bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Di Tella Institute
Authors: Herrera Eduardo
Published: September 2018

The Di Tella Institute was created in 1958 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and during the following years grew as a conglomerate of centers for cutting-edge research in multiple areas of knowledge. Under the directorship of Enrique Oteiza and Guido Di Tella, the Instituto Torcuato Di Tella functioned through two branches, the scientific research centers and the art centers. The scientific research centers were the CIE (center of Economic Research), CIS (center for Social Research), the CEUR (center for Urbana and Regional Studies), the CIAP (center for Research in Public Administration), the CICE (center for Research in Educational Sciences) and the CIN (center for Neurological Research). The art branch consisted of the CLAEM (Latin American center for Advanced Musical Studies), the CAV (center for Visual Arts) and CEA (center for Audiovisual Experimentation), together with a department of photography and graphic design.
Dix, Otto (1891–1969)
Authors: Van Dyke James A.
Published: September 2018

Otto Dix was a painter who emerged as a leading figure of the German avant-garde after World War I. His expressionist caprices, dadaist collages, and verist grotesques challenged prevalent norms of taste and propriety in a number of ways, which include but are not limited to the mixing of high art with mass culture, testing the limits of obscenity and transgressing traditionally heroic images of war. These tactics, coupled with the energetic promotion of his work in the modern dealer–critic system, laid the foundation for the painter’s rapid professional ascent, which culminated in an academic appointment in 1926. At the same time, conservative, nationalist and Nazi artists, critics, and activists frequently attacked Dix’s work, which was prominently displayed in anti-modernist exhibitions such as Degenerate Art between 1933 and 1938. During the Third Reich, Dix was marginalized; he adapted by producing ideologically equivocal, marketable landscapes and religious scenes. After 1945, Dix abandoned the techniques and themes of his earlier, best-known work and sought to position himself in West and East Germany while maintaining his independence from both abstraction and Socialist Realism. His work of the 1920s is now canonical, although the character of his political ideology and the causes and implications of his depictions of the female body and sexual violence continue to be debated.
Dubuffet, Jean (1901–1985)
Authors: Shaw Jill
Published: September 2018

Jean Dubuffet was an experimental artist who embraced unconventional materials and investigated different media; his style and the content of his work varied greatly throughout his career. While he tried his hand at art as a younger man, it was not until 1942, at the age of forty-one, in German-occupied France, that Dubuffet committed himself to producing art full-time. In the fall of 1944, Dubuffet held his first solo exhibition at Galerie René Drouin in Paris. Exhibiting garishly colored paintings featuring mundane subjects—including cows and suburban street façades—rendered in a crude, graffiti-like manner, Dubuffet agitated many critics with his perceived adoption of an anti-establishment aesthetic and philosophy. Nonetheless, he quickly ascended in the Paris and American art scenes upon developing a technique—influenced by the thickly impastoed works of Jean Fautrier—in which he incised compositional forms into thick layers of paint that had been mixed with materials such as grit, gravel, and glass. The resulting highly complex textured surfaces were a feature of Dubuffet’s best known works of the 1940s, including his series of caricatured and unflattering portraits of intellectuals in the circle of Jean Paulhan, the writer and editor who is often considered Dubuffet’s most important early champion. Dubuffet was a co-founder of the Compagnie de l’Art Brut in the late 1940s.
Emjaroen, Pratuang (1935--)
Authors: Chapakdee Thanom
Published: September 2018

Pratuang Emjaroen is a member of a wave of self-taught artists in Thailand who gained renown in the 1970s. His works are driven by his concerns about the vicissitudes of life, social problems, nature and Buddhism. A prolific artist, he created a large variety of works throughout his career. Pratuang began his career working as a painter of cinema billboards and movie posters. Inspired by the biographic film Lust for Life (1956), about Vincent Van Gogh, Pratuang developed an interest in becoming a visual artist and began studying painting independently. Being a self-taught artist could have been an obstacle to his career in challenging Thailand’s traditional art institutions. Fortunately, Pratuang was able to overcome this in developing his own inimitable style in painting, drawing and poetry. Having struggled to become a renowned artist, Pratuang established the Dhamma Group in 1971, and was able to convince many artists to join, thereby increasing his own reputation. In 1967, he won the Silver Medal from the National Exhibition of Arts, and in 1968, 1974 and 1995 won Bronze Medals. Pratuang received the National Artist of Thailand Award in Visual Art in 2005.
Enwonwu, Ben C. (1917–1994)
Authors: Ogbechie Sylvester Okwunodu
Published: September 2018

Benedict Chukwukadibia Enwonwu was a pioneer African modernist and the first African transnational artist to gain global visibility, having had his art exhibited in Europe, Africa, USA, and also in Asia well before 1950. Enwonwu was born in Onicha in Eastern Nigeria in 1917 and grew up in a cosmopolitan market town that was a center of indigenous Igbo culture and British colonial control. The origins of Enwonwu’s art lie in the complex historical and cultural environments from which the artist emerged. A sculptor and painter, his art was a complex amalgamation of British colonial culture and indigenous Igbo/African systems of representation that framed the artist’s early years. His father was a sculptor who produced both ritual and secular artworks for indigenous Onitsha society and Enwonwu was first introduced to the conceptual structures of Igbo aesthetics through his father’s practice. Throughout his life, Enwonwu described himself as a sculptor and used his father’s traditional tools of sculpture, mainly an adz, to produce his own works. Ben Enwonwu died in 1994 and left a legacy of significant art and notable critical interventions, which reflected his insistence on formulating a notion of African modernist practice that built on important indigenous styles and aesthetics. His various artworks, writings and commentary on the art of his time are among the most substantial of any modern artist in the global context.
Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon
Authors: Watling Lucy
Published: September 2018

The Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon [First German Autumn Salon] was one of the most important large-scale international exhibitions of Modern art to be shown in Germany before World War I. Staged in derelict rooms on Berlin’s Potsdamer Strasse between 20 September and 1 December 1913, the exhibition included over 360 works by some 90 artists. It was organized by the Berlin writer and critic Herwarth Walden (1878–1941) under the banner of his Der Sturm Gallery, working in collaboration with a group of Expressionist artists including Wassily Kandinsky, August Macke and Franz Marc, known by their collective name Der Blaue Reiter. The exhibition’s title was taken from the Salon d’automne, an annual display of avant-garde art which had taken place in Paris since 1903. Many in Germany—in particular the Blaue Reiter artists—increasingly felt that the development of modern art was no longer being adequately represented by these Paris shows. As Walden wrote in his foreword to the catalogue, the Erster Deutscher Herbstsalon sought to "give an overview of the new movements in the pictorial arts of all countries," that would "at the same time…broaden our view of the contemporary."
Fader, Fernando (1882–1935)
Authors: Dosio Patricia Andrea
Published: September 2018

The work of the French-born Argentine artist Fernando Fader is one of the most prominent and appreciated in Argentina. Fader was born in Bordeaux, France, but his family settled in Mendoza, Argentina just a few years later. His parents, a German engineer and a French viscountess, sent Fader to Europe to complete his primary and secondary school education in France and Germany. After some brief artistic training in Mendoza, during which he focused on depicting urban landscapes, he moved to Germany to study art at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts with Heinrich von Zügel, a specialist in pictures of animals in an impressionistic style. Von Zügel stimulated Fader to work in plein air (outdoors) painting. His spontaneous techniques, vibrant colors and brushstrokes contributed to the introduction of modernism in the local artistic field. After the death of his father, Fader took over the family business. In 1913, a flood destroyed the power station of his company in Mendoza, which eventually went bankrupt. Because of this, he decided to move to Buenos Aires and dedicate his life entirely to painting. He died in Loza Corral, Córdoba province, on February 25, 1935.
Farhat, Safia (1924–2004)
Authors: Gerschultz Jessica
Published: September 2018

Safia Foudhaïli Farhat was a Tunisian artist, arts administrator, and teacher. She was among the few elite Tunisian girls to receive a primary and secondary education in schools of the French Protectorate. In 1952 she was the third female Tunisian student to graduate from the colonial École des Beaux-Arts in Tunis. After independence in 1956, Farhat became the first Tunisian woman to teach at the Beaux-Arts, where she directed the atelier of decoration from 1958 until 1966. Along with Abdelaziz Gorgi, she was instrumental in launching an arts curriculum aligned with government initiatives for national development. Specifically, she partnered with the Office Nationale de l’Artisanat to revitalize artistic heritage and modernize local industries. She is credited with formally training the first generation of female art students, and was an influence on fibre artists such as Fatma Samet and Mohamed Njeh. In 1964 and 1966 Farhat was promoted to assistant director and director respectively, thus becoming the first Tunisian to head the École des Beaux-Arts. She held this position until 1973, the same year she engineered the joining of the art school (thereafter called the Institut Technologique d’Art d’Architecture et d’Urbanisme or ITAAUT) with the national university system.
Shankar, Uday (1900–1977)
Authors: Munsi Urmimala Sarkar
Published: September 2018

A legendary dancer often credited as the father of Indian modern dance, Uday Shankar was a visual artist and an astute choreographer with a keen sense of stagecraft, light designs, and music. He was a largely self-taught performer whose stage presence as an ‘‘Oriental,’’ masculine dancer in his starting years brought him the highest possible recognition as a dancer at home and abroad.
Frankenthaler, Helen (1928–2011)
Authors: Robbins Christa Noel
Published: September 2018

Helen Frankenthaler was an American painter known for her large, abstract stain paintings. Associated with the second generation of Abstract Expressionists, Frankenthaler is thought to have shown the way out of a quickly ossifying New York School "style" by developing a technique that emphasized large areas of color over gestural and expressionistic brushwork. As an alternative to Expressionism, Frankenthaler soaked thinned-out paint into raw duck canvas, a technique she first applied in her 1952 painting Mountains and Sea. In staining paint directly onto the canvas, Frankenthaler demonstrated that modernist painting need not be beholden to Clement Greenberg’s anti-illusionistic concept of "flatness," which Greenberg developed in theorizing medium specificity (the idea that the materials used to create an artwork determine its appropriate form). Frankenthaler re-introduced an illusive quality into her paintings not through representational devices, but through the atmospheric effects that result when applying large fields of color to unprimed canvas. Medium specificity is maintained, however, in that canvas and paint are still "laid bare," but a reductive emphasis on flatness is replaced with what Greenberg would come to call "opticality." As one of the few female painters during the postwar period to gain commercial and critical recognition, Frankenthaler was an inspiration for several generations of female artists that followed.
Fried, Michael (1939--)
Authors: Child Danielle
Published: September 2018

Michael Fried is an American art critic, literary critic and art historian. Fried is most well-known for his art criticism, which contributed to the debates on modernist painting and sculpture that were played out in the pages of American art journals, such as Artforum, during the 1960s. In 1958, while studying English as an undergraduate at Princeton University, Fried met Clement Greenberg, whose theories on modernist painting influenced Fried’s subsequent writings and art criticism. He later studied under Richard Wollheim while at Oxford University. The formalist influence of Greenberg’s art criticism is prevalent in Fried’s two canonical texts on modernist art: "Three American Painters: Kenneth Noland, Jules Olitski, Frank Stella" (1965), the catalogue essay for an exhibition curated by Fried at Harvard’s Fogg Art Museum; and "Art and Objecthood" (1967). The former focuses upon three second-generation New York School painters, considered to be "high modernist." The latter is a defense of modernist painting against a new form of three-dimensional work that he terms "literal," now known as minimalist, sculpture. The argument initiated in these two essays formed a key moment in the debates that defined late-20th-century modernist art history. In the late 1960s Fried moved away from writing art criticism, focusing instead on modernist art in the 19th and early-20th centuries. He recently returned to contemporary art with his text Why Photography Matters as Art as Never Before.
Fujita, Tsuguharu (藤田嗣治) (1886–1968)
Authors: Szostak John
Published: September 2018

Fujita Tsuguharu was a Japanese oil painter who spent most of his career in France. He is known in the West for female nudes and portraits painted in the 1920s with a distinctive pearl-white pigment, executed in a style that melds French modernism with the linear aesthetics of traditional Japanese prints. These paintings, which frequently featured cats, won him both critical and popular acclaim, earned him membership in the Salon d’Automne, and made him a mainstay of the Montparnasse artist community. He is the sole Japanese painter associated with the École de Paris. Fujita returned to Japan in 1933, where he exerted substantial influence on contemporary painting as a member of the Second Section Society (Nikakai). During the Pacific War, Fujita created many large-scale works for the Japanese military as an official war artist, activities that continue to affect his reputation in Japan today. Difficulties adjusting to the post-war cultural landscape of Japan led Fujita to return to France in 1950, where he revitalized his career. He became a French citizen in 1955, and was awarded the Legion of Honour in 1957.
Gabo, Naum (1890–1977)
Authors: Lodder Christina
Published: September 2018

Gabo was one of the first artists to create constructed sculptures, which he built up from flat (planar) elements in space. His initial works, developed in Norway (1915–1917), were figurative (see, for instance, Head No. 1 and 2), but in Russia (1917–1922) he adopted a more abstract idiom (for example, Column, 1920–1921) based on two intersecting vertical planes. The Realistic Manifesto (1920), written by Gabo, explained that his art was inspired by the ideas and forms of science and engineering and reflected the progressive political and social forces shaping the modern world. In 1920–1921 he produced the first kinetic sculpture—KineticConstruction (Standing Wave)—which consisted of a metal rod that oscillated by means of a motor to produce a virtual volume in space. In the 1920s Gabo started using plastics. In Britain, he moved away from a rectilinear geometry to develop a style based on more organic forms (Spiral Theme, 1941). Reflecting his desire to express the continuity and curvilinear quality of space, he developed Spheric Theme (1937) and employed stringing (Linear Construction in Space No.1 and 2, 1941 and 1949–1953), initially using nylon monofilament, but later employing more durable metal springs woven around metal armatures (Linear Construction in Space No. 4).
Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru
Authors: Clark Christine
Published: September 2018

Gerakan Seni Rupa Baru (GSRB—New Art Movement) was an art movement that emerged in Indonesia in the mid-1970s. GSRB was established during a period when younger artists had become dissatisfied with the lack of social and political consciousness in art, coupled with the perceived arrogance of power endemic at institutional and state levels in Indonesia. From the mid-1970s the movement instigated new contemporary art discourse and re-defined art making in Indonesia. GSRB continued to gain momentum in the latter half of the 1970s, issuing a publication in 1978, organizing exhibitions in various Indonesian cities from 1975 to 1979 and in the mid-1980s, and involving an increasing number of artists in the movement, among whom Jim Supangkat, FX Harsono, Dede Eri Supria, Nyoman Nuarta, S. Prinka, Wagiono Sunarto, and Bachtiar Zailoel were prominent members. These artists experimented with found objects, installation, and ready-mades, largely addressing conceptual approaches in their making. GSRB articulated a new path for practice; its spirit of experimentation and opposition inspired, influenced, and laid a foundation for the next generation of artists in Indonesia.
St. Denis, Ruth (1878–1968)
Authors: Coorlawala Uttara Asha
Published: September 2018

Ruth St. Denis is considered one of the founders of modern dance, even though the genre had not been named as such during her most active years, which spanned from the turn of the century through the 1920s. Looking for an alternative to classical ballet and Broadway glitter, St. Denis created works inspired by images of Oriental dance and informed by her Delsarte training. In 1906 she created an impressionistic version of the Indian goddess in her solo Radha, and the success of the dance launched her solo career in Europe. There she toured extensively from 1906 to 1909 with a repertoire of Indian-themed works. After her return to the U.S., she added works based on other cultures, including Egypt and Japan, to her repertory. In 1914 she met Ted Shawn, and the two founded Denishawn, a company and school that expanded St. Denis’s repertory to include musical visualizations and widely disseminated her methods and ideas. In addition to extensive tours across the U.S., Denishawn toured South and East Asia in 1925–1926, where the company acquired more repertory from local dance celebrities who were willing to experiment with their own forms. St. Denis influenced her contemporaries in Europe and subsequent generations of modern dancers in the U.S. Indeed, the generation of the 1930s that named modern dance included many artists who had come from Denishawn, including Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and Charles Weidman.
The Group of Ten (Onlar)
Authors: Smith Sarah-Neel
Published: September 2018

The Group of Ten (Onlar) was formed by ten students under the tutelage of prominent artist, critic, and poet Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu while at the Istanbul Academy of Fine Arts. Composed of Mustafa Esirkuş (1921–1989), Nedim Günsür (1924–1994), Leyla Gamsiz (1921–2010), Hulûsi Saptürk, Fahrünnisa Sönmez, İvy Stangali, Turan Erol (1927--), Orhan Peker (1927–1978), Mehmet Pesen (1923--), and Fikret Otyam (1926), the group was Active from 1947 to 1955. The Group of Ten argued that contemporary Turkish artists should engage with traditional Turkish folk and decorative arts including textiles, calligraphy, and architectural design. In doing so, the Group of Ten differed significantly from their immediate predecessors and contemporaries (the D Group and the Newcomers Group) with whom they had a common educational background from the Istanbul Fine Arts Academy and various Paris studios, including those of André Lhote and Fernand Leger. The D Group and the Newcomers charged themselves with reconciling local social realities with artistic styles associated with Western modernity, including impressionist, fauvist, and cubist painting techniques. In contrast, the Group of Ten argued that Turkey’s storied decorative arts tradition had earned it an integral place within a history of world civilization, and that such decorative modes should be carried through to art-making in the modern period.
Gunawan, Hendra (1918–1983)
Authors: Sambrani Chaitanya
Published: September 2018

Known in Indonesia as the peoples’ painter, Hendra Gunawan was born in Bandung. Family circumstances were strained with a father who gambled and his parents divorced while Hendra was still a child. After finishing high school, Hendra was part of a theatrical troupe, painting scenery as well as acting and dancing on stage. During the late 1930s, he is presumed to have studied landscape painting with Wahdi and modern art with Giorgi Giseken, a Bandung industrialist. It was after meeting Affandi in 1939 that he took up painting seriously. Hendra was associated with a number of artists’ organizations as well as popular culture. His career was marked by a deep interest in representing the lives of common people: villagers, farmers, folk dancers and prostitutes. Scenes of family gatherings, beach, festivals and marketplaces abound in his oeuvre. His art practice continued throughout his thirteen years spent as a political prisoner (1965–1978). In fact, it was during his prison years that he arrived at his mature style characterized by radiant, sometimes discordant color, and sinuous figures with exaggerated and distorted limbs. Especially in his later career, Hendra created paintings approximating history paintings in scale, about four meters in width. Even after his release from prison, the stigma of having been branded an enemy of the nation continued to influence his reception. To date, there has been no catalogue raisonné or retrospective exhibition of his work. Hendra Gunawan died five years after his release from prison.
Heron, Patrick (1920–1999)
Authors: Furness Tom
Published: September 2018

Patrick Heron is recognized by many as a key figure in the history of post-war British art, both as a practicing artist and as a prolific writer and critic. Influenced in his own work by artists such as Matisse, Bonnard, and Braque, he acted as key conduit between British art and the continent—particularly French painting, typified by the École de Paris. Like his fellow British painters Roger Hilton and William Gear, he was predisposed toward the bold use of color and a free play with oscillating perspectival cues in the more figurative of his works. An example of Heron’s earlier linear lyrical abstract work, Christmas Eve, was included in the 1951 Festival of Britain exhibition, 60 Paintings for ’51.

Heron also organized several key exhibitions during the 1950s, which marked key touchstones in the development of abstract British art, including Space in Colour at the Hanover Gallery, London, in 1953 and Metavisual, Taschiste, Abstract at the Redfern Gallery, London, in April 1956. Influenced by the Russian-French artist Nicholas de Staël, and perhaps somewhat by American Abstract Expressionism, after 1955 his works were primarily non-representational, but preserved subtle and equivocal references to the landscape surrounding his home.
Hidalgo, Ricardo Porro (1925–2014)
Authors: López Alberto José-Antonio
Published: September 2018

Best known for his involvement in the design of the National School of Art (1961–1965), Ricardo Porro’s work in Cuba marks a brief-lived yet spiritually lingering venture into a figurative modernism. Abandoning the rational and functional tendencies of his early training, Porro embarked on a project beginning in the late 1950s that sought to find a formal means of expression that challenged the abstract modernism of the period by incorporating gestures of an often romantic symbolism. Rising to prominence in the local design community at a time when cubanidad (the cultural spirit and expression of Cuban-ness) was a matter of impassioned debate, Porro challenged the accepted notion of Spanish-colonial primacy in the modern movement’s historical yearnings, advocating a criollo (culturally mixed) artistic tendency. In addition, he became a vociferous proponent for the cultivation of Cuba’s "black tradition," a stylistic notion present in the Afro-Cuban vernacular as well as the island’s artistic vanguard. As Porro and the unfinished Schools of Art fell out of favor with the Revolution, the young architect had no choice but to leave his native country in order to continue practicing his art. He entered into exile in 1967 when he left for Paris. He continued to design, now in partnership with Renaud de la Noue.
Hofmann, Hans (1880–1966)
Authors: Robbins Christa Noel
Published: September 2018

Hans Hofmann was a German–American painter associated with Abstract Expressionism. Known as much for his paintings as for his role as a teacher, Hofmann moved to New York City in 1932. Much older than the core group of New York School painters, Hofmann acted as a kind of bridge between European and American modernism. Hofmann’s paintings are highly recognizable: they feature large planes of thickly applied, bold color, often interspersed with expressionistic fields of gestural painting. The result, which can be seen in his 1962 painting Memoria in Aeternum, is a dynamic play with depth of field and colour relations. Hofmann referred to this spatial and optical play as the "push–pull" effect, indicating the manner in which areas of a canvas can appear to push back behind the picture plane and pull forward into the viewer’s space, while simultaneously reading as flat surface. The spatial and material relationality introduced through this device influenced a generation of New York painters and critics, both those taught directly by Hofmann and those who learned of his theories through second parties. Hofmann’s students from this period include Lee Krasner, Helen Frankenthaler, Frank Stella, Allan Kaprow and, importantly, Clement Greenberg. Many of their first lessons in modernist painting took place in his school.
Indian Group of Seven
Authors: Smith Matthew Ryan
Published: September 2018

The Indian Group of Seven is an ironic title given by a reporter from the Winnipeg Free Press to a collective of Indigenous artists from Canada, including Jackson Beardy (1944–1984), Eddy Cobiness (1933–1996), Alex Janvier (b. 1935), Norval Morrisseau (1932–2007), Daphne Odjig (b. 1919), Carl Ray (1942–1978), and Joseph Sanchez (b. 1948). Their name is a direct reference to the Group of Seven, a collective of Canadian artists who used the Canadian landscape as their primary subject matter in the 1920s and 1930s. The Indian Group of Seven emerged soon after Montreal’s 1967 International and Universal Exposition, and the 1969 release of the Statement of the Government of Canada on Indian policy—events that were heavily criticized for supporting colonial legacies and supressing Indigenous rights. The Group’s artwork reacted against such politics. They sought to break cultural and political stereotypes by demanding recognition as professional artists, by challenging established meanings of contemporary Indigenous art, and reconsidering social relationships to Indigenous peoples. The Indian Group of Seven helped to change the preconceived notion that Indigenous artists were preoccupied with traditional craftwork such as weaving, pottery, and carving.
Tudor, Antony (1908–1987)
Authors: Chazin-Bennahum Judith
Published: September 2018

Born into a modest household in London’s East End, Antony Tudor changed the way we look at ballet and what it was thought to express. Using the classical idiom in a new way, he evoked nuanced passions and subtle moods to convey his characters’ deepest thoughts. Though his ballets have narratives, they defy logical actions, instead following the emotional journeys of his characters as they struggle to come to terms with their dilemmas. His best-known ballets—Jardin aux lilas (also known as Lilac Garden, 1936), Dark Elegies (1937), and Pillar of Fire (1942)—reveal the sensitivity, wit, and psychological bite typical of his best work. In 1939, after briefly directing his own company, the London Ballet, he settled in New York, where he began a long association with Ballet Theatre (later American Ballet Theatre, ABT). In 1951, he joined the faculty of the Juilliard School of Music’s newly founded Dance Department, where he taught composition and choreography. He directed the Metropolitan Ballet from 1950 to 1962 and the Royal Swedish Ballet in 1962, and remained a presence at ABT until he died.
Kennington, Eric Henri (1888–1960)
Authors: Hudson Kitty
Published: September 2018

Eric Kennington’s career began in 1908 and, by early 1914, he had gained critical success with his portrait commissions and pictures of London attractions. However, it is his war paintings and war memorials for which he is best known; among them is the large oil-painting on glass, The Kensingtons at Laventie: Winter 1914 (1916), as well as hundreds of paintings and drawings done on duty as an official war artist from 1917–1919. Influenced by the direct carving techniques of Jacob Epstein, Eric Gill and Frank Dobson, among others, Kennington turned increasingly to sculpture during the postwar years, producing memorials to (for example) the 24th Infantry Division in Battersea Park (c. 1922–1924), as well as commissions for architectural sculpture. Another important figure in Kennington’s post-war career was T.E. Lawrence, for whose book Seven Pillars of Wisdom he drew a series of portraits of Arab people whom he met on his travels in the Middle East in 1920. He also produced a portrait bust of Lawrence (1926) and an effigy for his tomb (1935). During World War II he was again engaged as an official (and later unofficial) war artist, before turning increasingly to ecclesiastical sculpture after 1946. By the time he died in 1960 his reputation was sadly diminished, as a younger generation of sculptors, employing a broadly abstract style and modern materials, took over.
Kumalo, Sydney (1935–1988)
Authors: Stephenson Jessica
Published: September 2018

Sydney Kumalo (1935–1988) was an important early black modernist working primarily in cast metal sculpture and drawing. As an artist and educator, Kumalo’s contributions were twofold: he embraced sculpture at a time when most urban South African modernists worked exclusively in two-dimensional media; he also undertook a sophisticated rethinking of African sculptural forms through the language of international modernism. Kumalo initiated his art career at the Polly Street Art Centre in Johannesburg. Here he trained from 1952 to 1957 under Cecil Skotnes. Following this, he apprenticed with the sculptor Eduardo Villa until 1959. Early on Kumalo developed an interest in traditional West and Central African sculpture, as well as Cubism and mid-century European modernism and its related Primitivism, most notably the work of Marino Marini, Henry Moore, and Lynn Chadwick. Kumalo collaborated on a number of public art projects with Cecil Skotnes, and together with other South African artists (including Villa, Skotnes, Cecily Sash, Guiseppe Cattaneo, and Ezrom Legae) he exhibited locally and internationally as part of the multi-racial modernist Amadlozi Group. These collaborations highlight Kumalo’s refusal to accept the dictates of apartheid ideology.
Upa-in, Lawan (1935--)
Authors: Baker Catherine
Published: September 2018

Thai artist Lawan Upa-in was the first female student to be granted a Bachelor of Arts in painting at Silpakorn University—where she studied in the Faculty of Painting, Sculpture, and Graphic Arts—becoming well known in a field that was, at the time, entirely dominated by men. Professor Silpa Bhirasri (born Corrado Feroci), the so-called father of Thai modern art, mentored Upa-in, who became well known for her work in portraiture. She was offered a teaching position at Silpakorn prior to her graduation, and initial commissions from the Thai royal family helped to develop her reputation as an artist. Her style is influenced by the Western art traditions taught by her mentor; however, while her portraits maintain aspects of photo-realism, other works divert from this style to include narrative elements reflecting the political turmoil in Thailand.
Lemos, Fernando (1926--)
Authors: Vasconcelos Cristina
Published: September 2018

Known for his early photographic artwork, Fernando Lemos was associated with the Portuguese surrealists of the late 1940s and early 1950s prior to relocating to Brazil in 1952. During his early career Lemos explored a range of black and white photography techniques including film, overlapping, and partial under/overexposures, exemplified by his 1949 self-portrait Eu/Auto-Retrato. While perhaps best known for these early works, Lemos’s artistic production is ongoing, encompassing a wide range of media including drawing, painting, tapestry, ceramics, mural painting, glass windows, graphic/industrial design, and film photography. His productions are interwoven with experimental techniques and shifts in media.

While residing in Lisbon, Lemos primarily worked with photography and drawing, developing and exploring a variety of media after relocating to São Paulo, Brazil in 1953. In Brazil he turned to painting and drawing, often using Indian ink to develop rhythmic geometric forms, with works such as Desenho (1956) garnering several prizes at various São Paulo Biennials. In later works Lemos returned to the photographic image, utilizing color in his re-working of scratched and painted anonymous photographs, and printing the results on large-format photographic paper.
Matta, Roberto (1911–2002)
Authors: Doyen Roxanne
Published: September 2018

Chilean architect and artist Robert Matta Echaurren (b. 1911, Santiago, Chile; d. Civitavecchia, Italy 2002) is considered one of the most important figures of the Surrealist movement. His paintings combine Latin American, European, and American influences. In 1932, Matta decided to leave the politically unstable Chile to work for the French architect Le Corbusier in Paris. Disappointed with the architect’s rationalistic ideas, Matta explored the Parisian art world and met many members of the Latin American literary avant-garde, including Frederico Garcia Lorca and Pablo Neruda, who introduced him to Salvador Dalí and André Breton. Both encouraged Matta to draw and paint instead of being an architect. In 1937, Matta participated in his first Surrealist exhibition. The artists’ earliest works were abstract crayon drawings, showing organic patterns and microscope views of plants. In 1938, he transitioned to oil paintings. As an architect, Matta believed that architecture should create free, dynamic spaces. An example is Composición, where he used drawing to expand the visual fields and create interior landscapes, also known as inscapes, in which he tried to dissolve the boundaries of surfaces to find the internal world of the human being, or the human psyche.
Mattis-Teutsch, Hans (1884–1960)
Authors: Kessler Erwin
Published: September 2018

Hans Mattis-Teutsch was a Romanian artist, born to a German-Hungarian family in Braşov, where he also died. Exemplary of the diverse modernity of Central Europe, he moved between Realism and other styles, including Jugendstil, Post-Impressionism, Expressionism, constructive Abstraction, and Art Deco. His stay in Paris from 1905 to 1908 contributed to the development of his painting style, which was influenced by the fauves, cubo-futurists, and the polychrome sculptures of Paul Gauguin, in addition to the works of Constantin Brancusi, František Kupka, and the Expressionism of Der Blaue Reiter. His stay in Berlin in 1918 was crucial for his affiliation with Der Sturm; the 99th Sturm exhibition in 1921 featured him alongside Paul Klee.

Like his contemporaries, Mattis-Teutsch extracted stylish, spiritual, and cosmic-theosophical visions from fantasized landscapes and depicted the inner workings of the human mind on his canvases. He later erected functional-decorative, rational, and humanistic edifices based on Socialist utopias. Mattis-Teutsch was a keystone of the Romanian, Hungarian, and German avant-garde. Though cosmopolitan, he lived mostly in his Transylvanian hometown of Braşov, exhibiting locally and working as a professor at the art college, nourishing a modern, progressive, provincial art-life. In 1946, he founded the first syndicate of "democratic" artists in Romania.
Moudarres, Fateh al- (1922–1999)
Authors: Lenssen Anneka
Published: September 2018

Fateh al-Moudarres is considered a leader among Syria’s generation of modernist painters born in the 1920s. Because of his early participation in literary salons, his freeform and intuitive style of drawing and painting, and his willingness to express contrarian and independent views about culture and authority, al-Moudarres enjoyed widespread respect in the Arab world as an authentically modern artist. Al-Moudarres represented Syria in numerous international exhibitions, including biennials in Venice and São Paulo. A polymath who also wrote poems, short stories, and composed for the piano, his career began in the cultural circles of Aleppo in the 1940s, where he experimented with surrealist modes of composition. He would subsequently hone a semi-naïve style of painting and a repertoire of imagery drawn from the myths of ancient Syrian civilizations, religious icons, the land and its flora, and rural custom. In 1956, he was granted a four-year study fellowship at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Al-Moudarres settled in Damascus after finishing and joined the faculty at the new College of Fine Arts. Always a prolific artist, he painted and taught in Damascus for decades, where he served as a role model and mentor for emerging generations of Syrian artists.
Münter, Gabriele (1877–1962)
Authors: Obler Bibiana
Published: September 2018

Gabriele Münter was a key figure in German Expressionism. Born in Berlin, she moved to Munich in 1901 where she became an active participant in the Neue Künstlervereinigung München (NKVM) [Munich New Artists’ Association], founded in 1909, and then the Blaue Reiter in 1911. Known primarily for her painting, she was also a prolific graphic artist and photographer. Like many women of her generation, she received her art education through a combination of private lessons, women’s art schools, and new co-educational institutions—more specifically, the Phalanx School, where she studied with Wassily Kandinsky. The latter encounter proved momentous for both Münter and Kandinsky: by 1903, they were engaged (at first secretly) and remained in a relationship until 1916. During these years, both artists developed their mature styles. Expressionism in southern Germany, unlike Die Brücke in the north, fostered a collegial environment comprising both women and men. Münter’s painting changed dramatically in 1908 during a vacation the couple took in Murnau with Marianne von Werefkin and Alexej Jawlensky. Münter attributed her shift towards Fauvism to Jawlensky’s interest in Matisse and the Nabis, as well as to the Bavarian landscape and the inspiration of Hinterglasmalerei [reverse-glass painting].
Onabolu, Aina (1882–1963)
Authors: Ezeluomba Ndubuisi
Published: September 2018

Born on 13 September 1882 in Ijebu-Ode, Aina Onabolu was the pioneer of Nigerian Modern Art. He occasioned a radical revolution that facilitated the inclusion of arts scholarship into the curriculum of colonial Nigeria in the 1920s. As a self-taught artist, Onabolu developed his drawing and painting skills through pictures gleaned from European textbooks and magazines that were available to him in the early 20th century, when formal art training was not yet available in Nigeria. Although he became an accomplished artist, Onabolu’s greatest influence was in teaching art; after obtaining a diploma in fine arts from European art schools, he returned to Nigeria to promote the fine arts through education and policy reform. As a teacher, Onabolu sought to make his students understand the technical aspects of art. He emphasized the sciences of perspective, proportion, color technology, and chiaroscuro, encouraging students to take courses like drawing, basic design, and painting, and thus earning him the title Mr. Perspective around Lagos, as well as a reputation that would later mark him as the Father of Modern Nigerian Art.
Bruce Onobrakpeya (1932--)
Authors: Cantone Helena
Published: September 2018

Printmaker, sculptor, painter and inventor of new techniques, Bruce Onobrakpeya was one of the major figures to emerge from the Zaria Arts Society in Nigeria in the 1950s.

An innovator and experimentalist in printmaking, Onobrakpeya developed many techniques including "bronze lino relief," "hydrochloric acid accident," and in 1967, a deep etching technique called "plastograph" that uses plates cast in plaster. In a continuous process of innovation, Bruce started making prints from these "plastercasts," then coated the original plates with bronze in order to make the casts into pieces of art work themselves. In later years, Onobrakpeya recast these original plates into columns of resin to create sculptural installation-shrines, thereby not only reinventing the idea of printing itself, but reinterpreting African shrine traditions to give these ritual places new meanings. Together with his generation of modern artists rooted in the historical moment of African independence, Onobrakpeya helped to critically question Eurocentric assumptions by re-writing their own history.
Free Verse
Authors: Munro Niall
Published: September 2018

Free verse is a technique of poetic composition that was employed and discussed by poets and critics during the modernist period. Exemplified by a disregard for regular metre and rhyme, free verse came into English poetry via two main routes: the work of the American poet Walt Whitman, and late nineteenth-century French Symbolist poetry. Although not precisely equivalent, the French term vers libre began to be used interchangeably with free verse in the early 1910s when members of the Imagist movement began to advocate its use to develop an aesthetic that shifted verse written in English away from the Victorian poetry they considered hackneyed and full of unnecessary words. The movement toward free verse had a tremendous influence on English-language poetry throughout the modernist period and beyond, even though, by the 1920s and 30s, some of the mode’s earliest advocates (including Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot) were criticizing what they saw as a decline in the quality of poems written in free verse, and urging a return to the more formal features of rhyme and regular lineation.
Pavia, Philip (1912–2005)
Authors: Thyssen Esther T.
Published: September 2018

American sculptor and organizer of the New York art community, Philip Pavia sought to forge a group identity for the New York School. Pavia founded the Downtown Artists Club (1949–1955) with Willem de Kooning, Franz Kline, Ibram Lassaw and others. "The Club" transformed earlier gatherings into an intellectual and social forum as artists debated propositions and principles of Abstract Expressionism as well as the moniker itself. Lectures by luminaries like Joseph Campbell, John Cage and Hannah Arendt, and bi-weekly discussions nurtured artists’ theories. Harold Rosenberg’s milestone essay "The American Action Painters" (1952), for example, evolved from club panels convened by Pavia on "problems" of Abstract Expressionism. Dislike of French Surrealist influence and challenges to the validity of formalist arguments were common. Pavia initiated annual exhibitions with the Ninth Street Show in 1951. Between 1958 and 1965, as an extension of the annuals, Pavia edited and published the periodical It is. A magazine for abstract art (sic). Critical writing, manifestoes and statements by fellow artists were printed alongside reproductions of new work. The periodical was structured as an artists’ archive for Abstract Expressionism during the mature phase of the movement. Concurrently Pavia made abstract sculpture in bronze, stone, and clay.
Performance Art in China
Authors: Tan Adele
Published: September 2018

Performance art events began in China in the 1980s following Deng Xioping’s post-Mao economic reforms in 1979, which exposed Chinese socialist society to foreign investments and influences. In 1985, at a time when China’s mainstream art was mostly defined by official Academic Realism or Socialist Realism, incipient strands of avant-gardist experimentation were surfacing through informal art groups. Robert Rauschenberg, for instance, held a solo exhibition at the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. The exhibition displayed innovative readymade assemblages, installations and collaborations, introducing Chinese audiences and artists to major trends in contemporary Western art, including the breaking of aesthetic and conceptual boundaries, thus motivating artists away from deeply embedded modes of thinking and art-making. Rauschenberg’s exhibition confirmed a rising awareness in China that art could embrace participatory agency, and break down rules of perception and action, while expanding the possibilities of the duration, place, and materials of art. China’s performance art questioned thresholds of visuality and aesthetics, and was widely translated into Chinese asxingwei yishu [behaviour art], while also referred to as xingdong yishu [action art], shenti yishu [body art], and most recently xianchang yishu [live art]. The implication of human behavior and conduct in the translated term reflected performance art’s function in addressing lived experiences under socio-cultural constraints in an authoritarian state, as well as social change and upheaval during China’s transition into a socialist state with capitalist characteristics.
Shinnanga
Authors: Paget Rhiannon
Published: September 2018

Shinnanga [新南画], or "neo-nanga," is a term that came into use during the Taisho period (1912–1926) to describe new interpretations of literati-style painting by Japanese artists at that time. Nanga [南画] is the Japanese adaptation of Chinese literati painting and is also known as nanshūga [南宗画] or "Southern style painting," bunjinga [文人画], or literati painting. Shinnanga initially referred to experimentations among artists of nihonga [日本画] [Japanese-style painting] and yōga [洋画] [Western-style painting] with themes, pictorial techniques and sensibilities associated with literati painting, including vertical landscape compositions, expressive brushwork, a reduced color palette, and an impressionistic approach to representing form. The revival of nanga and the emergence of shinnanga occurred within the context of a broader resurgence of Sinology, fueled partly by the disintegration of the Qing dynasty, Japan’s rise as an imperial power, and the ensuing shifts of power in its relationships with China and the West. Japanese scholars found in nanga an artistic tradition that could hold its own against Western art history, arguing that nanga’s preference for subjectivity over likeness inspired Western art’s movement towards Expressionism and abstraction. Nanga was championed as the pre-eminent artistic expression of East Asia, and as an example of the common heritage of countries in the region, was invoked to naturalize Japan’s project of a Greater East Asia.