Posts in Category: 20th Century
Georgia O’Keeffe
Georgia O’Keeffe, November 15, 1887–March 6, 1986, was an American painter born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin. She studied at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League of New York, then attended Teachers College, Columbia University, where the ideas of Arthur Wesley Dow were important to her development.
After teaching in Virginia, South Carolina, and Texas, O’Keeffe exhibited drawings at Alfred Stieglitz’s gallery 291 in 1916. She moved to New York in 1918, married Stieglitz in 1924, and developed a career that included abstraction, flowers, New York subjects, and landscapes.
O’Keeffe first worked in New Mexico in 1929 and made it her principal home after Stieglitz’s death in 1946, living at Ghost Ranch and Abiquiú. She died in Santa Fe; her work is represented in major collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum.
Edmond Dulac
Edmond Dulac, October 22, 1882 – May 25, 1953, was a French-born British illustrator, painter, and designer. Born in Toulouse, he studied law while attending the École des Beaux-Arts de Toulouse, then briefly studied at the Académie Julian in Paris before moving to London in 1904.
Dulac began his British career by illustrating editions of the Brontë novels. He became known for color illustrations in gift books published by Hodder & Stoughton, including The Arabian Nights, The Tempest, The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám, and Stories from Hans Andersen, and became a British citizen in 1912.
After the market for deluxe illustrated books declined, Dulac worked in portraiture, theater design, magazines, medals, banknotes, and postage stamps. He died in London while completing illustrations for Milton’s Comus; his work is represented in collections including the National Portrait Gallery and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
Frits Thaulow
Frits Thaulow, May 20, 1847 – November 5, 1906, was a Norwegian painter. Born in Christiania, now Oslo, he studied at the Academy of Art in Copenhagen and later with the Norwegian landscape painter Hans Gude in Karlsruhe.
Thaulow worked in Norway and was associated with the naturalist painters at Skagen. He became known for landscapes and town views, especially winter scenes and paintings of rivers, canals, and moving water, and helped introduce open-air naturalism to Norwegian painting.
In 1892 Thaulow settled permanently in France, though he continued to travel and paint in Italy and the Netherlands. He died in Volendam in 1906; his works are held by the National Museum in Oslo, the Musée d’Orsay, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and other major collections.
Childe Hassam
Childe Hassam, October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935, was an American painter and printmaker born in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He began as a wood engraver and illustrator, attended drawing and painting classes in Boston, and studied in Paris from 1886 to 1889 at the Académie Julian.
Hassam settled in New York in 1889 and became a leading American Impressionist. He painted urban streets, New England gardens and coasts, and the flag-decorated avenues of New York during World War I; in 1898 he joined John Henry Twachtman, J. Alden Weir, and others in founding The Ten American Painters.
Hassam spent his later summers in East Hampton, New York, and continued working in oils, watercolors, and printmaking. He died in East Hampton in 1935, leaving a large body of work now held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, and other major collections.
Wassily Kandinsky
Vasily Kandinsky, December 16, 1866–December 13, 1944, was a Russian artist and theorist. Born in Moscow, he studied law and economics at the University of Moscow before turning to art in 1896. In Munich he studied with Anton Ažbe and at the Academy of Fine Arts under Franz von Stuck.
Kandinsky helped found the Neue Künstlervereinigung München and, with Franz Marc, edited The Blaue Reiter Almanac. After years in Russia during and after the Revolution, he taught at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau from 1922 until its closure in 1933.
Kandinsky settled near Paris in 1933 and continued to paint and draw until his death in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Major holdings of his work are at Centre Pompidou, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, Lenbachhaus, and the State Tretyakov Gallery.
Otto Dix
Otto Dix, December 2, 1891–July 25, 1969, was a German painter and printmaker born in Untermhaus, near Gera. He trained at the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts from 1910 to 1914, then served on the Eastern and Western Fronts during the First World War.
After the war Dix resumed his studies at the Dresden Academy and worked in Dresden and Düsseldorf. Associated with the New Objectivity, he painted portraits, urban scenes, and images of war, and in 1924 published Der Krieg, a portfolio of fifty prints.
Dix taught at the Dresden Academy from 1927 until his dismissal by the Nazi government in 1933. He lived at Hemmenhofen on Lake Constance from 1936 until his death; his work is represented in major museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Kunstmuseum Basel, and the Centre Pompidou.
Charles Demuth
Charles Demuth, November 8, 1883 – October 23, 1935, was an American painter and watercolorist associated with Precisionism and early American modernism. He received his first formal art training at the Drexel Institute of Art and studied at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts under Thomas Anshutz and William Merritt Chase. He also studied at art academies in Paris during extended European visits.
Demuth worked primarily in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, while participating in modernist circles in Philadelphia, New York, Paris, and Provincetown. He was a friend of William Carlos Williams, Marsden Hartley, Georgia O’Keeffe, and Albert C. Barnes, and his work was promoted by Alfred Stieglitz alongside that of Arthur Dove, John Marin, Hartley, and O’Keeffe.
Demuth is represented in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Barnes Foundation, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Cleveland Museum of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, and Demuth Museum of Art.
William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase, November 1, 1849 – October 25, 1916, was an American painter and teacher. Born in Williamsburg, now Nineveh, Indiana, he studied in Indianapolis, at the National Academy of Design in New York, and from 1872 at the Royal Academy in Munich, where his teachers included Alexander von Wagner and Karl von Piloty; he also worked in Venice with fellow American artists including Frank Duveneck and John Twachtman.
Chase returned to New York in 1878 and taught at the Art Students League, later teaching at several other American art schools. He directed the Shinnecock Hills Summer School of Art from 1891 to 1902 and founded the Chase School of Art, later the New York School of Art. He worked in portraiture, still life, interiors, urban park scenes, and plein-air landscape in both oil and pastel; his students included Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley, Edward Hopper, and Joseph Stella.
In 1902 Chase joined Ten American Painters and continued painting and teaching into his final years. He died in New York in 1916. His work is held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Brooklyn Museum, National Academy of Design, and other major American collections.
Frank Duveneck
Frank Duveneck, October 9, 1848 – January 3, 1919, was an American painter, printmaker, sculptor, and teacher. Born in Covington, Kentucky, to German immigrant parents, he apprenticed with a church-decoration firm before studying at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Munich under Wilhelm von Diez and working in the circle of Wilhelm Leibl.
Duveneck established schools in Munich and Polling and taught groups of American students in Germany and Italy who became known as the “Duveneck Boys.” His students included John Henry Twachtman, Otto Henry Bacher, John White Alexander, and Elizabeth Boott, whom he married in 1886. He worked chiefly as a portrait and figure painter and also produced etchings and sculpture.
After Elizabeth Duveneck’s death in 1888, he returned to the United States and taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, becoming chairman of its faculty in 1905. His work is held by the Cincinnati Art Museum, Metropolitan Museum of Art, National Gallery of Art, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and other public collections.
Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin
Ivan Bilibin, August 16, 1876 – February 7, 1942, was a Russian illustrator, stage designer, and graphic artist.
He is best known for his illustrations of Russian fairy tales and epic subjects, using strong outlines, patterned surfaces, and motifs drawn from medieval Russian art and folk design.
Bilibin also designed sets and costumes for opera and theater. He worked in Russia, traveled in North Africa and the Middle East, lived abroad after the Russian Revolution, and returned to the Soviet Union in the 1930s.
