There he met Leo Tolstoy, L O Pasternak, and the peasant poet Spiridon Droschin, whose poems he translated into German. These trips provided Rilke with the poetic material and inspiration essential to his developing philosophy of existential materialism and art as religion. 

Rilke’s verse became firmly fixed in his major poetry collection “Newe Gedichte (New Poems)”, with its verses becoming more objective, evolving from an impressionistic personal vision to the representation of this vision with impersonal symbolism. The major influence of this was Rilke’s association with French sculptor Auguste Rodin, under whom he worked as a secretary from 1905 to 1906. These verses employed a simple vocabulary to describe subjects experienced in everyday life, transforming his observations into art. 

In the last few years of his life, Rilke was inspired by such French poets as Paul Valery and Jean Cocteau, and wrote most of his last verses in French. Rilke suffered from illness his whole life and died of leukemia in 1926 while staying at the Valmont sanatorium near Lake Geneva.

“Letters to a Young Poet” is a collection of ten letters written by twenty-seven year-old Rainer Rilke to Franz Xaver Kappus, a nineteen year-old officer cadet at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt, Austria. Kappus corresponded with the poet from 1902 to 1908, seeking his advice as to the quality of his poetry, and in deciding between a literary career or a career as an officer in the Austro-Hungarian Army.These letters offer insight into the ideas and themes that appear in Rilke’s early poetry and his working process.

“Remarkable, this journey from the youthful music of Bohemian folk poetry… to Orpheus, remarkable how… his mastery of form increases, penetrates deeper and deeper into his problems! And at each stage now and again the miracle occurs, his delicate, hesitant, anxiety-prone person withdraws, and through him resounds the music of the universe; like the basin of a fountain he becomes at once instrument and ear.”

—Herman Hesse, My Belief: Essays on Life and Art,  (A summary of Rainer Maria Rilke’s evolution as a poet)

Bonifacio Lázaro

Bonifacio Lázaro. “Nazaré Triptych (People of the Sea)”, 1943, Oil on Canvas, Triptych, 200 x 242 cm,  Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofa, Madrid, Spain

Born on February 15, 1906, in Nazare, Portugal, Bonifácio Lázaro studied at the School of Arts and Crafts of Setúbal and later in Lisbon at the Escola Superior de Belas Artes. Born to parents linked to the fishing industry of Portugal, the expressionist painter dedicated a large part of his work to the people of his homeland, who lived their lives in a constant struggle with the sea. in 1927, Lázaro won the Annunciation Award, an annual award given to students from the Academy of Fine Arts for distinguished work in the genre of animalistic works.

In 1942, Bonifacio Lázaro won the Rocha Cabral Prize from the Lisbon National Academy of Fine Arts for the Nazaré Triptych “People of the Sea”and; in 1943, he obtained the Silver Medal at the National Fine Arts Exhibition for another triptych “Fishermen of Nazaré”,  related to the previous one. Both works, having important dimensions of 2 x 2.4 meters, are conceived as ethnographic altarpieces with an atmosphere of mysticism.

Recognized by many awards and medals, Lázaro’s works can publicly be seen at the José Malhoa Museum in Caldas da Rainha, the Museu da Nazaré, the Museu do Chiado in Lisbon, and the Columbus Museum in Georgia, USA. There are also several works at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom and the Provincial Museum in Badajoz, Spain. Lázaro’s works are also included in many private collections. 

Gian Paolo Barbieri

 

Gian Paolo Barbieri: Tahiti Photogrpahs, Silver Gelatin Prints

Born in Milan, Italy, in 1938, Gian Paolo Barbieri is a self-taught fashion photographer, whose professional career started with a short  apprenticeship to Harper’s Bazaar photographer Tom Kublin. In 1963, Barbieri had some images published in the Italian fashion magazine Novità, which later became Vogue Italia in 1965. 

As fashion photography had not been fully created in the 1960s, Barbieri had the unique opportunity to create a new style, with its makeup, hairstyles, and jewelry. After opening his own Milan studio in 1964, working both in Milan and Paris, he began to develop creative  relationships with fashion designer Walter Albini and Valentino Garavani, who with Barbieri was responsible for innovating modern fashion advertising campaigns. In 1965, Barbieri shot his first cover for Italian Vogue. 

An analog photographer who does not retouch his images, Gian Barbieri became a travel photographer in the 1990s. When Vogue magazine sent him to Tahiti for a photographic reportage, he found  more than just an exotic island. Like other children who sailed the South Seas through film and books by Melville and James Cook, he saw a dream-like unknown world. Barbieri’s photographs of the Polynesia culture, focusing on their tattoos, became a record of the unspoken language left on the skin of the Tahitian people. These images were collected and published in the photographic hard-cover art book “Tahiti Tattoos”, by Taschen Press in 1998. 

Gina Paolo Barbieri was awarded in 1968 the Biancmano Prize as Best Italian Photographer. He was named one of the fourteen best international fashion photographers by the German magazine Stern in 1978.

Alan Spazzali

Three Artworks  by Alan Spazzali

Born in Trieste, Italy, Alan Spazzali is a photographer with Dutch citizenship. He graduated with a Bachelors Degree from the Ecole Nationale Superieur des Beaux-Arts and the Ecole des Arts Decoratief in Paris. Spazzali’s post-graduate work was done at the Rietveld Modern Art Academy located in Amsterdam.

Inspired by the work of surrealist artist Max Ernst and the minimalist works of Joan Miro, Alan Spazzail, a private person by inclination, constructs his work using various mediums to present a personal and symbolic narrative to his images. His work has been exhibited at the Biennale of Modern Art in Buenos Aires, the Biennale Lorenzo in Florence, and the Biennale Sao Paulo in Brazil.

Alan Spazzali’s site is located at: https://alanspazzali.wordpress.com/inicio/

Sergei Sovkov

Sergei Sovkov, “Dampfbad (Steambath), Date Unknown, Oil on Canvas

Born in Kyshtym, Russia, in 1972, Sergei Sovkov studied at the art faculty of the Togliatti State University located in Samara Oblast, graduating in 1997. He later attended the Repin Academic Institute of Fine Arts in St. Petersburg. Sovkov took a position as a lecturer and a professor at Togliatti Stat University where he taught for seventeen years before devoting himself full-time to painting in 2014. 

An abstract-realist painter, Sovkov paints colorful and textured images of people, often male nudes, engaged in their daily lives, and has also painted a series of still life images. A member of the Creative Union of Artists of Russia since 2006, he was awarded a gold medal of “Cultural Heritage” for his individual style and skill in painting. In 2011, Sovkov was awarded the title of Laureate of Cultural Heritage.    

Since his first exhibitions in 1995, Sergei Sovkov has exhibited in galleries and multiple international exhibitions, including among others, the 2018 Parallax Art Fair in London, and two solo shows at the Galerie Time in Vienna. Sovkof’s works are held in many private collections.  

In 2015 Sergei Sovkov met his future husband Austrian-born Erwin Sovkov, a photographer and eurythmist who graduated in 2008 from Vienna’s Institute for Eurythmy, which was established in 1912 by philosopher and writer Rudolph Steiner. Sergei and Erwin have together worked on their art project “Crystal House”, a combination of their visions in the fields of painting, photography, and ceramics presenting the inseparable inner and outer worlds of a human being. Married in 2016, they opened their company “Blaue Tauben”, located in Vienna, as a venue for paintings and ceramics by Sergei Sovkov and male nude art photography by Erwin Sovkov. 

Sergei and Erwin Sovkov’s Blaue Tauben Art Studio is located at: https://www.blauetauben.com

Sergei Sovkov’s work can be also be found at: https://sergey-sovkov.pixels.com

Walt Whitman: “Fulfilling Our Foray”

Photographers Unknown, (Fulfilling Our Foray)

“WE two boys together clinging,

One the other never leaving,

Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,

Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,

Arm’d and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.

No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,

threatening,

Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on

the turf or the sea-beach dancing,

Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness

chasing,

Fulfilling our foray.” 

—Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass, 1900

Brian Andreas: “The Room Filled with the Sound of the Wind”

Photographer Unknown, (The Room Filled with the Sound of the Wind)

“The day he first told me he was starting to disappear I didn’t believe him & so he stopped & held his hand up to the sun & it was like thin paper in the light & finally I said you seem very calm for a man who is disappearing & he said it was a relief after all those years of trying to keep the pieces of his life in one place. Later on, I went to see him again & as I was leaving, he put a package in my hand. This is the last piece of my life, he said, take good care of it & then he smiled & was gone & the room filled with the sound of the wind & when I opened the package there was nothing there & I thought there must be some mistake or maybe I dropped it & I got down on my hands & knees & looked until the light began to fade & then slowly I felt the pieces of my life fall away gently & suddenly I understood what he meant & I lay there for a long time crying & laughing at the same time.
—Disappearing”

― Brian Andreas, Still Mostly True

Pierre Julien

Pierre Julien, “Dying Gladiator”, 1779, Marble, 60 x 48x 42 cm, Richelieu Wing, Louvre, Paris

The “Dying Gladiator” was Pierre Julien’s second admission piece for the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture and a crucial work for him. He had presented another piece for admission in 1776, a statue of Ganymede and had been refused, possibly due to his teacher, Guillaume II Coustou’s, lack of support for his too talented pupil. Humiliated by this unjust failure, Julien had thought of becoming a naval sculptor but, encouraged by friends, persevered and presented “Dying Gladiator” to the Académie in 1778. Acclaim for the sculpture at the 1779 Salon made amends for the affront of 1776. Pierre Julien  was admitted to the Académie on 27th of March, 1779, and appointed an assistant teacher in 1781.

In this scholarly work, Pierre Julien demonstrated his mastery of academic criteria while asserting personal qualities and his knowledge of antique sculpture. He was reinterpreting the “Dying Gladiator” in the Capitoline Museum in Rome, a marble copy of which he had sculpted during his three-year stay at the Académie de France in Rome. Julien’s nude gladiator demonstrates his complete mastery of anatomy,. But it was the sculptor’s personal contribution which imbues the work with its sensitivity: the elegant proportions, unctuous modeling and delicate execution in the finesse of the hands, laurel leaves and strands of hair; the marble’s perfect finish and the rendering of textures, illustrated by the suggestion of metallic brilliance in the sword and shield.

The work is a dazzling testimony to the renaissance of classical sensibility, although in a codified genre. The return to antiquity and nature, begun in the 1740s by the sculptors Edme Bouchardon and Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, asserted itself in the 1770s. Julien was exalting the heroism of a man overcoming his pain and stoically dying in silence. The balanced composition, dignified pose, discreet chest wound and restrained expression are formal echoes of this heroic serenity. Like the “Laocoon”, one of the most admired antique statues at that time, the gladiator is in agony but not crying out in pain; and it is this dignity in suffering which makes the figure more sensitive and inward-looking.

Information reblogged with thanks to Valerie Montalbetti

Vojtěch Kovařík

Paintings by Vojtěch Kovařík

Born in 1993, Vojtěch Kovařík is a Czech artist who lives and works in Rožnov pod Radhoštěm, located in the eastern part of the Czech Republic. He received both his BA and MA at the Faculty of Arts of the Ostrava University in the Czech Republic; he also studied Painting at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw, Poland. 

Kovařík has devoted himself to painting, mixing classical influences with a contemporary style. In his exploration of Greek mythology and European identity, he creates exaggerated figures evocative of the ancient Greek heroes. Kovařík’s large-format works, displaying their strong, muscled characters  with mottled skin tones and textures, are achieved through a technique of spray, acrylic, and oil painting. Set in abstract surroundings, represented by mere symbols, these strong figures are the central focus for the viewer.

Kovařík has participated in several residency projects including The Fores Project for emerging artists in London, Los Angeles’s The Cabin, and the curatorial and residency L21 x Camper Foundation in Palma, Spain. Among his recent solo exhibitions are “Lovers and Fighters” at the Public Gallery in London, “Landscapes of Muscle” at Galerie Dukla in Ostrava, Czech Republic, and “Hidden Garden” at the 2020 Galerie Derouillon in Paris.  

Charles Robert Gatewood

Photographs by Charles Gatewood

Born in November of 1942 in Elgin, Illinois, Charles Robert Gatewood attended the University of Missouri, earning a degree in anthropology. It was during his first year of graduate work at the university that he began his photographic work. Studying sociology at the University of Stockholm, Gatewood apprenticed with a group of documentary photographers, worked as a darkroom technician, and began shooting photos of jazz artists on tour.

After returning to the United States in 1966, Gatewood settled in New York City, where he worked at the Jaffe-Smith photography studio in Greenwich Village. He was hired in 1969 as a staff photographer for the weekly The Manhattan Tribune, covering the upper West Side. It was at this time that he started freelancing assignments for Time magazine, The New York Times, and Rolling Stone magazine. Gatewood’s first major celebrity photograph “Dylan with Sunglasses and Cigarette” was taken at a 1966 Swedish news conference and syndicated to publications worldwide.

Gatewood continued to work as a freelancer for Rolling Stone, producing,, among other works, a series of portraits of the writer William S. Burroughs in the early 1970s, and covering political demonstrations, Gay Pride celebrations, and Manhattan’s downtown music and arts scene. He gravitated toward photographing extreme behavior, extreme people and extreme situations, with particular interest in the annual New Orleans’ Mardi Gras.

The gritty, often sexually explicit, photographs taken by Gatewood were rejected my many publishers  before the small New York publishing house Strawberry Hill agreed to publish his “Sidetripping” in 1975. The book’s photos are a first-hand account of the 1960s and 70s counter-couture with an introduction and narrative by William Burroughs. It was in the mid 1970s that the majority of his famous celebrity portraits were taken including Andy Warhol, Sly Stone, Etta James, Carlos Santana, and Bernado Berolucci. 

From 1978 to 1987, Gatewood lived near Woodstock, New York, working in Manhattan and elsewhere. His photos from this period include social protests, outlaw bikers, nature photos, and portraits, including Quentin Crisp and dark comedy writer Michael O’Donoghue. Gatewood was awarded a grant in 1984 by the New York State Arts Council to publish his book “Wall Street”, which was recieved  the Lieca Medal of Excellence for Outstanding Humanistic Photojournalism. In 1987, Gatewood relocated to San Francisco, spending the years from 1998 to 2010 as photographer for the tattoo magazine “Skin and Ink”.

Gatewood’s many photo collections include the 1977 “People in Focus”, “Primitives” in 1992, and the 1999 “Badlands”. He was the subject of two film documentaries: Mark and Dan Jury’s “Dances Sacred and Profane” in 1985, and Bill MacDonald’s “Forbidden Photographs: The Life and Work of Charles Gatewood” in 2003. Charles Gatewood died in San Francisco on April 28, 2016, at the age of seventy-three, after sustaining injuries in a fall from his balcony three weeks earlier. An apparent suicide, Gatewood left three notes behind.

Ted Shawn and Company

Ted Shawn and Company at Greek Theatre Pageant, 1918, New York Public Library Collection

“Know thyself deathless and able to know all things, all arts, sciences, the way of every life. Become higher than the highest height and lower than the lowest depth. Amass in thyself all senses of animals, fire, water, dryness and moistness. Think of thyself in all places at the same time, earth, sea, sky, not yet born, in the womb, young, old, dead, and in the after death state.”
― Muata Ashby, Ancient Egyptian Proverbs 

Paul Schulenburg

Oil Paintings by Paul Schulenburg

Born in 1955, Paul Schulenburg grew up in the small town of Niskayuna, near Albany, New York. He was encouraged by his family, including his painter grandfather, to pursue his passion for drawing and painting. Schulenburg studied at the Boston University School of Fine Arts, undertaking the fundamentals of classical art with emphasis on anatomy and form, color, composition, and draftsmanship. He achieved his BFA in 1979. 

During the 1980s and 1990s, Schulenburg created artwork for publications, winning several awards for his work. His former clients included Cigna, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Time magazine, The Wall Street Jounal, and Prentice Hall. Schulenburg concentrated on full-time painting beginning in 2000, with his first show being exhibited at Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, Massachusetts.

Schulenburg’s “Shoveling Ice’, a painting of a Cape Cod fisherman, was featured as the cover artist on the July 2007 issue of American Art Collector. Later works of his were featured on the June issues of 2009 and 2010. Schulenburg had two solo shows, along with exhibiting in group shows, at the Cape Cod Museum of Art, which added several of his works to its permanent collection. 

Living currently in Massachusetts, Paul Schulenburg paints primarily in the outer parts of Cape Cod. He follows in the tradition of narrative artists Rockwell Kent, Edward Hopper and Charles Hawthorne, recording and revealing the daily lives of his subjects. Schulenburg is a member of the Copley Society of Art in Boston and his work is represented by the Addison Art Gallery in Orleans, Massachusetts. 

Alexander Struys

Alexander Struys, “Birds of Prey: The Will”, 1876, Oil on Canvas, 160 x 135 cm, The State Hermitage Museum, St. Petersburg, Russia

Born in Berchem, Belgium,in 1852, Alexander Theodore Honoré Struys was a genre and portrait painter of the Realistic style. At the age of six, he was already a student at the Academy of Dordrecht. He later became the student of biblical scene painter Polydore Beaufaux and romantic-historical painter Jozef Van Lerius at Antwerp’s Royal Acacemy of Fine Arts. 

In 1871 Struys exhibited his works in Ghent and traveled with his friend, painter Jan Van Beers (the Younger), to France and England, achieving little success in selling their work. After his return to Belgium, Stuys exhibited his painting “Birds of Prey: The Will” in 1876, creating a scandal due to its anti-clerical imagery. 

The following year, Alexander Struys was named a Professor at the Weimar Saxon-Grand Ducal Art School, which had just turned away form the academic tradition of idealized composition, setting the school apart from other established schools. He stayed in that position until 1882, moving to The Hague to concentrate for two years  on portrait work. His paintings of the impoverished people in the area received praise in the socially-conscious publications at that time. 

Leaving The Hague, Stuys settled in Mechelen, in the province of Antwerp, becoming head of its Royal Drawing Academy. In 1902 he joined the commission for the ninth exhibition of “Société des Beaux-Arts à Bruxelles” and, in 1905, became the society’s Vice-President. Alexander Struys also served on the committee for the “Exposition Rétrospective de l’Art Belge”, a celebration of Belgium’s 75th anniversary. 

Alexander Struys was a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and the Institute of France. He passed on the 25th of March, 1941 in Uccle, Belgium.