Biografias -pintores.docx

BIOGRAFIAS

Paul Cézanne Biography Painter (1839–1906) BIRTH DATE: January 19, 1839 DEATH DATE: October 22, 1906 EDUCATION: University of Aix-en-Provence,Collège Bourbon, Académie Suisse, École des Beaux-Arts (School of Design, Aix) PLACE OF BIRTH: Aix-en-Provence, France PLACE OF DEATH: Aix-en-Provence, France “Art is a harmony parallel with nature.” —Paul Cézanne

Synopsis The work of Post-Impressionist French painter Paul Cézanne, born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839, can be said to have formed the bridge between late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new line of artistic inquiry, Cubism. The mastery of design, tone, composition and color that spans his life's work is highly characteristic and now recognizable around the world. Both Henri Matisse and Pablo Picasso were greatly influenced by Cézanne.

Early Life Famed painter Paul Cézanne was born on January 19, 1839, in Aix-en-Provence (also known as Aix), France. His father, Philippe Auguste, was the co-founder of a banking firm that prospered throughout the artist's life, affording him financial security that was unavailable to most of his contemporaries and eventually resulting in a large inheritance. In 1852, Paul Cézanne entered the Collège Bourbon, where he met and befriended Émile Zola. This friendship was decisive for both men: with youthful romanticism, they envisioned successful careers in Paris' booming art industry—Cézanne as a painter and Zola as a writer. Consequently, Cézanne began to study painting and drawing at the École des Beaux-Arts (School of Design) in Aix in 1856. His father opposed the pursuit of an artistic career, and in 1858 he persuaded Cézanne to enter law school at the University of Aix-en-Provence. Though Cézanne continued his law studies for several years, he was simultaneously enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts, where he remained until 1861.

In 1861, Cézanne finally convinced his father to allow him to go to Paris, where he planned to join Zola and enroll at the Académie des Beaux-Arts (now the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris). His application to the academy was rejected, however, so he began his artistic studies at the Académie Suisse instead. Though Cézanne had gained inspiration from visits to the Louvre—particularly from studying Diego Velázquez and Caravaggio—he found himself crippled by self-doubt after five months in Paris. Returning to Aix, he entered his father's banking house, but continued to study at the School of Design. The remainder of the decade was a period of flux and uncertainty for Paul Cézanne. His attempt to work in his father's business was abortive, so in 1862 he returned to Paris, where he stayed for the next year and a half. During this period, Cézanne met Claude Monet and Camille Pissarro and became acquainted with the revolutionary work of Gustave Courbet and Édouard Manet. The budding artist also admired the fiery romanticism of Eugène Delacroix's paintings. But Cézanne, never entirely comfortable with Parisian life, periodically returned to Aix, where he could work in relative isolation. He retreated there, for instance, during the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871).

Works of the 1860s Paul Cézanne's paintings from the 1860s are peculiar, bearing little overt resemblance to the artist's mature and more important style. The subject matter is brooding and melancholy and includes fantasies, dreams, religious images and a general preoccupation with the macabre. His technique in these early paintings is similarly romantic, often impassioned. For his "Man in a Blue Cap" (also called "Uncle Dominique," 1865-1866), he applied pigments with a palette knife, creating a surface everywhere dense with impasto. The same qualities characterize Cézanne's unique "Washing of a Corpse" (1867-1869), which seems to both portray events in a morgue and be a pietà—a representation of the biblical Virgin Mary. A fascinating aspect of Cézanne's style in the 1860s is the sense of energy in his work. Though these early works seem groping and uncertain in comparison to the artist's later expressions, they nevertheless reveal a profound depth of feeling. Each painting seems ready to explode beyond its limits and surface. Moreover, each seems to be the conception of an artist who could either be a madman or a genius—the world will likely never know, as Cézanne's true character was unknown to many, if not all, of his contemporaries. Though Cézanne received encouragement from Pissarro and some of the other Impressionists during the 1860s and enjoyed the occasional critical backing of his friend Zola, his pictures were consistently rejected by the annual Salons and frequently inspired more ridicule than did the early efforts of other experimenters in the same generation.

Cézanne and Impressionism In 1872, Cézanne moved to Pontoise, France, where he spent two years working very closely with Pissarro. Also during this period, Cézanne became convinced that one must

paint directly from nature. One result of this change in artistic philosophy was that romantic and religious subjects began to disappear from Cézanne's canvases. Additionally, the somber, murky range of his palette began to give way to fresher, more vibrant colors. A direct result of his stay in Pontoise, Cézanne decided to participate in the first exhibition of the "Société Anonyme des artistes, peintres, sculpteurs, graveurs, etc." in 1874. This historic exhibition, which was organized by radical artists who'd been persistently rejected by the official Salons, inspired the term "Impressionism"—originally a derogatory expression coined by a newspaper critic—marking the start of the now-iconic 19th century artistic movement. The exhibit would be the first of eight similar shows between 1874 and 1886. After 1874, however, Cézanne exhibited in only one other Impressionist show—the third, held in 1877—to which he submitted 16 paintings. After 1877, Cézanne gradually withdrew from his Impressionist colleagues and worked in increasing isolation at his home in southern France. Scholars have linked this withdrawal to two factors: 1) The more personal direction his work began to take was not well-aligned with that of other Impressionists, and 2) his art continued to generate disappointing responses from the public at large. In fact, after the third Impressionist show, Cézanne did not exhibit publicly for nearly 20 years. Cézanne's paintings from the 1870s are a testament to the influence that the Impressionist movement had on the artist. In "House of the Hanged Man" (1873-1874) and "Portrait of Victor Choque" (1875-1877), he painted directly from the subject and employed short, loaded brushstrokes—characteristic of the Impressionist style as well as the works of Monet, Renoir and Pissarro. But unlike the way the movement's originators interpreted the Impressionist style, Cézanne's Impressionism never took on a delicate asthetic or sensuous feel; his Impressionism has been deemeed strained and discomforting, as if he were fiercely trying to coalesce color, brushstroke, surface and volume into a more tautly unified entity. For instance, Cézanne created the surface of "Portrait of Victor Choque" through an obvious struggle, giving each brushstroke parity with its adjacent strokes, thereby calling attention to the unity and flatness of the canvas ground, and presenting a convincing impression of the volume and substantiality of the object. Mature Impressionism tended to forsake the Cézanne's and other deviating interpretations of the classic style. The artist spent most of the 1880s developing a pictorial "language" that would reconcile both the original and progressive forms of the style—for which there was no precedent.

Mature Work During the 1880s, Cézanne saw less and less of his friends, and several personal events affected him deeply. He married Hortense Fiquet, a model with whom he'd been living for 17 years, in 1886, and his father died that same year. Probably the most significant event of this year, however, was the publication of the novel L'Oeuvre by Cézanne's friend Zola.

The hero of the story is a painter (generally acknowledged to be a composite of Cézanne and Manet) who is presented as an artistic failure. Cézanne took this presentation as a critical denunciation of his own career, which hurt him deeply, and he never spoke to Zola again. Cézanne's isolation in Aix began to lessen during the 1890s. In 1895, largely due to the urging of Pissarro, Monet and Renoir, art dealer Ambroise Vollard showed several of Cézanne's paintings. As a result, public interest in Cézanne's work slowly began to develop. The artist sent pictures to the annual Salon des Indépendants in Paris in 1899, 1901 and 1902, and he was given an entire room at the Salon d'Automne in 1904. While painting outdoors in the fall of 1906, Cézanne was overtaken by a storm and became ill. The artist died in the city of his birth, Aix, on October 22, 1906. At the Salon d'Automne of 1907, Cézanne's artistic achievements were honored with a large retrospective exhibition.

Artistic Legacy Cézanne's paintings from the last three decades of his life established new paradigms for the development of modern art. Working slowly and patiently, the painter transformed the restless power of his earlier years into the structuring of a pictorial language that would go on to impact nearly every radical phase of 20th century art. This new language is apparent in many of Cézanne's works, including "Bay of Marseilles from L'Estaque" (1883-1885); "Mont Sainte-Victoire" (1885-1887); "The Cardplayers" (1890-1892); "Sugar Bowl, Pears and Blue Cup" (1866); and "The Large Bathers" (18951905). Each of these works seems to confront the viewer with its identity as a work of art; landscapes, still lifes and portraits seem to spread out in all directions across the surface of the canvas, demanding the viewer's full attention. Cézanne used short, hatched brushstrokes to help ensure surface unity in his work as well as to model individual masses and spaces as if they themselves were carved out of paint. These brushstrokes have been credited with employing 20th century Cubism's analysis of form. Furthermore, Cézanne simultaneously achieved flatness and spatiality through his use of color, as color, while unifying and establishing surface, also tends to affect interpretations of space and volume; by calling primary attention to a painting's flatness, the artist was able to abstract space and volume—which are subject to their medium (the material used to create the work)—for the viewer. This characteristic of Cézanne's work is viewed as a pivotal step leading up to the abstract art of the 20th century. URL http://www.biography.com/people/paul-czanne-954203

QUICK FACTS NAME: Claude Monet OCCUPATION: Painter BIRTH DATE: November 14, 1840 DEATH DATE: December 5, 1926 EDUCATION: Académie Suisse PLACE OF BIRTH: Paris, France PLACE OF DEATH; Giverny, France “Merely think here is a little square of blue, here an oblong of pink, here a streak of yellow, and paint it just as it looks to you, the exact color and shape, until it gives your own naïve impression of the scene before you.” —Claude Monet Claude Monet - Mini Biography (TV-14; 4:13) A short biography of painter Claude Monet who started the Impressionist Movement. He is best known today for his series of "Water Lilies."

Synopsis Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. He enrolled in the Academie Suisse. After an art exhibition in 1874, a critic insultingly dubbed Monet's painting style "Impression," since it was more concerned with form and light than realism, and the term stuck. Monet struggled with depression, poverty and illness throughout his life. He died in 1926.

Early Life and Career One of the most famous painters in the history of art and a leading figure in the Impressionist movement, whose works can be seen in museums around the world, Oscar Claude Monet (some sources say Claude Oscar) was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. Monet's father, Adolphe, worked in his family's shipping business, while his mother, Louise, took care of the family. A trained singer, Louise liked poetry and was a popular hostess. In 1845, at the age of 5, Monet moved with his family to Le Havre, a port town in the Normandy region. He grew up there with his older brother, Leon. While he was reportedly a decent student, Monet did not like being confined to a classroom. He was more interested in being outside. At an early age, Monet developed a love of drawing. He filled his schoolbooks with sketches of people, including caricatures of his teachers. While his

mother supported his artistic efforts, Monet's father wanted him to go into business. Monet suffered greatly after the death of his mother in 1857. In the community, Monet became well-known for his caricatures and for drawing many of the town's residents. After meeting Eugene Boudin, a local landscape artist, Monet started to explore the natural world in his work. Boudin introduced him to painting outdoors, or plein air painting, which would later become the cornerstone of Monet's work. In 1859, Monet decided to move to Paris to pursue his art. There, he was strongly influenced by the paintings of the Barbizon school and enrolled as a student at the Academie Suisse. During this time, Monet met fellow artist Camille Pissarro, who would become a close friend for many years. From 1861 to 1862, Monet served in the military and was stationed in Algiers, Algeria, but he was discharged for health reasons. Returning to Paris, Monet studied with Charles Gleyre. Through Gleyre, Monet met several other artists, including Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley and Frederic Bazille; the four of them became friends. He also received advice and support from Johann Barthold Jongkind, a landscape painter who proved to be an important influence to the young artist. Monet liked to work outdoors and was sometimes accompanied by Renoir, Sisley and Bazille on these painting sojourns. Monet won acceptance to the Salon of 1865, an annual juried art show in Paris; the show chose two of his paintings, which were marine landscapes. Though Monet's works received some critical praise, he still struggled financially. The following year, Monet was selected again to participate in the Salon. This time, the show officials chose a landscape and a portrait Camille (or also called Woman in Green), which featured his lover and future wife, Camille Doncieux. Doncieux came from a humble background and was substantially younger than Monet. She served as a muse for him, sitting for numerous paintings during her lifetime. The couple experienced great hardship around the birth of their first son, Jean, in 1867. Monet was in dire financial straits, and his father was unwilling to help them. Monet became so despondent over the situation that, in 1868, he attempted suicide by trying to drown himself in the Seine River. Fortunately, Monet and Camille soon caught a break: Louis-Joachim Guadibert became a patron of Monet's work, which enabled the artist to continue his work and care for his family. Monet and Camille married in June 1870, and following the outbreak of the FrancoPrussian War, the couple fled with their son to London, England. There, Monet met Paul Durand-Ruel, who became his first art dealer.

Returning to France after the war, in 1872, Monet eventually settled in Argenteuil, an industrial town west of Paris, and began to develop his own technique. During his time in Argenteuil, Monet visited with many of his artist friends, including Renoir, Pissarro and Edouard Manet—who, according to Monet in a later interview, at first hated him because people confused their names. Banding together with several other artists, Monet helped form the Société Anonyme des Artistes, Peintres, Sculpteurs, Graveurs, as an alternative to the Salon and exhibited their works together. Monet sometimes got frustrated with his work. According to some reports, he destroyed a number of paintings—estimates range as high as 500 works. Monet would simply burn, cut or kick the offending piece. In addition to these outbursts, he was known to suffer from bouts of depression and self-doubt.

The Master of Light and Color The society's April 1874 exhibition proved to be revolutionary. One of Monet's most noted works in the show, "Impression, Sunrise" (1873), depicted Le Havre's harbor in a morning fog. Critics used the title to name the distinct group of artists "Impressionists," saying that their work seemed more like sketches than finished paintings. While it was meant to be derogatory, the term seemed fitting. Monet sought to capture the essence of the natural world using strong colors and bold, short brushstrokes; he and his contemporaries were turning away from the blended colors and evenness of classical art. Monet also brought elements of industry into his landscapes, moving the form forward and making it more contemporary. Monet began to exhibit with the Impressionists after their first show in 1874, and continued into the 1880s. Monet's personal life was marked by hardship around this time. His wife became ill during her second pregnancy (their second son, Michel, was born in 1878), and she continued to deteriorate. Monet painted a portrait of her on her death bed. Before her passing, the Monets went to live with Ernest and Alice Hoschede and their six children. After Camille's death, Monet painted a grim set of paintings known as the Ice Drift series. He grew closer to Alice, and the two eventually became romantically involved. Ernest spent much of his time in Paris, and he and Alice never divorced. Monet and Alice moved with their respective children in 1883 to Giverny, a place that would serve as a source of great inspiration for the artist and prove to be his final home. After Ernest's death, Monet and Alice married in 1892. Monet gained financial and critical success during the late 1880s and 1890s, and started the serial paintings for which he would become well-known. In Giverny, he loved to paint outdoors in the gardens that he helped create there. The water lilies found in the pond had a particular appeal for him, and he painted several series of them throughout the rest of his

life; the Japanese-style bridge over the pond became the subject of several works, as well. (In 1918, Monet would donate 12 of his waterlily paintings to the nation of France to celebrate the Armistice.) Sometimes Monet traveled to find other sources of inspiration. In the early 1890s, he rented a room across from the Rouen Cathedral, in northwestern France, and painted a series of works focused on the structure. Different paintings showed the building in morning light, midday, gray weather and more; this repetition was a result of Monet's deep fascination with the effects of light. Besides the cathedral, Monet painted several things repeatedly, trying to convey the sensation of a certain time of day on a landscape or a place. He also focused the changes that light made on the forms of haystacks and poplar trees in two different painting series around this time. In 1900, Monet traveled to London, where the Thames River captured his artistic attention. In 1911, Monet became depressed after the death of his beloved Alice. In 1912, he developed cataracts in his right eye. In the art world, Monet was out of step with the avantgarde. The Impressionists were in some ways being supplanted by the Cubist movement, led by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque. But there was still a great deal of interest in Monet's work. During this period, Monet began a final series of 12 waterlily paintings commissioned by the Orangerie des Tuileries, a museum in Paris. He chose to make them on a very large scale, designed to fill the walls of a special space for the canvases in the museum; he wanted the works to serve as a "haven of peaceful meditation," believing that the images would soothe the "overworked nerves" of visitors. His Orangerie des Tuileries project consumed much of Monet's later years. In writing to a friend, Monet stated, "These landscapes of water and reflection have become an obsession for me. It is beyond my strength as an old man, and yet I want to render what I feel." Monet's health proved to be an obstacle, as well. Nearly blind, with both of his eyes now seriously affected by cataracts, Monet finally consented to undergo surgery for the ailment in 1923. Later Years As he experienced in other points in his life, Monet struggled with depression in his later years. He wrote to one friend that "Age and chagrin have worn me out. My life has been nothing but a failure, and all that's left for me to do is to destroy my paintings before I disappear." Despite his feelings of despair, he continued working on his paintings until his final days.

Monet died on December 5, 1926, at his home in Giverny. Monet once wrote, "My only merit lies in having painted directly in front of nature, seeking to render my impressions of the most fleeting effects." Most art historians believe that Monet accomplished much more than this: He helped change the world of painting by shaking off the conventions of the past. By dissolving forms in his works, Monet opened the door for further abstraction in art, and he is credited with influencing such later artists as Jackson Pollack, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning.

Alberto Valenzuela Llanos

Biography

O’Higgins Historical Museum (es), in the city of Talca, Chile

Paisaje de Lo Contador (Lo Contador Landscape, Chile)

Valenzuela Llanos was born in the province of Colchagua, Chile, in the city of San Fernando. He was the son of a formerly wealthy family in decline - his parents, Florencia Valenzuela Llanos and Ricardo Lira, were cousins who belonged to a family with a long landowning and military tradition, where intermarriage was common. No explicit records remain to explain why the family was gradually falling into poverty. In his youth, Valenzuela Llanos was always interested in nature and enjoyed strolling through the grounds and admiring the countryside. He often made sketches of trees and colours and was known as respectable young gentleman.

He studied at public school and went to high school at a liceo (a public high school specialising in sciences and humanities). As the financial situation of his family got steadily worse, the young Alberto decided to work in the local textile store. He felt trapped in that environment but tried to accept his fate, knowing his family situation. At the age of 17, bored during a quiet day at the shop, he started drawing lilies on a piece of fabric. The store owner saw the drawings and, annoyed but impressed, showed the ruined fabric to the boy's father. His father was amazed at Alberto’s talent and decided that the boy was born to be an artist. He managed to convince his brother to let his son live in his house in the Chilean capital, Santiago so he could study simultaneously at the Instituto Nacional General José Miguel Carrera and the Chilean Academy of Fine Arts. Luckily for Alberto, the new director of the Academy was Juan Mochi, who, unlike previous Academy directors, tried to encourage his students to develop a unique style and did not care if they used unconventional artistic techniques. This enabled Llanos to dedicate the rest of life and career to painting the subject he loved most: landscapes. Valenzuela Llanos produced textured, subtle and simple landscapes using pinks and greens. His paintings of the spring are a faithful record of the morning light. The size of his canvases is particularly notable and is well above the average for the period. Experience of financial difficulties taught him to produce many paintings in a short time, so his work ended up being widely distributed around Chile. He liked to portray landscapes of everyday life in the capital city and began with Lo Contador (now Pedro de Valdivia Norte (es) street inProvidencia), the mountains of the Cajón del Maipo to the south of Santiago, and the coast of Algarrobo. The personality of Valenzuela Llanos was calm and serene and his main hobby was painting with oils. He never felt influenced by the bohemian atmosphere of the time, keeping his distance from political conflicts, and was always concerned about the welfare of his parents, siblings and friends in his hometown, taking the train to Colchagua whenever he had the chance to visit his relatives. His painting evolved quickly thanks to the direction of Mochi and he began specialising in oil painting and using more and more sketches, drawing designs before starting on the painting itself. Most importantly, he was able to develop a personal style, the product of need and of effort. This earned him early recognition, and in 1889 he gained a place in the “Salon official de Santiago” (the official Santiago salon or exhibition hall). The following year he won a bronze medal at the annual salon contest, with more awards and recognition following quickly afterwards: in 1890, one of his paintings was featured in the Salon de peinture et de sculpture in Paris, something that few Latin American artists had achieved. Then, in 1891, he won an award at an exhibition in the United States and the Chilean government gave him a scholarship to study in Paris in exchange for some years of teaching .

With no hesitation, Valenzuela Llanos accepted the scholarship and went to France to study with Jean-Paul Laurens, who had taught other Chilean painters such as Alberto Orrego Luco and Alfredo Valenzuela Puelma, in the Académie Julian. There, he learned about impressionism and expressionism and had an extremely productive period, producing many paintings of Paris at dawn. In 1913, his efforts would win him an award at the Salon de peinture et de sculpture in 1913. Thanks to the support of the Chilean government, Valenzuela Llanos was able to travel regularly throughout Europe between 1901 and 1906, giving him the chance to visit Spain,Italy and England as well as France, where he continued to study. Finally, in 1906, he returned home to Chile and was hired to teach drawing at the Liceo Miguel Luis Amunátegui (es) high school in Santiago. In 1910, he married Julia Montero, a young student. After that he was hired to succeed Fernando Alvarez de Sotomayor y Zaragoza as professor of painting at the School of Fine Arts, where he taught for a couple of years.

Pintura en el campo chileno por Valenzuela Llanos (Chilean countryside)

Valenzuela Llanos taught his students in the same way he was taught himself, trying to encourage them to develop their own style. He was beloved by his students and pushed them to walk around Santiago and visit the most famous places. He died in Santiago in July 23, 1925. Currently, most of his paintings are in private collections, but some of his most famous works are in the Chilean National Museum of Fine Arts, the Central Bank of Chile, the Casa del Arte in Concepción (es) and the O’Higgins Historical Museum (es) in Talca.[2]