The man who put the swing into sculpture When the final tally of key movers in the plastic arts of this century is compiled, there is no doubt that maestro of movement Alexander Calder (1898-1976), the man who put the swing into sculpture, will be near numero uno. Calder took it off the plinth, gave it to the wind, and left us kinetic playgrounds of the spirit. He operated at the point where Modernity ...

Pleasantly plump With whimsical irony and a style reminiscent of the old masters, Fernando Botero (b.1932) began painting caricatured animals and corpulent bodies with disproportionate heads at a time when his contemporaries were fervently rejecting figurative work in favor of abstraction. More recently he has expanded into sculpture, creating delightful large-scale bronze works portraying the same ...

Notorious bad boy of Italian Baroque painting, Caravaggio (1571-1610) is finally getting the recognition he deserves. Though his name may be familiar to all of us, his work has been habitually detested and forced into obscurity. Not only was his theatrical realism unfashionable in his time, but his sacrilegious subject matter and use of lower class models were violently scorned. Caravaggio's ...

Legendary apples and pears Cézanne's quest for "a harmony parallel to Nature" He was the founding father of modern art, the grand master who pointed painting forward on its way from Impressionism to the 20th century: Paul Cézanne (1839-1906). In Paris, but above all in Provence, Cézanne quested tirelessly for "a harmony parallel to Nature"—discovering it in still lifes ...

"I maintain," stated Gustave Courbet (1819-1877), "that painting is clearly a concrete art whose existence lies only in the representation of real and existing objects..." Courbet, who influenced and advised the fledgling Impressionists, was an outstanding representative of a naturalistic realism that highlights the contradictions and inequities in society. Revolutionary were ...

Greek-born Italian painter Giorgio De Chirico (1888-1978) was hugely influential in the early years of the Surrealist movement. His paintings during the teens in Paris, where he moved in 1911, caused such a stir that such important figures as Picasso and Paul Eluard immediately praised them. This phase of his work, which he later termed pittura metafisica (metaphysical painting) ...

Dancers always remained Degas's favorite theme "No art could be less spontaneous than mine. Inspiration, spontaneity, temperament are unknown to me. One has to do the same subject ten times, even a hundred times over. In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement." Edgar Degas In terms of both theme and technique, the key to understanding the early work of Edgar Degas ...

A glimpse into the world of the greatest German Romantic painter. Caspar David Friedrich is considered to be a genius in the history of landscape painting and this work shows us why. ...

Paul Gauguin - One of the true pioneers of modernism After starting a career as a bank broker, Paul Gauguin (born 1848) turned to painting only at age twenty-five. After initial successes within the Impressionist circle, he broke with Vincent van Gogh and subsequently, when private difficulties caused him to become restless, embarked on a peripatetic life, wandering first through Europe and finally, ...

One of Spain's most revered and controversial painters Francisco de Goya y Lucientes (1746-1828), one of Spain's most revered and controversial painters, is known for his intense, chilling, and sometimes grotesque paintings depicting the injustice of society with brutal sincerity. About the Series: Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features: a detailed chronological summary ...

Minimalist bodies, sensual forms The sensual, voluptuous shapes in the work of British sculptor Henry Moore (1889-1986) are the sign of his unmistakable signature style. Often depicting human or human-like forms—especially female—Moore`s sculptures, with their abstract style, brought a distinctive brand of Modernism to fine art. His cast bronze and carved marble sculptures grace the gardens and ...

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797-1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning pictures of the floating world, ukiyo-e refers to the famous Japanese woodblock print genre that originated in the 17th century and is practically synonymous with the Western world`s visual characterization of Japan. Though Hiroshige captured a variety of subjects, his greatest talent was in ...