Posts in Category: december 8
Aristide Maillol
Aristide Maillol, December 8, 1861–September 27, 1944, was a French sculptor, painter, and tapestry designer from Banyuls-sur-Mer. After several unsuccessful applications, he entered the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1885, where Jean-Léon Gérôme and Alexandre Cabanel were among his teachers.
Maillol worked with the Nabis and first gained notice for tapestry. By about 1900 he turned principally to sculpture, while continuing to paint and draw; his simplified, monumental female figures became the central subject of his work.
Maillol died at Banyuls-sur-Mer following injuries from an automobile accident. His work is represented in the Musée d’Orsay, the Louvre Museum, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Museum of Modern Art.
Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera, December 8, 1886–November 24, 1957, was a Mexican painter born in Guanajuato. He studied at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City and, from 1907, spent extended periods in Spain and France, where he encountered modern European painting and Cubism.
Rivera returned to Mexico in 1921 and became a leading mural painter of the post-revolutionary period. He executed large public fresco cycles in Mexico City, Chapingo, Detroit, San Francisco, and New York, while continuing to paint portraits, landscapes, and still lifes.
He married Frida Kahlo in 1929; their relationship, with an interruption in 1939–1940, remained central to both artists’ lives. Rivera died in Mexico City in 1957. His murals and easel paintings are held in major collections in Mexico and abroad.
Adolph von Menzel
Adolph von Menzel, December 8, 1815–February 9, 1905, was a German painter, draftsman, printmaker, and illustrator. Born in Breslau, he moved with his family to Berlin in 1830 and trained largely outside an academy while working in his father's lithographic workshop.
Menzel first gained wide recognition for his illustrations to Franz Kugler's history of Frederick the Great. He later painted Prussian history, modern urban life, interiors, landscapes, and industrial subjects, while producing thousands of drawings. Major collections of his work are held by the Nationalgalerie in Berlin, Hamburger Kunsthalle, the National Gallery, London, and other European and American museums.
He was ennobled in 1898 and thereafter used the name Adolph von Menzel. Menzel died in Berlin in 1905 and received a state funeral; his work remains central to accounts of nineteenth-century German art and Realism.
