Thursday, 30 November 2017

Four seasons...

TSAROUCHIS INSPIRES THE LITTLE PUPILS OF VERDIKOUSSA


inspired by the paint of Yannis Tsarouchis (above), the little pupils of Verdikoussa (third grade) created their own 4 seasons (underneath)!!!


We are expecting more artistic creations...









Yiannis Tsarouchis_Greek painter (1910-1989)



Yiannis Tsarouchis_Greek painter (1910-1989)


Yiannis Tsarouchis is one of the most important painters of the 20th century. He was born in Piraeus and studied in the School of Fine Arts. He continued his studies in Paris and in London. He was a staunch supporter of the movement for the return to the roots of Greek art. 

   His painting "The Four Seasons" is oil in canvas,160x300 cm, 1969. It depicts seasons as human figures, two men and two women, who are standing in front of a table with fruit on it. He highlights the beauty of human existence and emphasizes the simple, ordinary things. The big table symbolizes the coexistence of those people, but also the sacred moment of having supper, where everyone is gathered around the table.There are of course fruit on the table from all seasons:grapes, peaches, apricots, watermelon, cherries, melons. 

   In the first part, on a window, he drew Spring (on the left), in the second part, in the middle, he drew Summer and Autumn and in the third part, on a window (on the right) Winter. 

Figures

Spring: a girl with long hair, rose on the face, wearing a blue dress and holding a pink rose on her left hand.

Summer: a well-built man, half naked, crowned with red flowers, holding grains on his left hand and a sickle on the right.

Autumn: a girl with a dark brown scarf on her head, who is wearing a red dress and holding with her fingers a white scarf filled with black and white grapes. 


Winter: a man with thick black hair, who has a coat on his back, unbuttoned, holding it with both hands. 


Four faces, four friends
beautiful eyes, tight lips
one comes, another goes


who is next to you? who reigns?

Claude Monet




La pie, 1868-1869

Claude Monet was born on November 15, 1840 in Paris, but his family moved to the port city of Le Havre, France while he was still young. He loved to draw as a child. Around the age of eleven, Claude entered a school for the arts. A few years after he moved to Paris. He painted a lot of outdoor scenes. He then decided to take on large project he called Women in the Garden. This was a huge painting, over eight feet tall, that he painted outside in the natural light. It was a normal everyday scene. He spent a lot of time on it, but the critics did not like it. He became depressed and was also out of money. 

War broke out in France in 1870 and Claude moved with his new wife, Camille, to London. There he met art dealer Paul Durand-Ruel who would become one of his strongest supporters. At this time Monet began to study the relation of the city of London to the River Thames. Monet became friends with several of the leading artists of the time including Pierre Renoir, Edouard Manet, and Camille Pissarro. Together they formed the Society of Anonymous Painters, Sculptors, and Printers. They wanted to experiment with art and not do the same classical art that satisfied the art critics of Paris. They organized an exhibition of their art in 1874. One critic called it the Exhibition of the Impressionists. The term "impressionist" was used to imply that the art was just an impression of something and not completed. It was meant as an insult. The critic got the word "impression" from one of Monet's works. It is called Impression: Sunrise. This painting was a great example of the new style. The lighting gives the viewer the feeling or "impression" that the sun is just rising. Monet's use of light was unique. 



Impression Soleil Levant, 1872

 Despite the critics of Impressionism, Monet continued to refine his work. He continued to try and capture the changing effects of color with light. He used a wide range of vibrant colors and painted quickly using short brushstrokes. Soon, Monet's work began to gain recognition. His paintings started to sell. He even organized an Impressionist art exhibition in the United States in 1886.

In order to continue his experiments with light, Monet began to paint series of the same scenes. He would paint them at different times of the day and in different types of weather. He painted a series on haystacks, the Rouen Cathedral, and the London Parliament. 


Cathédrale de Rouen : Le portail (Soleil), 1894

Near the end of his life, Monet embarked on his largest project. It was a series on the pond at his home in Giverny. It involved a number of huge paintings of the pond in different lighting and conditions such as morning, sunset, and clouds. He called it the Grandes Decorations. When finished, all the panels together were over 6 feet tall and nearly 300 feet long. During much of the project the aging Monet was suffering from bad eyesight and lung cancer. He spent the last ten years of his life on the project and donated it to France in honor of the end of World War I. He died on 5th December 1926 in Giverny.


Le pont japonais à Giverny, 1899

Monet is still considered one of the great French artists of all time.
We are getting a bit chilly in Southern Spain. The Sun is still rising though!

First snow :o)

 Snowy greetings from Slovakia :)




Friday, 24 November 2017

Thursday, 23 November 2017

Thursday, 16 November 2017

Pablo Picasso and the "Cubismo" own style
Pablo Picasso was born in Málaga, Spain. When he was baptized, he was named after various saints and relatives: Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y Picasso. His father, Jose Ruiz Blasco, was an artist and art professor who gave Pablo art lessons. His mother was Maria Picasso y Lopez. According to his mother, his first word was “piz” when he was trying to say “lápiz,” the Spanish word for pencil.
Picasso was not a good student. He often had to go to detention. Here’s what he said about it.
“For being a bad student I was banished to the ‘calaboose’ – a bare cell with whitewashed walls and a bench to sit on. I liked it there, because I took along a sketch pad and drew incessantly … I could have stayed there forever drawing without stopping.”
When he was nine, Picasso finished his first painting, Le picador. It shows a man on a horse at a bullfight. When he started painting, he used a realistic style. He began to experiment with different techniques and styles. When he was 13, he was admitted to the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, Spain. When he was 16, Picasso’s father and uncle decided to send him to Madrid’s Royal Academy of San Fernando. This was Spain’s top art school. He did not like formal instruction and soon stopped going to classes. He loved Madrid and enjoyed going to The Prado museum to see paintings by famous Spanish painters. He particularly like El Greco’s work.
In 1900, Picasso went to Paris. He met Max Jacob, a journalist and poet. Max helped Picasso learn to speak French. He also met many of the famous artists who lived in Paris. In 1905, American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein began to collect his work and helped to make him famous.
He and Georges Braque invented Cubism, a form of painting that featured simple geometric shapes. He is also known for making collages – gluing previously unrelated things together with images. He created oil paintings, sculpture, drawings, stage designs, tapestries, rugs, etchings, collage, and architecture. No other painter or sculptor was as famous while he was still alive. It is estimated that Picasso produced at least 50,000 works of art: 1,885 paintings; 1,228 sculptures; 2,880 ceramics, roughly 12,000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. He also wrote plays and poetry. He became very wealthy.
Some of his famous paintings include: The Old Guitarist; Asleep and Seated Woman, which portray Marie-Therese Walter, one of the women he loved; Guernica, a mural about the Spanish Civil War; and Three Musicians.
Picasso loved many women. He married two of them, Olga Khokhlova and Jacqueline Roque. He had four children: Paulo, Maya, Claude and Paloma, who is famous for her jewelry designs. He died April 8, 1973 in Mougins, France.
Picasso quotes:
 “I paint objects as I think them, not as I see them. ”
“All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up. ”
“He can who thinks he can, and he can’t who thinks he can’t. This is an inexorable, indisputable law".
“Action is the foundational key to all success.”



Wednesday, 15 November 2017

Ivana Kobilica (Ljubljana, 1861–1926)-Slovene painter

self-portratit                        photography

Ivana Kobilca was born in Ljubljana as a daughter in a wealthy family of a crafstman. Her parents gave great emphasis on education. At first, she learned how to draw, but also French and Italian, in the Ursuline High School in her home town, where her teacher of drawing was Ida Künl. When she was 16, she went with her father to Vienna, where she saw the paintings of old masters that inspired her. From 1879 to 1880, she studied in Vienna, where she copied the paintings at the gallery of the Academy of Arts, and from 1880 to 1881 in Munich. From 1882 to 1889, she continued her studies under Alois Erdtelt. In 1888, she participated for the first time in a public exhibition. At the following exhibition in Munich, her work was spotted and praised by the prominent German art historian Richard Muther. and then returned to Ljubljana. In 1890, she painted in Zagreb. In 1891 and 1892, she painted in Paris in the private school of Henri Gervex. She became an honorary member (membre associée) of Société Nationale des Beaux Arts. In 1892, she also painted in Barbizon. In 1893, she returned to Ljubljana, visited Florence in 1894, and lived in Sarajevo from 1897 to 1905. From 1906 to 1914, she lived in Berlin, and then returned to Ljubljana. At the time of her death in 1926 in Ljubljana, she was described as the greatest Yugoslav female painter.

Kobilca is considered to be the most successful Slovenian woman artist. As her contemporaries already acknowledged, she succeeded in achieving things that her male colleagues were not able to. She exhibited in the respectable Salon in Paris for several times and became a membre associée of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts. She spent most of her creative period in European capitals (Vienna, Munich, Paris, Sarajevo, Berlin) and returned to Ljubljana only at the outset of the Great War. After the Munich phase, in which murky brownish tones prevailed in her colouring, she painted in violet, blue and green tones in Paris, later, during her sojourn in Berlin, also in white ones. Her oeuvre is marked by portrayals of her family members and children, portraits of members of middle-class society, mainly of Ljubljana, genre scenes and especially flowers.
Summer (1889)

 Parisian woman with a letter, 1891-92

 Woman drinking coffee, 1888       

Girl in a red waistcoat, 1886          

Mission: Green steps (Slovenia)