Born in 1903, Louis Schanker quit school as a teenager and joined the circus, worked in the wheat fields of the Great Plains, and rode the rails. In 1919, he went to New York and began studying art. He spent 1931 and 1932 in Paris and came back “something of a Cubist”, becoming a muralist [...]
David Alfaro Siqueiros
David Alfaro Siqueiros (1896-1974), one of the great Mexican mural painters, introduced technical innovations in his murals and easel paintings. David Alfaro Siqueiros was born in Chihuahua. He was educated at the National School of Fine Arts, Mexico City, and did further study in Spain, Italy, and France. He served as an officer in Venustiano [...]
Mark Tobey
Mark Tobey was a leading painter of the Northwest School, one of the four “Northwest Mystics” described in a 1953 Life magazine article that proclaimed the “Mystic Painters of the Pacific Northwest.” Tobey became renowned for an energetic, Eastern influenced “white writing” style of abstraction painted originally to express the frenetic pulse of New York [...]
Hitler’s Art
Before amassing his fortune with the enormous royalties from the publication of his hugely popular Mein Kampf, Hitler earned a living by using his artistic skills to produce paintings that were sold to the public or used for postcards. Hitler was a great student of the fine arts and studied music, opera, painting, sculpture, and [...]
Nathan Coley
I did some research on Nathan Coley, shortlisted for this years Turner Prize, but couldn’t find very much about him except long lists of where he has had exhibitions. So here is a short and sweet biography of the artist. You can see more of him and his works if you click: Doggerfisher Camouflage Church [...]
Zarina Bhimji
Born in 1963 in Mbarara, Uganda, Zarina Bhimji now lives and works in London and Berlin. Immediately after receiving a B.A. in Fine Arts from the University of London in 1987, she began exhibiting her work in group exhibitions. Following post-graduate work she became an Artist in Residence at Darwin College in Cambridge. In 1996, [...]
Mike Nelson
This is a really nasty part of London – not in any definable way, just in its lack of clarity. Go through an underpass and you find yourself in a dead zone between traffic and empty industrial buildings. I’m looking for Mike Nelson’s studio, but instead blunder through a plastic curtain into a space full [...]
Mark Wallinger
English painter, sculptor and video artist. He studied in London at the Chelsea School of Art (1978–81) and Goldsmiths’ College (1983–5). From the mid-1980s his work has addressed the traditions and values of British society, its class system and organized religion. The range of approaches he has adopted reflects his wish to have a broad [...]
The Turner Prize – Tate Liverpool 2007
The Turner Prize has travelled outside London for the first time in its 23-year history, and you can’t help but notice that this daring excursion is making its organisers feel just a little anxious. In the capital, you see, there are enough pseuds on hand: types in architectural spectacles who are perfectly at ease ignoring [...]
Morris Louis
The American painter Morris Louis (Bernstein; 1912-1962) explored new realms of pictorial space with his series the “Veils”, the “Unfurleds”, and the “Stripes”. By exploiting the anonymous “stain” method, he formed a bridge between the Abstract Expressionists of the 1950s and the Minimalists of the 1960s. Number 32 Morris Louis Bernstein was born in Baltimore, [...]
