See www.lonvig.dk/art-gallery-support.htm
for further information on general motifs.
AND.
Here are the motifs to children:

See www.lonvig.dk/art-gallery-support-motifs-to-children.htm
for further information on motifs to children.

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
"Lille Fejringhus"
43 Fejringhusvej
8722 Hedensted
Denmark

See www.lonvig.dk/art-gallery-support.htm for further information.

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
"Lille Fejringhus"
43 Fejringhusvej
8722 Hedensted
Denmark

Buy Mugs with Asbjorn Lonvig Surround Art Motifs.
Buy the Mugs at Zazzle.com in San Jose, CA. There are more than 100 different Mugs. 
Below I have selected a few - click on a Mug.

  
Have a nice day.

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
artist, designer etc.
http://www.lonvig.dk/
http://www.lonvig.biz/

you can order more than 100 different motifs. 
Below I have selected a few on which you can click and order directly.




Click on a motif!

You will find all my MERCHANDISE products on my web site or on Art Portals.
If you or your child want other of my motifs on shirts - just send me an e-mail.

Have a nice day.

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
artist, designer etc.
http://www.lonvig.dk/
http://www.lonvig.dk/
http://www.lonvig.biz/

Zazzle.com is working with on-demand manufacturing
and they handle exhibiting my MERCHANDISE products, ordering, payment and delivery on your address... 

Buy Asbjorn Lonvig motifs on US Postal stamps that can be sent through standard U.S. Mail.
You buy the stamps from Zazzle.com/lonvig* - you can order more than 100 different motifs. 
Below I have selected a few on which you can click and order in sheets of 20 directly.

Click on a motif!

You will find all my MERCHANDISE products on my web site or on Art Portals.
Find the Art Portals in English on lonvig.dk/portal-en.htm.


Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
artist, designer etc.
www.lonvig.dk
www.lonvig.dk
www.lonvig.biz

Zazzle.com is an approved licenced vendor
of United States Postal Service costomized PC postage

The first phase of my Art Portal project was based on on-demand print.
This next phase is based on on-demand manufacturing.
It means that the mayor, the priest and ordinary people can do their own personal designs
in ties, mugs, T-shirts, caps, mouse pads, stamps, posters, postcards...
I have prepared MERCHANDISE products based on my own art works.
70 MERCHANDISE products for New Hedensted , 55 MERCHANDISE products for Aarhus City, 18 MERCHANDISE products for Guggenheim Museum, 7 MERCHANDISE products for Shanghai Chambers of Commerce etc.
So far I have done 1200 MERCHANDISE products.
I found the software I needed in Silicon Valley - where else.
The customer must be able to customize my MERCHANDISE products.
The mayor must be able to decide himself where my motif is placed on his tie.



Click on a motif above!

You will find the MERCHANDISE products on my web site or on Art Portals.
Find the Art Portals in English on lonvig.dk/portal-en.htm.
Customizing takes place in San Jose (Silicon Valley).
My friends in Silicon Valley are zazzle.com and my new name is zazzle.com/lonvig*.

My project is maybe very ambitious. I have difficulties explaining what it is all about.
I wrote an article in WWAR Art News the other day.
As I got not much response I thought: Shit!!!
Shit, now I was again not able to explain.
And I became so sad - so sad.
But.
Yesterday a reader of my article wrote to me from New York: You are a genius.
Today the world renowned Iconograpfer Ilina Filipova from Malta expressed her enthusiasm about my ideas.
And she even has used them on her web site.
Another artist from Phoenix, Arizona intend to use my ideas in teaching illustration and advertising...........

Sincerely,
Asbjorn Lonvig
artist, designer etc.
www.lonvig.dk
www.lonvig.dk
www.lonvig.biz

 Wikipedia

]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-pollock.htm Thu, 16 Mar 2006 12:50:52 +0200 Art works selected by Asbjorn Lonvig http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-o-toole.htm Thu, 16 Mar 2006 08:22:27 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
José Victoriano González-Pérez (March 23, 1887 — May 11, 1927), better known as Juan Gris, was a Spanish painter and sculptor who lived and worked in France most of his life. His works are closely connected to the emergence of an innovative artistic genre — cubism.

Born in Madrid, Spain, Gris studied mechanical drawing at the Escuela de Artes y Manufacturas in Madrid from 1902 to 1904, during which time he contributed drawings to local periodicals. From 1904 to 1905 he studied painting with the academic artist José Maria Carbonero.

In 1906 he moved to Paris and became friends with Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Fernand Léger, and in 1915 was painted by his friend, Amedeo Modigliani. In Paris, Gris followed the lead of another friend and fellow countryman, Pablo Picasso. His portrait of Picasso in 1912 is a significant early cubist painting done by a painter other than Picasso or Georges Braque.

The Art Institute of Chicago.Although he submitted darkly humorous illustrations to journals such as Le Rire, Lassiette au beurre, Le Charivari, and Le Cri de Paris, Gris began to paint seriously in 1910. By 1912 he had developed a personal Cubist style.

At first Gris painted in the analytic style of cubism, but after 1913 he began his conversion to synthetic cubism of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier collé. Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse.

In 1922 the painter first designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev.

Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilités de la peinture, at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923 and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925.

He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) in the spring of 1927 at the age of forty, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.

Although he regarded Picasso as a teacher, Gertrude Stein acknowledged that Gris, "was the one person that Picasso would have willingly wiped off the map."

Before 2005, a Gris painting sold for more than $8.4 million.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-gris.htm Tue, 14 Mar 2006 15:55:38 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Marcel Duchamp (July 28, 1887 – October 2, 1968) was a French/American artist whose work and ideas had considerable influence on the development of post-World War II Western art, and his advice to modern art collectors helped shape the tastes of the Western art world. His influence continues into the 21st century.

While he is most often associated with the Dada and Surrealism movements, his participation in Surrealism was largely behind the scenes, and after being involved in New York Dada, he barely participated in Paris Dada.

Thousands of books and articles attempt to interpret Duchamp's work and philosophy, but in interviews and his writing Duchamp only added to the mystery. The interpretations interested him as creations of their own, and as reflections of the interpreter.

A playful man, Duchamp prodded thought about artistic processes and art marketing, not so much with words, but with actions such as dubbing a urinal art and naming it Fountain, and by "giving up" art to play chess. He produced relatively few artworks, as he quickly moved through the avant-garde rhythms of his time.

The creative act is not performed by the artist alone; the spectator brings the work in contact with the external world by deciphering and interpreting its inner qualifications and thus adds his contribution to the creative act.

— Marcel Duchamp
Living and working in a studio in Montparnasse, Marcel Duchamp's early works were Post-Impressionist in style but he would become perhaps the most influential of the Dada artists. A student at the Académie Julian, his influence is still strongly felt to this day by contemporary artists.

At his eldest brother Jacques' home, in 1911 the Duchamp brothers organized a regular discussion group with artists and critics such as Francis Picabia, Robert Delaunay, Fernand Leger and others that soon was dubbed the Puteaux Group.

In early years, Duchamp had some contact with the Salon Cubists of Paris, but aesthetic as well as political differences precluded closer affiliation. In 1912, he painted Nude Descending a Staircase, No. 2, in which motion was expressed by successive superimposed images, as in motion pictures. The work was originally slated to appear in Paris, but the Salon Cubists demanded that Duchamp retitle it to avoid possible scandal. Duchamp removed the work from the exhibition entirely, and, in 1913, it went on to create a scandal at the Armory Show in New York City instead; it also spawned dozens of parodies in the years that followed.

 Wikipedia

Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Gustav Klimt (July 14, 1862 - February 6, 1918) was an Austrian Symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Art Nouveau (Vienna Secession) movement. His major works include paintings, murals, sketches and other art objects, many of which are on display in the Vienna Secession gallery. Klimt's primary subject is the female body, and his works are marked by a frank eroticism. His pencil drawings, which are very numerous, have been regarded by many as his greatest legacy.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-duchamp-klimt.htm Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:53:55 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Paul Klee (December 18, 1879 – June 29, 1940) was a Swiss painter. He used many different art styles in his work, including surrealism and cubism. He and his friend Wassily Kandinsky were also famous for teaching at the Bauhaus school of art after World War One.

Klee (pronounced kle:) was born in Münchenbuchsee (near Bern), Switzerland, into a musical family - his father, Hans Klee, taught music at the Hofwil Teacher Seminar near Berne. In his early years, Paul wanted to be a musician, but decided on the visual arts in his teen years. He studied art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich with Heinrich Knirr and Franz von Stuck. After travelling to Italy and then back to Bern, he settled in Munich, where he met Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, and other avant-garde figures, and became associated with Der Blaue Reiter. Here he met Bavarian pianist Lily Stumpf, whom he married; they had one son.

In 1914, he visited Tunisia with August Macke and Louis Moilliet and was impressed by the quality of the light there, writing "Color has taken possession of me; no longer do I have to chase after it, I know that it has hold of me forever ... Color and I are one. I am a painter."

Klee worked with many different types of media – oil paint, watercolor, ink, and more. He often combined them into one work. He has been variously associated with expressionism, cubism and surrealism but his pictures are difficult to classify. They often have a fragile child-like quality to them, and are usually on a small scale. They frequently allude to poetry, music and dreams and sometimes include words or musical notation. The later works are distinguished by spidery hieroglyph-like symbols. His better known works include Southern (Tunisian) Gardens (1919), Ad Parnassum (1932), and Embrace (1939).

Following World War I, in which he painted camouflage on airplanes for the imperial German army, Klee taught at the Bauhaus, and from 1931 at the Düsseldorf Academy, before being denounced by the Nazi Party for producing "degenerate art".

Composer Gunther Schuller also immortalized seven works of Klee's in his Seven Studies on Themes of Paul Klee. The studies are based on a range of works, including Alter Klang [Antique Harmonies], Abstraktes Terzett [Abstract Trio], Little Blue Devil, Twittering Machine, Arab Village, Ein unheimlicher Moment [An Eerie Moment], and Pastorale.

Another of Klee's paintings, Angelus Novus, was the object of an interpretive text by German philosopher and literary critic Walter Benjamin. In it, Benjamin suggests that the angel depicted in the painting represents progress in history. In 1933, Paul Klee returned to Switzerland; in 1935, he began experiencing the symptoms of what was diagnosed as scleroderma after his death. The progression of his disease can be followed through the art he created in his last years.

He died in Muralto, Switzerland, in 1940 without having obtained the Swiss citizenship. Today, a painting by Paul Klee can sell for as much as US$7.5 million. A museum dedicated to Paul Klee was built in Bern, Switzerland, by the Italian architect Renzo Piano. It opened in June 2005. It houses a collection of about 4000 art works by Paul Klee.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-klee.htm Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:16:48 +0200 Art works selected by Asbjorn Lonvig http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-dunlap-solit.htm Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:21:04 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Georges-Pierre Seurat (December 2, 1859–March 29, 1891) was the founder of Neoimpressionism. His large work Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is one of the icons of the 19th century painting.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-seurat.htm Mon, 13 Mar 2006 11:07:44 +0200 Art works selected by Asbjorn Lonvig http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-saak-nagel.htm Mon, 13 Mar 2006 10:10:12 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Camille Pissarro (July 10, 1830 – November 13, 1903) was a French impressionist painter.

Camille Jacob Pissarro was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, and Rachel Manzano-Pomié, from the Dominican Republic. Pissarro lived in St. Thomas until age 12, when he went to a boarding school in Paris. He returned to St. Thomas where he drew in his free time. In 1852, he travelled to Venezuela with the Danish artist Fritz Melbye. In 1855, he moved to Paris, where he studied with the French landscape artist Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

Camille Pissarro married Julie Vellay, a maid of his mother's household. Julie was much younger than Pissarro when the two met. They would marry ten years later after their initial meeting. They had many children together.

Known as the Father of Impressionism, he painted rural French life, particularly landscapes and workers in the fields as well as scenes from Montmartre. He then went to Paris to teach, where some of his students were Californian Impressionist Lucy Bacon , Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin.

His influence on the Impressionists is probably still underrated; not only were many of the ideas his own, but he also managed to remain on friendly, mutually respectful terms with such difficult personalities as Edgar Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin. Although generally seen as a minor Impressionist, Pissarro exhibited at all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions. Moreover, whereas Monet was the main practitioner of the Impressionist style, Pissarro may have been the main thinker in the development of Impressionist theory.

Probably the strength of Pissarro's mind got rather in the way of his painting as he felt the need to try out all new forms of painting as they came along, thus he painted in the Neo-Impressionist form between 1885 and 1890, before returning to a more pure Impressionism before the end of his life.

In March 1893, Paris Gallery Durand-Ruel organized a major exhibition of 46 of Pissarro's works along with 55 others by Antonio de La Gandara. But while the critics acclaimed Gandara, their appraisal of Pissarro's art was less enthusiastic.

Pissarro died in Éragny-sur-Epte on either November 12 or November 13, 1903 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

During his lifetime, Camille Pissarro sold few of his paintings. By 2005, however, some Pissarro paintings sold for around $4 million.

Wikipedia

]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-cappiello.htm Mon, 13 Mar 2006 09:38:17 +0200 Art works selected by Asbjorn Lonvig http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-norris.htm Mon, 13 Mar 2006 07:52:07 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (25 June 1852 – 10 June 1926) was a Catalan architect famous for his unique style and highly individualistic designs.

Gaudí was born in Tarragona, Catalonia, Spain, in 1852 though no one knows exactly where. While many believe his birthplace to be the town of Reus, others claim it was in fact Riudoms. It is known, however, that he was baptized in Reus a day after his birth. The artist's parents, Francesc Gaudí Serra and Antonia Cornet Bertran, both came from families of metalsmiths.

Gaudí, the youngest of five, found himself unable to play with friends his age because of rheumatism. Being in such pain, he was rarely able to walk on foot and was forced to ride a donkey when he wanted to go anywhere outside his home. That he remained close to home allowed him substantial free time to observe nature and its design. It has been hypothesized that it was this exposure to nature at an early age that began to hone two of his greatest qualities: observation and the analysis of nature.

At a young age, Gaudí entered a nursery school (parvulari) under the instruction of Francesc Berenguer, and his imaginative qualities began to manifest themselves: when Berenguer lectured the child on how wings let birds fly, Gaudí observed that chickens do not fly. He concluded that their wings must help them run faster.

When the time came for his formal education, Gaudí enrolled in the Collegi de les Escoles Píes de Reus, where he soon became fast friends with Eduard Toda and Josep Ribera. It was perhaps their insatiable curiosity that drove them to learn all they could about the intricacies of nature.

During his time at Les Escoles, Gaudí did not make the best of grades, though he proved to be an abstract thinker. He did, however, see remarkable improvement in the area of geometry, a subject which fascinated him. This fascination would carry through with him until his death. Its first major effect on his life was his choice of career.
Higher education

As an architecture student at the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura in Barcelona from 1873 to 1877, Gaudí continued to achieve mediocre grades but did well in the "Trial drawings and Projects" course.

He would remain affiliated with the Escola Tècnica Superior d'Arquitectura his entire life. Awarded the title of Architect by the school in 1878, Gaudí immediately began to plan and design. When Elies Rogent signed the title, he declared, "I have either found a lunatic or a genius."

Gaudí, throughout his life, was fascinated by nature. He studied nature's angles and curves and incorporated them into his designs. Instead of relying on geometric shapes, he mimicked the way trees and humans grow and stand upright. The hyperboloids and paraboloids he borrowed from nature were easily reinforced by steel rods. He didn't limit his use of natural structures to support, however, and most of his designs resemble elements from the environment.

Because of his rheumatism, the artist observed a strict vegetarian diet, used homeopathic drug therapy, underwent water therapy, and hiked regularly. Long walks, besides suppressing his rheumatism, further allowed him to experience nature.

The Casa Milà, in the Eixample, Barcelona.Gaudí was an ardent Catholic and a fervent Catalan nationalist. (He was once arrested for speaking in Catalan in a situation deemed illegal by authorities.) In his later years, he abandoned secular work and devoted his life to Catholicism and his Sagrada Família. In the early twentieth century, Gaudí's closest family and friends began to die; his works slowed to a halt; and his attitude changed. Perhaps one of his closest family members – his niece Rosa Egea – passed away in 1912, only to be followed by a "faithful collaborator, Francesc Berenguer Mestres" two years later. After both tragedies, Barcelona fell on hard times, economically. The construction of La Sagrada Família slowed; the construction of La Colonia Güell ceased altogether. Four years later, Eusebi Güell died.

Perhaps it was because of this unfortunate sequence of events that Gaudí changed. He became reluctant to talk with reporters or have his picture taken and solely concentrated on his masterpiece, La Sagrada Familia.

On June 7, 1926, Antoni Gaudí was run over by a tram. Because of his ragged attire and empty pockets, multiple cab drivers refused to pick him up for fear that he would be unable to pay the fare. He was eventually taken to a pauper's hospital in Barcelona. Nobody recognized the injured Gaudí until some friends found him at the poor hospital the next day. When they tried to move him into a nicer hospital, Gaudí refused, reportedly saying "I belong here among the poor." He died two days later, half of Barcelona mourning his death. It was, perhaps, fitting that he was buried in the midst of his unfinished masterpiece, La Sagrada Família.

Gaudí's first works were designed in the style of gothic and traditional Catalan architectural modes, but he soon developed his own distinct sculptural style. French architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who promoted an evolved form of gothic architecture, proved a major influence on Gaudí. But the student surpassed the master architect and contrived highly original designs – irregular and fantastically intricate. Some of his greatest works, most notably La Sagrada Família, have an almost hallucinatory power.

He integrated the parabolic arch, nature's organic shapes, and the fluidity of water into his architecture. While designing buildings, he observed the forces of gravity and related catenary principles. (He designed many of his arches upside down by hanging various weights on interconnected strings, using gravity to calculate catenaries for a natural curved arch.) Using the Catalan trencadís technique, Gaudí often decorated surfaces with broken tiles.

The architect's work has been categorized as Art Nouveau architecture, a precursor to modern architecture. But his adoption of biomorphic shapes rather than orthogonal lines put him in a category unto himself (in Latin, sui generis). His style was later echoed by that of Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928–2000).

Though hailed as a genius, some hypothesize that Gaudí was color blind and that it was only in collaboration with Josep Maria Jujol – an architect twenty seven years his junior whom he acknowledged as a genius in his own right – that he produced his greatest works.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-johns.htm Sun, 12 Mar 2006 14:33:57 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
The Walt Disney Company (most commonly known as Disney) (NYSE: DIS) is one of the largest media and entertainment corporations in the world. Founded on October 16, 1923 by brothers Walt and Roy Disney as a small animation studio, today it is one of the largest Hollywood studios and also owns nine theme parks and several television networks, including ABC.

Disney's corporate headquarters and primary production facilities are located at the Walt Disney Studios in Burbank, California. The company is a component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. It had revenues of $31.9 billion in 2005.

Divisions
Disney's main operating units are Walt Disney Studio Entertainment, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Walt Disney Media Networks, and Walt Disney Consumer Products.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-disney-original.htm Sat, 11 Mar 2006 21:20:11 +0200 250 different posters and fine art prints
Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Walter Elias Disney (December 5, 1901 – December 15, 1966), was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, and animator. One of the most well-known motion picture producers in the world, Disney was the co-founder with his brother Roy O. Disney of Walt Disney Productions. The corporation, now known as The Walt Disney Company, makes revenues of about US $30 billion annually.

Walt Disney is particularly noted for being a successful storyteller, a hands-on film producer, and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in amusement park design. He and his staff created a number of the world's most popular animated properties, including the one many consider Disney's alter ego, Mickey Mouse.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-disney.htm Sat, 11 Mar 2006 12:35:00 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Marc Chagall (Belarusian and Russian: ???? ????´?; his real name was Mojša Zacharavic Šahalau / ????? ????????? ???????) (July 7, 1887 – March 28, 1985) was a Russian-French painter who was born in Belarus. Among the celebrated painters of the 20th century, he is often associated with the Surrealist movement.


Born Moishe Segal (Russified Moishe Zakharovich Shagalov) in Vitebsk, Belarus (then in the Russian Empire), Chagall was the eldest of nine children in the close-knit Jewish family led by his father, a herring merchant and his mother, Feiga-Ita. This period of his life, described as happy though impoverished, appears in references throughout Chagall's work.

Beginning to study painting in 1906 under famed local artist Yehuda Pen, Chagall moved to St. Petersburg only a few months later in 1907. There he joined the school of the Society of Art Supporters and studied under Nikolai Roerich, encountering artists of every school and style. From 1908-1910 he studied under Leon Bakst at Zvyagintseva School.

This period was difficult for Chagall — Jewish residents at the time could only live in St. Petersburg with a permit, and he was jailed for a brief time. Chagall remained in St. Petersburg until 1910, and regularly visited his home village where in 1909 he met his future wife, Bella Rosenfeld.

After becoming known as an artist, he left St. Petersburg to settle in Paris in order to be near the art community of the Montparnasse district, where he becomes a friend of Guillaume Apollinaire, Robert Delaunay, and Fernand Léger. In 1914, he returned to Vitebsk and a year later married his fiancé, Bella. World War I erupted while Chagall was in Russia. In 1916, the Chagalls had a daughter, Ida.

Chagall became an active participant in the Russian Revolution of 1917. The Soviet Ministry of Culture made him a Commissar of Art for the Vitebsk region, where he founded an art school. He did not fare well politically under the Soviet system. He and his wife moved to Moscow in 1920 and back to Paris in 1923.

With the German occupation of France during World War II, and the deportation of Jews and the Holocaust, the Chagalls fled Paris. He hid at Villa Air-Bel in Marseille and American journalist, Varian Fry assisted his escape from France through Spain and Portugal. In 1941, the Chagalls settled in the United States of America.

On September 2, 1944, his beloved Bella, the constant subject of his paintings and companion of his life, died from an illness. Two years later in 1946 he returned to Europe. By 1949 he was working in Provence, France. During these intense years, he rediscovered the vital energy of color, free and vibrant. His works of this period are dedicated to themes inspired by love and the joy of life, with curved, sinuous figures. He also began to work in sculpture, ceramics, and stained glass.

Chagall remarried in 1952 to Valentina Brodsky. He traveled several times to Greece, and in 1957 visited Israel, where in 1960 he created stained glass windows for the synagogue of the Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem and in 1966, wall art for the new parliament being constructed in that city.

He died at the age of 97 in Saint-Paul de Vence, France and was buried at Saint-Paul Town Cemetery. His plot is the most westerly aisle upon entering the cemetery.

Anyone that has visited Lincoln Center in New York City is familiar with the huge mosaic murals in the lobby of the new Metropolitan Opera House which opened in 1966.

In 1973, the Musée National Message Biblique Marc Chagall (Chagall Museum) opened in Nice, France.

The museum in Vitebsk, which bears his name, was founded in 1997 in the building where his family lived on 29 Pokrovskaia street — though until his death, years before the fall of the Soviet Bloc, he was persona non grata in his homeland. The museum only has copies of his work.

In 2005, musician Tori Amos recorded and released the composition "Garlands," with lyrics inspired by a series of Chagall lithographs.

Art of Chagall
Chagall took inspiration from Belarusian folk-life, and portrayed many Biblical themes reflecting his Jewish heritage. In the 1960s and 1970s, Chagall involved himself in large-scale projects involving public spaces and important civic and religious buildings.

Chagall's works fit into several modern art categories. He took part in the movements of the Paris art world which preceded World War I and was thus involved with avant-garde currents. However, his work always found itself on the margins of these movements and emerging trends, including Cubism and Fauvism. He was closely associated with the Paris School and its expoenents, including Amedeo Modigliani.

His works abound with references to his childhood, yet often neglect some of the turmoil which he experienced. He communicates to those who view his works happiness and optimism by means of highly vivid colors. Chagall often posed himself, sometimes together with his wife, as an observer of the world — a colored world like that seen through a stained-glass window. Some see The White Crucifixion, which abounds in rich, intriguing detail, as a denunciation of the Stalin regime, the Nazi Holocaust, and all oppression of the Jews.

Wikipedia

]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-chagall.htm Sat, 11 Mar 2006 08:37:09 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Georges Braque (May 13, 1882 - August 31, 1963) was a French painter and sculptor, and with Pablo Picasso one of the inventors of Cubism.

Georges Braque was born in Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France. He grew up in Le Havre and studied in the evenings at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts from about 1897 to 1899.

He studied in Paris under a master decorator and was awarded his certificate of craftmanship in 1901. The following year he attended the Academie Humbert and painted there until 1904. It was here that he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia.

His early work was impressionistic, but he soon changed to a Fauvist style. In 1907, he exhibited works in this style in the Salon des Indépendants. From 1909 to 1911, he worked with Picasso to develop Cubism. In 1912, they began to experiment with collage and papier collé. Their collaboration continued until 1914.

Braque was injured in the First World War, after which he moved away from the harsher abstraction of cubism, towards the hermetic and synthetic forms - the most abstract forms of cubism.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-braque.htm Sat, 11 Mar 2006 07:52:19 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Johannes Vermeer (October 31, 1632 - buried on December 15, 1675) was a Dutch painter, who lived and worked in Delft. He is also sometimes referred to as Vermeer of Delft or Johannes van der Meer. Alongside Rembrandt, Vermeer is the best known painter of the Dutch Golden Age, and his paintings are admired for their transparent colours, careful composition, and brilliant use of light.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-vermeer.htm Fri, 10 Mar 2006 20:54:17 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Roy Lichtenstein (October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was a prominent American pop artist, whose work borrowed heavily from popular advertising and comic book styles, which he himself described as being "as artificial as possible."

Born into a middle class family in 1923 in New York City, he attended public school until the age of 12, before being enrolled into a private academy for his secondary education. The academy did not have an art department, and he became interested in art and design as hobby outside of his schooling. He was an avid fan of Jazz and often attended concerts at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. He would often draw portraits of the musicians at their instruments. During 1939, in his final year at the academy, he enrolled in summer art classes at the Arts Students League in New York under the tutelage of Reginald Marsh.

On graduating in 1940, Lichtenstein left New York to study at the Ohio State University which offered studio courses and a degree in fine arts. His studies were interrupted by a three year stint in the army during World War II. He returned to his studies in Ohio after the war and one of his teachers at the time, Hoyt L. Sherman, is widely regarded to have had a significant impact on his future work (Lichtenstein would later name a new studio he funded at OSU as the Hoyt L. Sherman Studio Art Center). Lichtenstein entered the graduate program at Ohio State and was hired as an art instructor, a post he held on and off for the next ten years. In 1951 he had his first one-man exhibition at a gallery in New York, the exhibition was a minor success. He moved to Cleveland in 1951, where he remained for six years, doing jobs as various as draftsmen to window decorator in between periods of painting. His work at this time was based on cubist interpretations of other artist’s paintings such as Frederic Remington. In 1957 he moved back to upstate New York and began teaching again. It is at this time that he adopted the Abstract Expressionism style, a late convert to this style of painting; he showed his work in 1959 to an unenthusiastic audience.

He began teaching at Rutgers University in 1960 where he was heavily influenced by Allan Kaprow, also a tutor at the University. His first work to feature the large scale use of hard edged figures and Benday Dots was Look Mickey (1961, National Gallery, Washington DC). In the same year he produced six other works with recognizable characters from gum wrappers or cartoons. In 1961 Leo Castelli started displaying Lichtenstein's work at his gallery in New York, and he had his first one man show at the gallery in 1962; the entire collection was bought by influential collectors of the time before the show even opened. Finally making enough money to live from his painting, he stopped teaching in the same year.

Using oil and Magna paint his best known works, such as Drowning Girl (1963, Museum of Modern Art, New York), feature thick outlines, bold colors and Benday Dots to represent certain colors, as if created by photographic reproduction. Rather than attempt to reproduce his subjects, his work tackles the way mass media portrays them.

His most famous image is arguably Whaam! (1963, Tate Gallery, London), one of the earliest known examples of pop art, featuring a fighter aircraft firing a rocket into an enemy plane with a dazzling red and yellow explosion. The cartoon style is heightened by the use of the onomatopoetic lettering WHAAM! and the boxed caption "I pressed the fire control... and ahead of me rockets blazed through the sky..." This diptych is large in scale, measuring 1.7 x 4.0 m (5'7" x 13'4").

Most of his best-known artworks are relatively close, but not exact, copies of comic book panels, a subject he largely abandoned in 1965. (He would occasionally incorporate comics into his work in different ways in later decades.) These panels were originally drawn by lesser known comic book artists such as Russ Heath, Tony Abruzzo, Irv Novick, and Jerry Grandinetti, who rarely received any credit. Artist Dave Gibbons, said of Lichtenstein's works: "Roy Lichtenstein's copies of the work of Irv Novick and Russ Heath are flat, uncomprehending tracings of quite sophisticated images." In response to complaints like that of Gibbons, Lichtenstein's obituary in The Economist noted these artists "did not think much of his paintings. In enlarging them, some claimed, they became static. Some threatened to sue him...But this is to miss the point of Roy Lichtenstein's achievement. His was the idea. The art of today, he told an interviewer, is all around us."

During the seventies and eighties, his work began to loosen and expand on what he had done before. He produced a series of “Artists Studios” which incorporated elements of his previous work. A notable example being Artist's Studio, Look Mickey (1973, Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis) which incorporates five other previous works, fitted into the scene.

In the late seventies this style was replaced with more surreal works such as Pow Wow (1979, Ludwig Forum für Internationale Kunst,Aachen).

In addition to paintings, he also made sculptures in metal and plastic including some notable public sculptures such as Lamp in St. Mary’s, Georgia in 1978.

His painting Torpedo...Los! sold at Christie's for $5.5 million in 1989, a record sum at the time, one of only three artists to have attracted such huge sums for art produced within the artists lifetime.

In 1995 Lichtenstein was awarded the Kyoto Prize from the Inamori Foundation in Kyoto, Japan.

In 1996 The National Gallery in Washington DC became the largest single repository of the Artists work when he donated 154 prints and 2 books. In total there are some 4,500 works thought to be in circulation. He died of pneumonia in 1997 at New York University Medical Center. Twice married, he was survived by his wife, Dorothy, who he wed in 1968 and by his sons, David and Mitchell, from his first marriage.

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Wassily Kandinsky (Russian: ??????? ??????????, first name pronounced as [vassi:li]) (December 4, 1866 (O.S., December 16, 1866 N.S.) – December 13, 1944) was a Russian-French painter and art theorist. One of the most important 20th-century artists, he is credited with painting the first modern abstract works.

Kandinsky was born in Moscow but spent his childhood in Odessa. He enrolled at the University of Moscow and chose law and economics. Although quite successful in his profession, he started painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.

In 1896 he settled in Munich and studied at the Academy of Fine Arts, Munich. He went back to Moscow in 1918 after the Russian Revolution. Being in conflict with official theories on art, he returned to Germany in 1921. There he was a teacher at the Bauhaus from 1922 until it was closed by the Nazis in 1933. At that time he moved to France. He lived the rest of his life there, becoming a French citizen in 1939. He died at Neuilly-sur-Seine in 1944.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-kandinsky.htm Fri, 10 Mar 2006 12:44:51 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Edgar Degas (July 19, 1834 – September 27, 1917) was a French painter and sculptor.

Born Hilaire Germain Edgar Degas (IPA /il?? ???m?~ ?dg?? d?g?/) in Paris, he was the oldest of five children. Madame de Gas belonged to a French family that settled in America. Fond of his mother, her death in 1847 was a deep personal tragedy for Degas. His father, a banker, encouraged his son's artistic inclination. Degas received a classical education at Lycee Louis-le-Grand from 1845 to 1852, then studied law.

Degas' innovative composition, influenced by photography and Japanese woodblock prints called Ukiyo-e (Japonism), his skillful drawing, and perceptive analysis of movement made him one of the masters of progressive art in the late 19th century. He is especially known for his paintings of ballet dancers and other women, as well as of race horses. Often considered an impressionist, some of his work shows classical and realist styles, and other times romanticism.

In 1852 he transformed a room of the family home into a studio and worked under the tutelage of Felix Joseph Barrias. In 1855 Degas began study at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris under Louis Lamothe, a disciple of Ingres for whom Degas would retain great respect. However, he found the course unprofitable and too restricting, and preferred independent study in the classical tradition. So, he drew and painted copies of the old masters in the Louvre, a practice he continued for many years. He travelled throughout Europe to study the prints of Dürer, Mantegna, Rembrandt and Goya.

For three years he lived in Rome, Italy, where his sister also lived. While there he admired the Italian Early Christian and medieval masterpieces, as well as the frescoes, panels, and drawings of the Renaissance masters.

In 1859 Degas opened a studio in Paris, and painted portraits and historical subjects which were popular with art buyers at the time. He quickly established clients in French art circles and did not experience the financial difficulties of many of his contemporaries.

Degas abandoned the historical genre in 1866 for several reasons. In 1862 Degas met Édouard Manet who preferred themes of modern life to traditional subject matter of history and religion. Degas also met novelist Edmond Duranty who passionately believed in realism and wanted to remove the barrier between art and life. Degas frequented Café Guerbois where many artists associated with impressionism regularly met.

His art of the late 1860s reflects his changing views. He turned to theatre and the racecourse for inspiration. The influence of Japanese art and its depiction of figures began to show in his paintings.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870 – 1871) Degas served in the artillery. He contracted a severe chill during his service, and for the first time had trouble with his eyes.

Degas lived with his mother's relatives in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1872 and 1873, living at 2306 Esplanade. The house now operates as a bed and breakfast and guided tours are available. One of the paintings he did while there was The Cotton Exchange at New Orleans which garnered favourable attention back in France, and was his only work purchased by a museum (that of Pau) during his lifetime.

Upon his return to Paris he opened another studio and concentrated on themes from modern life such as dancers, acrobats, singers and washerwomen. He also rendered female nudes, which, along with dancers, became his favourite subject matter.

In 1874 Degas' father died, and to pay off the vast inherited debt, he sold some of his art collection.

From 1874 Degas sent works to the impressionist shows (he helped organise the first impressionist exhibition). In 1881 he showed The Little Dancer of Fourteen Years, his only sculpture exhibited during his life. After the last impressionist exhibition in 1886, Degas stopped sending works to exhibitions.

In the 1880s, with his eyesight failing, Degas shifted his talent to sculpture and pastel, which did not require such acute vision. By the 1890s worked only on large compositions and in 1908 he gave up art completely. Ever more reclusive and eccentric, Degas was evicted from his home and a new studio was found for him, but he never settled there. He wandered the streets like a blind Homer.

Famous and revered, Degas died in Paris on 27 September 1917 and left behind a whole studio of art and sculptures that soon were to be cast in bronze, and is buried in the Cimetière de Montmartre, Paris, France. Degas left more than 2,000 oil paintings and pastels and 150 sculptures.

Before 2005, Degas paintings sold for as much as $16 million.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-degas.htm Thu, 9 Mar 2006 21:35:55 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Édouard Manet (January 23, 1832 – April 30, 1883) was a French painter. One of the first 19th century artists to approach modern-life subjects, his art bridged the gap between Realism and Impressionism.¨

Édouard Manet was born in Paris. His mother, Eugénie-Desirée Fournier, was the goddaughter of the Swedish crown prince, Charles Bernadotte from whom the current Swedish monarchs are descended, and his father, Auguste Manet, was a French judge. His father wanted him to also pursue a career in law, but he wanted a career in the arts. His uncle, Charles Fournier, encouraged him to pursue painting and often took young Manet to the Louvre.

From 1850 to 1856, after failing the examination to join the navy, Manet studied under academic painter Thomas Couture. In his spare time he copied the old masters in the Louvre. He visited Germany, Italy and the Netherlands, during which time he absorbed the influences of the Dutch painter Frans Hals, and the Spanish artists Diego Velázquez and Francisco José de Goya.

Manet, in imitation of the then current style of realism initiated by Gustave Courbet, painted everyday subjects like beggars, cafés, bullfights, and other events and scenery. He produced very few religious, mythological, or historical paintings.

Music in the Tuileries
Manet painted a picture of people he knew enjoying themselves in the Tuileries Gardens. Music in the Tuileries was a painting of the sort of lifestyle which he enjoyed; music, conversation, dancing and fun. While the picture has been regarded as not very well finished by some, the atmosphere created gives the viewer a sense of what it would be like in the Tuileries gardens at the time; the music which would be playing, the conversation and the sounds of glasses clinking. The senses are very much a part of this work. The work includes a self-portrait. The painting shows people he knew personally; artists, authors and musicians. He based the work on a series of sketches which he did when he visited the Tuileries gardens and did sketches of people relaxing and playing.

Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe)
Main article: The Luncheon on the Grass
One of Manet's best known early paintings is The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe). The Paris Salon rejected it for exhibition in 1863 but he exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the rejected) later in the year. (Emperor Napoleon III initiated The Salon des Refusés, after the Paris Salon rejected more than 4,000 paintings in 1863.) The painting's juxtaposition of dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, as was its abbreviated sketch-like style — an innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. However, Manet's composition is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving The Judgment of Paris (c. 1510) after a drawing by Raphael.

Olympia
Manet took respected works by Renaissance artists and updated them, a practice he also adopted in Olympia (1863), a nude portrayed in a style reminiscent of the early studio photographs, but which was based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538). The painting was seen as controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck and mule slippers, she has a look of defiance as well. It also has a fully dressed servant next to her, the same effect of having a nude next to fully dressed people, as in Luncheon on the Grass.

Life and times
The roughly painted style and photographic lighting in these works was seen as specifically modern, and as a challenge to the Renaissance works Manet updated. His work is considered early modern because of its black outlining of figures that draws attention to the surface of the picture plane and the materiality of paint.

He became friends with the impressionists Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Paul Cézanne, and Camille Pissarro in part through his sister-in-law Berthe Morisot, who was a member of the group. Eva Gonzalès was his only student.

Unlike the core impressionist group, Manet consistently believed that modern artists should seek to exhibit at the Paris Salon rather than abandon it. Though his own work influenced and anticipated the impressionist style, he resisted involvement in impressionist exhibitions, partly because he did not wish to be seen as the representative of a group identity, and partly because of his disapproval of their opposition to the salon system. Nevertheless, when Manet was excluded from the International exhibition of 1867, he set up his own exhibition.

He was influenced by the impressionists, especially by Monet, and to an extent Morisot. Their impact is seen in Manet's use of lighter colors, but he retained his distinctive use of blocks of black, uncharacteristic of impressionist painting. He painted many outdoor (plein air) pieces, but always returned to what he considered serious work in the studio.

Throughout his life, though resisted by art critics, Manet had many champions. Émile Zola supported him publicly in the press, and Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as Charles Baudelaire, who had challenged him to depict life as it was. Manet, in turn, made many sketchings of them.

Cafe scenes
The Cafe Concert.Manet's paintings of cafe scenes show the leisurely world of restaurants in Paris. People are depicted doing many activities such as drinking beer, listening to music, flirting, reading or waiting. He often visited the Brasserie Reichshoffen on boulevard de Rochechourt, and based on what he saw there, he painted At the Cafe in 1878. This painting shows several people at a bar, a woman looking towards the viewer while others wait to be served. He also painted typical views of what he would have seen upon going to one of these places, a crowded scene of people drinking, enjoying themselves, talking, having fun. They are painted in a style which is loose, yet captures the mood and feeling of a bar at night; crowded with many things happening.

In Corner of a Cafe Concert, Manet shows a person smoking while behind him a waitress is in the middle of serving drinks. In The Beer Drinkers a woman drinks from a glass at a table with another woman. In The Cafe Concert a more sophisticated looking gentleman sits at a bar while a waitress stands very confidently in the background sipping her drink. Many of these paintings he based on sketches which he did at the cafes. These paintings usually showed a happy party going atmosphere. In The Waitress, a waitress pauses for a moment behind a seated customer smoking a pipe, while a ballet dancer, with arms extended as she is about to turn, is on stage in the background.

Manet often sat at the restaurant on the Avenue de Clichy called Pere Lathuille's, which had a garden as well as the eating area. One of the paintings he produced here was At Pere Lathuille's showing a man looking very interested in a woman sitting at a table at the restaurant who does not seem as interested in him as he is in her. He looks like he is getting too close and possibly annoying her, while she sits rigidly and disinterested.

In Le Bon Bock, a large, cheerful, bearded man sits with a pipe in one hand and a glass of beer in the other, looking straight at the viewer, from where he sits at the corner of a bar.

Paintings of social activities
Racing at Longchamp.Social activities were portrayed in works by Manet. In Masked ball at the Opera, Manet shows a crowd of people enjoying a party. Men stand with top hats and long black suits while talking to women with masks and costumes. It is a crowded atmosphere of an enjoyable activity. He included portraits of his friends in this picture.

Manet depicted other popular activities in his work, such as the races in Racing at Longchamp, which shows popular horse racing, where the excitement of the horses as they rush towards the viewer is shown. In Skating Manet shows a well dressed woman in the foreground, with people simply having fun skating in the background.

In View of the International Exhibition, Manet's painting shows soldiers relaxing seated and standing; several couples of well to do people talking; a gardener; a boy with a dog; a woman on horseback; a sample of all the classes and ages of the people of Paris.

Masked Ball at the Opera shows men with bow ties and black suits stand around chatting with fancifully dressed women with masks.

Paris
Manet depicted many scenes of the streets of Paris in his works. He did several paintings showing the streets when French flags were unfurled along the sides, and the horses and carts, and people walking past could be seen. The Rue Mosnier Decked with Flags, which is quite a blurry work, shows the red, white and blue flags all over the buildings on either side of the street. He did another painting of the same subject with the same title, showing a man with one leg walking by with crutches at the bottom left and flags all over. Again depicting the same street, but this time in a different context, is Rue Monsnier with Pavers, where he shows the men repairing the street while people and horses move past in the background.

He also painted a scene of a woman waiting for a train in Paris in The Railroad, where a woman who is the middle of reading a book looks up at the viewer momentarily, while a young girl stands looking at the nearby train with all its noise and smoke. It is an oil painting on canvas. It is currently displayed in Washington D.C. in the National Gallery of Art.

Outside Paris
On holidays Manet painted his surroundings such as when he went to Bologne during the summer. On these trips he painted Departure of the Folkestone Boat which shows a crowd of well dressed people milling about in front of where they would watch the boat leave, or possibly wave to people they knew on the boat. The lady in the long white dress holding a dainty umbrella to the left of centre sums up this relaxed scene. He also painted Moonlight over Boulogne Harbour which is a darker painting at night time, which nevertheless shows the moonlight glistening off the water; a calm view of the serene harbour at night.

Death
Manet died of untreated syphilis, which caused much pain and partial paralysis from locomotor ataxia in his later years. His left foot was amputated because of gangrene 11 days before he died.

He died in Paris in 1883 and is buried in the city's Cimetière de Passy.

In 2000, one of his paintings sold for over $20 million.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-manet.htm Thu, 9 Mar 2006 21:24:20 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Camille Pissarro (July 10, 1830 – November 13, 1903) was a French impressionist painter.

Camille Jacob Pissarro was born in Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas to Abraham Gabriel Pissarro, a Portuguese Sephardic Jew, and Rachel Manzano-Pomié, from the Dominican Republic. Pissarro lived in St. Thomas until age 12, when he went to a boarding school in Paris. He returned to St. Thomas where he drew in his free time. In 1852, he travelled to Venezuela with the Danish artist Fritz Melbye. In 1855, he moved to Paris, where he studied with the French landscape artist Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot.

Camille Pissarro married Julie Vellay, a maid of his mother's household. Julie was much younger than Pissarro when the two met. They would marry ten years later after their initial meeting. They had many children together.

Known as the Father of Impressionism, he painted rural French life, particularly landscapes and workers in the fields as well as scenes from Montmartre. He then went to Paris to teach, where some of his students were Californian Impressionist Lucy Bacon , Paul Cezanne and Paul Gauguin.

His influence on the Impressionists is probably still underrated; not only were many of the ideas his own, but he also managed to remain on friendly, mutually respectful terms with such difficult personalities as Edgar Degas, Cézanne and Gauguin. Although generally seen as a minor Impressionist, Pissarro exhibited at all eight of the Impressionist exhibitions. Moreover, whereas Monet was the main practitioner of the Impressionist style, Pissarro may have been the main thinker in the development of Impressionist theory.

Probably the strength of Pissarro's mind got rather in the way of his painting as he felt the need to try out all new forms of painting as they came along, thus he painted in the Neo-Impressionist form between 1885 and 1890, before returning to a more pure Impressionism before the end of his life.

In March 1893, Paris Gallery Durand-Ruel organized a major exhibition of 46 of Pissarro's works along with 55 others by Antonio de La Gandara. But while the critics acclaimed Gandara, their appraisal of Pissarro's art was less enthusiastic.

Pissarro died in Éragny-sur-Epte on either November 12 or November 13, 1903 and was buried in Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris.

During his lifetime, Camille Pissarro sold few of his paintings. By 2005, however, some Pissarro paintings sold for around $4 million.

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Alfred Sisley (October 30, 1839 – January 29, 1899) was a French impressionist landscape painter.

Sisley was born in Paris to British parents, William Sisley and Felicia Sell.

In the early 1860s studied in the atelier of Marc-Charles-Gabriel Gleyre, where he became acquainted with Frederic Bazille, Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir. Unlike some of his fellow students who suffered financial hardships, Sisley received an allowance from his father.

Sisley's student works are lost. His earliest known work, Lane near a Small Town is believed to have been painted around 1864.

In the late 1860s, he entered into a relationship with Eugenie Lescouezec, with whom he had two children. This relationship continued for over 30 years, ending with her death a few months before Sisley's death in 1899.

Sisley was in London with Monet in 1871 where they discovered the paintings of J. M. W. Turner and probably John Constable. Although Sisley was no theorist, these discoveries had an influence on his development into an Impressionist painter.

Probably the least rated of the Impressionists, Sisley was a very talented painter of landscape invoking atmosphere, his skies are always very impressive and he tends to use more of the canvas for sky than is usual.

Sisley died in Moret-sur-Loing at the age of 59.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-sisley.htm Thu, 9 Mar 2006 20:44:46 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Adolphe Mouron Cassandre (January 24, 1901 – June 19, 1968) was an influential Ukrainian-French painter, commercial poster artist, and typeface designer.

Born Adolphe Jean-Marie Mouron in Kharkov, Ukraine to French parents, as a young man, Cassandre moved to Paris, France where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and at the Académie Julian. Needing to earn a living, the popularity of posters as advertising afforded him an opportunity to work for a Parisian printing house. Inspired by cubism as well as surrealism, he earned a reputation with works such as Bûcheron (Woodcutter), a poster created for a cabinetmaker that won first prize at the 1925 Exposition Internationale des Arts Décoratifs.

Cassandre became successful enough that with the help of partners he was able to set up his own advertising agency called Alliance Graphique. Serving a wide variety of clientele, during the 1930s, his creations for the Dubonnet wine company were among the first posters designed in a manner that allowed them to be seen by occupants in fast-moving vehicles. His posters are memorable for their innovative graphic solutions and their frequent denotations to such painters as Max Ernst and Pablo Picasso. In addition, he taught graphic design at the Ecole des Arts Décoratifs and then at the Ecole d'Art Graphique.

With typography an important part of poster design, the company created several new typeface styles. Cassandre developed Bifur in 1929, the sans serif Acier Noir in 1935, and in 1937 an all-purpose font called Peignot. In 1936, his works were exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City which led to commissions from Harper's Bazaar to do cover designs.

With the onset of World War II, Cassandre served in the French army until the fall of France. His business long gone, he survived by creating stage sets and costumes for the theatre, something he had dabbled in during the 1930s. After the war, he continued this line of work while also returning to easel painting. In 1963, he designed the well-known Yves Saint-Laurent logo.

In his later years, Adolphe Mouron Cassandre suffered from bouts of depression that led to his suicide in Paris in 1968.

In 1985, Henri Mouron told his father's life story in the a book titled A.M. Cassandre.

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-cassandre.htm Thu, 9 Mar 2006 20:06:32 +0200 Children posters selected by Asbjorn Lonvig http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores.htm Thu, 9 Mar 2006 09:53:46 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Jean Renoir (September 15, 1894 – February 12, 1979), born in the Montmartre district of Paris, France, was a film director, actor and author. As a film director and actor he made over forty films from the silent era to the end of the 1960s. As an author, his biography of his father, Renoir My Father (1962), is the definitive biography of that artist.

Renoir was the second son of Aline Victorine Charigot and the French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir. He was the brother of Pierre Renoir, a noted stage and film actor and director of the Comedie Francaise, the uncle of Claude Renoir, a cinematographer, and the father of Alain Renoir, a professor of comparative literature at the University of California at Berkeley.

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Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (June 8, 1848 – May 9, 1903) was a leading Post-Impressionist painter. His bold experimentation with colouring led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art.

Born in Paris, he was descended from Spanish settlers in South America and the viceroy of Peru, and spent his early childhood in Lima. He was the grandson of Flora Tristan, a founder of modern feminism. After his education in Orléans, France, Gauguin spent six years sailing around the world in the merchant marines and then in the French navy. Upon his return to France in 1870, he took a job as a broker's assistant. His guardian Gustave Arosa, a successful businessman and art collector, introduced Gauguin to Camille Pissarro in 1875.

Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, MA, USAA successful stockbroker during week-days, Gauguin spent holidays painting with Pisarro and Cezanne. Although his first efforts were clumsy, he made visible progress. By 1884 Gauguin had moved with his family to Copenhagen, where he unsuccessfully pursued a business career. Driven to paint full-time, he returned to Paris in 1885, leaving his family in Denmark. Without adequate subsistence, his wife and children returned to her family.

Like his friend Vincent Van Gogh, with whom he spent nine weeks painting in Arles, Paul Gauguin experienced bouts of depression and at one time attempted suicide. Disappointed with Impressionism, he felt that traditional European painting had become too imitative and lacked symbolic depth. By contrast, the art of Africa and Asia seemed to him full of mystic symbolism and vigour.

1889, oil on canvas. Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, NY, USAUnder the influence of folk art and Japanese prints, Gauguin evolved towards the manner he called Cloisonnism. In The Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential Cloisonnist work, image was reduced to areas of pure colour separated by heavy black outlines. In such works Gauguin paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour — he dispensed with the two most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting.

In 1891, Gauguin, frustrated by lack of recognition at home and financially destitute, sailed to the tropics to escape European civilization and "everything that is artificial and conventional." He remained first in Tahiti and later in the Marquesas Islands for most of the rest of his life, returning to France only once. His works of that period are full of quasi-religious symbolism and an exoticized view of the inhabitants of Polynesia.

He is buried in Calvary Cemetery (Cimetière Calvaire), Atuona, Hiva ‘Oa, Marquesas Islands, French

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]]> http://www.lonvig.dk/e-shop-art-com-stores-gauguin.htm Wed, 8 Mar 2006 22:40:36 +0200 Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia:
Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (November 14, 1840 – December 5, 1926) was a French impressionist painter. His painting Impression: Sunrise was the source for the naming of the Impressionism movement.


Monet was born in Paris, but his family moved to Le Havre in Normandy when he was five. His father wanted him to go into the family grocery store business, but Claude Monet wanted to become an artist.

He first became known locally for his charcoal caricatures, which he would sell for ten to twenty francs. On the beaches of Normandy, he met fellow artist Eugène Boudin, who became his mentor and taught him to use oil paints. Boudin taught Monet en plein air (outdoor) techniques for painting.

When Monet travelled to Paris to visit The Louvre, he would see many painters imitating famous artists' work. Monet, having brought his paints and other tools with him, would instead go and sit by a window and paint what he saw.

Monet served in the army in Algeria for two years of a seven-year commitment (1860–1862), but upon his contracting typhoid his aunt Madame Lecadre intervened to get him out of the army if he agreed to complete an art course at a university.

Disillusioned with the traditional art taught at universities, instead in 1862 he joined the studio of Charles Gleyre in Paris, where he met Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Frederic Bazille, and Alfred Sisley. Together they shared new approaches to art, which later came to be known as impressionism, featuring open spaces and light painted with thick brushstrokes.

Monet's 1866 The Woman in the Green Dress (Camille, ou la femme à la robe verte), which brought him recognition, depicted Camille Doncieux. Shortly thereafter Doncieux became pregnant and bore their first child, Jean.

During the Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871), Monet took refuge in England to avoid the conflict. There he studied the works of John Constable and J. M. W. Turner.

From 1871 to 1878 Monet lived at Argenteuil, a village on the Seine near Paris, and here were painted some of his best known works.

Upon returning to France, in 1872 (or 1873) he painted Impression, Sunrise (Impression, soleil levant) depicting a Le Havre landscape. It hung in the first impressionist exhibition in 1874 and is now displayed in the Musée Marmottan-Monet, Paris. From the painting's title, art critic Louis Leroy coined the term "impressionism".

In 1870, Monet and Doncieux married and in 1873 moved into a house in Argenteuil near the Seine River. They had another son, Michel, on March 17, 1878. Madame Monet died of tuberculosis in 1879.

Alice Hoschedé decided to help Monet by bringing up his two children together with her own. They lived in Poissy, which Monet hated. In April 1883 they moved to a house in Giverny, Eure, in Haute-Normandie, where he planted a large garden which he painted for the rest of his life. Monet and Hoschedé married in 1892.

In the 1880s and 1890s, Monet began "series" painting — paintings of one subject in varying light and viewpoints. His first series is of Rouen Cathedral from different points of view and at different times of the day. Twenty views of the cathedral were exhibited at the Durand-Ruel gallery in 1895. He also made a series of paintings of haystacks.

Monet was exceptionally fond of painting controlled nature — his own garden, his water lilies, his pond, and his bridge. He also painted up and down the banks of the Seine.

Between 1883 and 1908, Monet travelled to the Mediterranean and painted many beautiful landscapes and seascapes such as Bordighera. Landmarks were another subject for Monet in the Mediterranean. His wife Alice died in 1911 and his son Jean died in 1914. Cataracts formed on his eyes for which he underwent two surgeries in 1923. He died December 5, 1926 and is buried in the Giverny church cemetery.

In 2004, London, the Parliament, Effects of Sun in the Fog (Le Parlement, Effet de Brouillard) (1904), sold for over U.S. $20 million.

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Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (November 24, 1864 – September 9, 1901) was a French painter.

Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa was born in Albi, Tarn in the Midi-Pyrénées Region of France. From an old aristocratic family which had lost much of its prestige, he was the son of Comte Alphonse and Comtesse Adèle de Toulouse-Lautrec. Henri was their first child. A brother was born on August 28, 1867 but died the next year. His parents were first cousins and much intra-marriage had already taken place within the families. This was done to preserve the family wealth, but led to development of genetic defects as the result of inbreeding.

At age 12 Henri fractured his left thigh bone, and at 14 his right thigh bone, and because of a genetic disorder which prevented his bones from healing properly, his legs ceased to grow. He reached maturity with a body trunk of normal size but with abnormally short legs, described by Jean Bouret as having "developed the torso of a grown man on the legs of a small boy; and his handsome face changed gradually into a thick-lipped, monstrously masculine and sensual mask covered in black stubble." He was only 1.5 m (4 1/2 ft) tall.

(1892)Unable to participate in the activities a normal body would have permitted, Toulouse-Lautrec lived for his art. He became an important post-impressionist painter, art nouveau illustrator, and lithographer, and recorded the bohemian lifestyle of Paris at the end of the 19th century. In the mid-1890s, Toulouse-Lautrec contributed illustrations to the humourous magazine, Le Rire.

He was deemed "the soul of Montmartre", the Parisian quarter where he made his home. His paintings portray life at the Moulin Rouge and other Montmartre and Parisian cabaret and theatres, and in the brothels that he frequented (and where he perhaps contracted syphilis). Two of the well-known people he portrayed were singer Yvette Guilbert, and Louise Weber, known as the outrageous La Goulue, a dancer who created the "French Can-Can."

Toulouse-Lautrec taught painting to, and encouraged the efforts of, Suzanne Valadon, one of his models and probably his mistress. She is believed the one from whom he contracted syphilis.

An alcoholic for most of his adult life, shortly before his death he entered a sanatorium.

He died due to the complications of alcholism and syphilis at the age of almost 37, at the family estate in Malromé and is buried in Verdelais, Gironde, a few miles from his birthplace.

His last words were "Old fool" in reference to his father who was there when he died.

After his death, his mother, The Comtesse Alphonse de Toulouse-Lautrec, and Maurice Joyant, his art dealer, promoted his art, and his mother contributed funds for a museum to be built in Albi, his birthplace, to house his works.

Toulouse-Lautrec is said to have been a genius of an artist whose remarkable powers of observation were matched by a profound sympathy with humanity. He never exhibited any regret at being born with his deformities. He lived life to the full, made many friends and was always accepted in spite of his short stature.

Before 2005, his paintings sold for as much as $14.5 million.

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Paul Cézanne (January 19, 1839 – October 22, 1906) was a French artist, a painter (Postimpressionist) whose work laid the foundations of the transition from the 19th Century conception of artistic endeavour to a new and radically different world of art in the 20th. Cézanne can be said to form the bridge between late 19th Century Impressionism and the early 20th Century's most startling new line of artistic enquiry, namely Cubism. The line attributed to both Matisse and Picasso that Cézanne "...is the father of us all..." cannot be easily refuted.

Paul Cézanne's work demonstrates a mastery of design, colour, composition and draftsmanship. His often repetitive, sensitive, tentative, delicate and exploratory brushstrokes are highly characteristic and instantly recognisable, almost as clearly recognisable as handwriting. Using planes of colour and small repeated brushstokes that build up to form complex fields at once a direct expression of the sensations of the observing eye, and an abstraction from observed nature, Cézanne's paintings convey intense study of his subjects, a repeated and searching gaze, and a dogged struggle to deal with the complexity of human visual perception.

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Christo (born Hristo Yavashev, Bulgarian: ?????? ??????) and Jeanne-Claude are an artistic couple practicing environmental, installation art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin, and the Pont Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long Running Fence in Marin and Sonoma, counties in California, and The Gates, in New York City's Central Park.


Although their artwork is visually striking and often controversial due to its size and scale, the artists have repeatedly denied that their projects contain any deeper meaning. The purpose of their art, they contend, is to simply make the world a "more beautiful place" or offer a new way of looking at an old landscape. David Bourdon has called Christo's wrappings a "revelation through concealing."

The couple maintain a partnership in all undertakings; however, Jeanne-Claude has been understood to serve as the PR agent, while Christo has appeared to make the creative decisions. She has described their public personae as having a "good cop / bad cop" dynamic.

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Andy Warhol (August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American painter, filmmaker, publisher, actor, and a major figure in the Pop Art movement.

Warhol was born as Andrew Warhola in Forest City, Pennsylvania. His parents, Ondrej (Andrew) Warhola (original surname was Varchola, he changed it after coming to US) and Júlia Zavacká, were working class immigrants of Ruthenian ethnicity from Miková, in northeast Slovakia; his father worked in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. The family was Catholic. In the third grade, he came down with a strange disease called St. Vitus' dance, which is a virus of the nerves and thought to be a complication of scarlet fever. This disease changed his looks, and his life, forever.

Warhol showed early artistic talent and studied commercial art at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. In 1949, he moved to New York City and began a successful career in magazine illustration and advertising. He became well-known mainly for his whimsical ink drawings of shoes done in a loose, blotted style.

In the 1960s, Warhol began to make paintings of famous American products such as Campbell's soup cans and Coca-Cola. He switched to silkscreen prints, seeking not only to make art of mass produced items, but to mass produce the art itself. He said that he wanted to be like a robot. He hired and supervised "art workers" engaged in making prints, shoes, films, books and other items at his studio, The Factory, located on Union Square in New York City. Warhol's body of work furthermore includes commissioned portraits and commercials.

A lot of Warhol's works revolve around the concept of Americana and American culture. He painted money, dollar signs, food, groceries, women's shoes, celebrities, and newspaper clippings. To him, these subjects represented American cultural values. For instance, Coca-Cola represented democratic equality because, quote:

"What’s great about this country is that America started the tradition where the richest consumers buy essentially the same things as the poorest. You can be watching TV and see Coca-Cola, and you know that the President drinks Coke, Liz Taylor drinks Coke, and just think, you can drink Coke, too. A Coke is a Coke and no amount of money can get you a better Coke than the one the bum on the corner is drinking. All the Cokes are the same and all the Cokes are good. Liz Taylor knows it, the President knows it, the bum knows it, and you know it."
He used popular imagery and methods to visualize the American cultural identity of the 20th century. This popular redefinition of American culture is a theme and result of Warhol's art. Because American culture has had great international influence, Warhol did, as well.

Outside of the art world, Andy Warhol is best known for the quote, "In the future everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." He later told reporters, humorously, "My new line is, 'In fifteen minutes, everybody will be famous.'"

Socialite and Recluse
Warhol used to socialize at Serendipity and Studio 54, nightclubs in New York City. He was generally regarded as quiet, shy, and as a meticulous observer. More than one person jokingly referred to him as "death warmed over."

Warhol was openly gay, rare for celebrities of his stature at the time. Many people think of Warhol as asexual and as merely a voyeur, but these notions have been debunked by biographers like Fred Guiles, scholars like Richard Meyer, personal accounts of relationships by ex-lovers such as Jed Johnson and Billy Name, and by the overtly campy and homoerotic nature of his work itself. Throughout his career, Warhol produced erotic photography and drawings of male nudes. Many of his most famous works (portraits of Liza Minelli, Judy Garland, Elizabeth Taylor, and films like "My Hustler", "Blow Job", and "Lonesome Cowboys") draw from gay underground culture and/or openly explore the complexity of sexuality and desire. In fact, many of his films premiered in gay porn theaters. The first works that he submitted to a gallery in the pursuit of a career as an artist were, in fact, homoerotic drawings of male nudes. They were rejected for being too openly gay.

A meticulous collector, he organized almost every piece of paper, fan mail—after taking off the stamps—and magazine related to his fame along with personal notes, gay pornography and found artifacts into hundreds of numbered boxes and set them aside, never to open them again. Warhol referred to these boxes as his "time capsule". Many exist today and are available for research at his Pittsburgh museum. Warhol's house was filled to the brim with his collected art, artifacts, and Americana.

Many of his later commissioned portraits were a direct or indirect result of this networking. As a famous artist, Warhol and his Factory attracted and facilitated many "groupies" and friends that Warhol would include in films and happenings. Warhol promoted these factory regulars to fame, creating the Warhol superstars. They would appear in and help him make his work, play in his movies, write his books, hang out and generally become his following.

When Warhol was asked to give a series of university lectures that he didn't feel like doing, one of his friends put on a wig and white make-up, and pretended to be him by sitting quietly on the stage. Other Superstars explained Warhol's work to the audience, and urged them to drop out of college. The University eventually found out Warhol's "fraud" and the following dispute had to be settled with a refund.

Warhol would regularly volunteer at the homeless shelters in New York, particularly during the busier times of the year. He described himself as a religious person, although not fully accepted by religion because of his homosexuality. Many of his later works contain almost hidden religious themes or subjects, and a body of religious-themed works was found posthumously in his estate.

Shooting
On June 3, 1968, Valerie Solanas, a Factory regular, entered Warhol's studio and fired three shots at Warhol, nearly killing him. Although the first two rounds missed, the third passed through Warhol's left lung, spleen, stomach, liver, esophagus, and right lung. Solanas then turned the gun on a companion of Warhol, Mario Amaya, injuring his thigh. Warhol survived his injuries, but he never fully recovered. Earlier, Solanas had given a script to Warhol, in hopes that he would make a film out of it. Warhol never did. Apparently, she had visited the Factory earlier in the day to ask that they give the script back to her. It had, however, been lost. She later explained that she had attacked Warhol because, "he had too much control over [her] life." The story of Valerie Solanas was made into the 1996 film I Shot Andy Warhol, starring Lili Taylor and directed by Mary Harron.

In the hospital, his doctors had already declared him deceased, after which he was resuscitated. Warhol later joked that he was now invulnerable, since he had gone through death and came out alive. The shooting and Warhol's "death" received wide media coverage.

One of Warhol's associates, Paul Morrissey, later satirized the event in his movie "Women In Revolt", calling a group similar to Solanas' S.C.U.M. (Society for Cutting Up Men), P.I.G. (Politically Involved Girls).

In 1990 Lou Reed recorded the album Songs for Drella (one of Warhol's nicknames was Drella, a combination of Dracula and Cinderella) with fellow Velvet Underground alumnus John Cale.

Warhol had adopted Reed's band the Velvet Underground as one of his projects in the 1960s, "producing" their first album The Velvet Underground and Nico as well as providing the album art, widely regarded as some of the greatest album art of all time. The album itself is also regarded as one of the greatest (and most influential) albums in rock history. After the band became successful Warhol and band leader Reed started to disagree more and more about the direction the band should take, and the contact between them faded. On Drella, Reed apologizes and comes to terms with his part in their conflict.

Death
Warhol died in New York City following routine gallbladder surgery at the age of 58. Warhol was afraid of hospitals and doctors, so he had delayed having his recurring gall bladder problems checked.

He is interred at St. John the Baptist Catholic Cemetery in Bethel Park, south of Pittsburgh. Fellow artist Yoko Ono was among the speakers at his funeral.

Andy Warhol had so many posessions it took Sotheby's 9 days to auction his estate after his death for a total gross amount of over 20,000,000 (USD).

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Vincent Willem van Gogh (March 30, 1853 – July 29, 1890) was a Dutch painter, classified as a Post-impressionist, and is generally considered one of the greatest painters in the history of European art. His work shows the objects, people and places in his life with bold, usually distorted, draughtsmanship and visible dotted or dashed brushmarks, which are intensely yet subtly coloured.

He is popularly known as much for his embodiment of the myth of the tortured romantic artist as for his work, which is seen as the visual expression of his life. Three of the most widespread myths about him are that he cut off his ear (it was only the lobe), that he killed himself because no one recognised his talent (in the last six months of his life he received generous accolades which he found very disturbing), and that he painted as he did because he was mad (he painted during his lucid periods).

He produced all of his work (some 900 paintings and 1100 drawings) during the ten year period before he committed suicide. Most of his best known work was produced in the final two years of his life. In the two months before his death he painted 90 pictures.

He was afflicted with increasingly recurrent periods of mental ill health, spending time in a sanatorium. His state of mind was not helped by overwork (especially in the hot sun), bad dietary habits and reliance on tobacco, coffee and alcohol. His career was cut short too early for him to reap success during his lifetime; his fame then grew slowly, helped by the devoted promotion of it by his widowed sister-in-law. A major show of 71 paintings was held in Paris eleven years after his death.

As the pioneer of what came to be known as Expressionism, Van Gogh has had an enormous influence on 20th-century art, especially in the early part of the century, when many paintings of the Fauves and German Expressionists, particularly Die Brücke are highly derivative. His energetic approach to the painted surface follows a lineage to the Abstract Expressionism of Willem de Kooning and beyond.

His brother Theo, who worked at the art dealers Goupil & Cie, was a central part of Vincent's life, continually providing financial support. Their lifelong friendship is documented in the large collection of letters they exchanged from August 1872 onwards. These letters provide much insight into the life of the painter, and show him to be a talented writer with a keen mind.

In Dutch, the name Gogh is pronounced [x?x]; however common pronunciations used in English include [g?f], [g?x], and [go?].

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Esteban Rodriguez Miro (1744 - June 4, 1795), also known as Esteban Miro and Estevan Miro, was a Spanish army officer and governor of the American provinces of the Louisiana Territory and West Florida.

He was born in Reus, (currently in the province of Tarragona, Catalonia), Spain. He joined the military in 1760 during the Seven Years War. In about 1765 he was transferred to Mexico and rose to the rank of lieutenant. He returned to Spain in the 1770s and received military training before being sent to Louisiana in 1778.

In 1779 during the American Revolutionary War, he was a part of the forces commanded by Bernardo de Galvez in campaigns against the British in West Florida (which was at the time a British possession).

Galvez appointed Miro acting Governor of Louisiana on January 20, 1782. He became proprietary governor in August 1785.

After the war, Miro was a key figure in the boundary dispute with the U.S. over the northern boundary of West Florida. Under Spanish rule the boundary had been 31 degrees north latitude. In 1763, it came under British control at the end of the Seven Years War and in 1767 the northern boundary was moved to 32 degrees, 28' north latitude (from the current location of Vicksburg, Mississippi east to the Chattahoochee River).

In 1783, Britain recognized the Spanish conquest of West Florida in the war, but did not specify the norther border. In the separate treaty with the U.S., Britain specified the southern boundary as 31 degrees north latitude. Spain claimed the British expansion of West Florida, while the U.S. held to the old boundary. Britain had also granted free navigation on the Mississippi River, even where Spain owned both sides of the river.

In 1784, the Spanish government closed the lower Mississippi River to the Americans, causing significant fears of resentment among settlers in the western frontiers of Kentucky that depended on river trade. The settlers anger was directed as much toward the U.S. government for not acting aggressively enough to protect their interests as it was against Spain. A significant faction within Kentucky considered becoming an independent republic rather than joining the U.S. One of the leaders of this faction was James Wilkinson, who met with Miro in 1787 and secretly acted as an agent for Spain.

Wilkinson's schemes to set up an independent nation in the west that was friendly to Spain did little except cause controversy, resurfacing later in another form in Wilkinson's dealings with Aaron Burr.

Miro fortified Nogales (present day Vicksburg) and the mouth of the Mississippi against the possibility of war with the U.S. He also helped to rebuild New Orleans after fire destroyed much of it in 1788.

He surrendered governorship at the end of 1791 to return to Spain and serve in the Ministry of War. He served as Field Marshal from 1793-1795 in the war with the French Republic. He died on the battle front from natural causes.

In 1788, North Carolina formed a judicial district called the Mero District in its western territory (the area presently around Nashville, Tennessee) named after Miro. Among Louisianians, Miro is chiefly remembered for having prevented the establishment of the Inquisition in the territory.

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Salvador Felip Jacint Dalí Domènech (Catalan) Salvador Felipe Jacinto Dalí Domènech (Spanish), (May 11, 1904 – January 23, 1989) was one of the most important painters of the 20th century, best known for his surrealist work identified by its striking, bizarre, dreamlike images, combined with his excellent draftsmanship and painterly skills influenced by the Renaissance masters. An artist of great talent and imagination, he had a love of doing unusual things to draw attention to himself which sometimes irked those who loved his art as much as it annoyed his critics, since his eccentric theatrical manner sometimes overshadowed his artwork in public attention.

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Henri Matisse (December 31, 1869 – November 3, 1954) was a French Artist, noted for his use of color and his fluid, brilliant and original draftsmanship.

Born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, he grew up in Bohain-en-Vermandois. In 1887 he went to Paris to study law. After gaining his qualification he worked as a court administrator in Le Cateau-Cambrésis. Following an attack of appendicitis he took up painting during his convalescence. After his recovery, he returned to Paris in 1891 to study art at the Académie Julian and became a student of William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Gustave Moreau.

Influenced by the works of Paul Cézanne, Gauguin, Van Gogh and Paul Signac, and also by traditional Japanese art, he started to see color as a crucial element of composition.

His art was based on a method that consists in separating elements of the work into drawing, colour, composition – and then joining the elements in a synthesis. He was the only Fauvist to develop his work as a balance between colour and line, in flat compositions, without traditional means of giving the illusion of depth (shading and modelling for example). He was one of the first painters of the Fauvist ("Wild Beast") movement to be interested in “primitive” art. His contemporary Derain's work should be compared and contrasted. Matisse abandoned the palette of the Impressionists and established his characteristic style, with its flat, brilliant color and fluid line. His subjects were primarily women, interiors, and still life.

He painted in the Fauvist manner, becoming known as a leader of that movement. His first exhibition was in 1901 and his first solo exhibition in 1904. His fondess for bright and expressive colour became more pronounced after he moved southwards in 1905 to work with André Derain and spent time on the French Riviera, his paintings marked by having the colours keyed up into a blaze of intense shades and characterized by flat shapes and controlled lines, with expression dominant over detail. The decline of the Fauvist movement after 1906 did nothing to affect the rise of Matisse; he had moved beyond them and many of his finest works were created between 1906 and 1917 when he was an active part of the great gathering of artistic talent in Montparnasse.

He was a friend as well as rival of the younger Picasso, with whom he is often compared.

Matisse lived in Cimiez on the French Riviera, now a suburb of the city of Nice, from 1917 until his death in 1954. In 1941 he was diagnosed with cancer and, following surgery, he used a wheelchair. Matisse did not allow this setback to stop him working however, and with the aid of assistants he started creating cut paper collages called gouaches découpés, often large. These demonstrate his ability to bring his eye for colour and geometry to a new medium of utter simplicity, but with playful and delightful power.

Draughtsman, Printmaker, Sculptor, but principally a Painter, Henri Matisse achieved widespread fame during his lifetime. Today, a Matisse painting can fetch as much as US$ 17 million. In 2002, a Matisse sculpture, "Reclining Nude I (Dawn)," sold for US$ 9.2 million, a record for a sculpture

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Pablo Ruiz Picasso (October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain – April 8, 1973) was a Spanish painter and sculptor. One of the most recognized figures in 20th century art, he is best known as the co-founder, along with Georges Braque, of cubism.

Picasso's work is often categorized into "periods". While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are:

Blue Period (1901–1904), consisting of somber, blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the recent death of a friend, often featuring depictions of acrobats, harlequins, prostitutes, beggars and artists.
Rose Period (1905–1907), characterized by a more cheery style with orange and pink colors, and again featuring many harlequins. He met Fernande Olivier, a model for sculptors and artists, in Paris at this time, and many of these paintings are influenced by his warm relationship with her, in addition to his exposure to French painting.
African-influenced Period (1908–1909), influenced by the two figures on the right in his painting of Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, he used African artifacts as the inspiration for his work.
Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), a style of painting he developed along with Braque using monochrome brownish colours, where they took apart objects and "analyzed" them in terms of their shapes. Picasso and Braque's paintings at this time are very similar to each other.
Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), involving the use of collage and cut paper, the first time collage had been used in fine art.

Early life
Pablo Diego José Santiago Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso was born on October 25, 1881 in Málaga, Spain, the first child of José Ruiz y Blasco and María Picasso y López.

Picasso's father, José Ruiz y Blasco (who also recognized the potential of Picasso's art talent and taught his son everything he knew about painting), was himself a painter, and for most of his life a professor of art at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts and a curator of a local museum. It was from his father that Picasso learned the basics of formal academic art training, such as figure drawing and painting in oil. Although Picasso attended art schools throughout his childhood, often those where his father taught, he never finished his college-level course of study at the Academy of Arts (Academia de San Fernando) in Madrid, leaving after less than a year.

The Museu Picasso in Barcelona features many of Picasso's early works, created while he was living in Spain, as well as the extensive collection of Jaime Sabartés, Picasso's close friend from his Barcelona days who, for many years, was Picasso's personal secretary. There are many precise and detailed figure studies done in his youth under his father's tutelage, as well as rarely seen works from his old age that clearly demonstrate Picasso's firm grounding in classical techniques.

Picasso used harlequins in many of his early works, especially in his Blue and Rose Periods. A comedic character usually depicted in checkered patterned clothing, the harlequin became a personal symbol for Picasso. During the 1930s, the minotaur replaced the harlequin as a motif which he used often in his work. His use of the minotaur came partly from his contact with the surrealists, who often used it as their symbol, and appears in Picasso's Guernica.

The Guinness Book of Records names Picasso as the most prolific painter ever – In his lifetime, he produced around 13,500 paintings, 100,000 prints and engravings, 34,000 book illustrations and 300 sculptures.

Picasso remained neutral during the Spanish Civil War, World War I and World War II, refusing to fight for any side or country. Picasso never commented on this but encouraged the idea that it was because he was a pacifist. Some of his contemporaries though (including Braque) felt that this neutrality had more to do with cowardice than principle.

As a Spanish citizen living in France, Picasso was under no compulsion to fight against the invading Germans in either world war. In the Spanish Civil War, service for Spaniards living abroad was optional and would have involved a voluntary return to the country to join either side. While Picasso expressed anger and condemnation of Franco and the Fascists through his art he did not take up arms against them.

He also remained aloof from the Catalan independence movement during his youth despite expressing general support and being friendly with activists within it. No political movement seemed to compel his support to any great degree, though he did become a member of the Communist Party.

During the Second World War, Picasso resided in Paris when the Germans occupied the city. The Nazis hated his style of painting, so he was not able to show his works during this time. He retreated into his studio, continuing to paint all the while. While the Germans outlawed bronze casting in Paris, Picasso was still able to continue because of the French resistance who would smuggle bronze to him.

Arguably Picasso's most famous work is his depiction of the German bombing of Guernica, Spain — Guernica. This large canvas embodies for many the inhumanity, brutality and hopelessness of war. The act of painting was captured in a series of photographs by Picasso's most famous lover, Dora Maar, a distinguished artist in her own right. Guernica hung in New York's Museum of Modern Art for many years. In 1981 Guernica was returned to Spain and exhibited at the Casón del Buen Retiro. In 1992 the painting hung in the Madrid's Reina Sofía Museum when it opened.

After the Second World War, Picasso rejoined the French Communist Party, and even attended an international peace conference in Poland. But party criticism of a portrait of Stalin as insufficiently realistic cooled Picasso's interest in Communist politics, though he remained a loyal member of the Communist Party until his death. His beliefs tended towards anarcho-communism.

Personal life
Picasso hated to be alone when he wasn't working. In Paris, in addition to having a distinguished coterie of friends in the Montmartre and Montparnasse quarters, including André Breton, Guillaume Apollinaire, writer Gertrude Stein and others, he usually maintained a number of mistresses in addition to his wife or primary partner. Picasso married twice and had four children by three women.

In the early years of the twentieth century, Picasso, still a struggling youth, began a long term relationship with Fernande Olivier. It is she who appears in many of the Rose period paintings. After garnering fame and some fortune, Picasso left Olivier for Marcelle Humbert, whom Picasso called Eva. Picasso included declarations of his love for Eva in many Cubist works. Humbert was diagnosed with cancer and during her rapid deterioration, Picasso administered to her every need, making daily trips across Paris to visit her in the hospital.

In 1918, Picasso married Olga Khoklova, a ballerina with Sergei Diaghilev's troupe, for whom Picasso was designing a ballet, Parade, in Rome. Khoklova introduced Picasso to high society, formal dinner parties, and all the social niceties attendant on the life of the rich in 1920s Paris. The two had a son, Paulo, who would grow up to be a dissolute motorcycle racer and chauffeur to his father.

Khoklova's insistence on social propriety clashed with Picasso's bohemian tendencies and the two lived in a state of constant conflict. In 1927 Picasso met 17 year old Marie-Thérèse Walter and began a secret affair with her. Picasso's marriage to Khoklova soon ended in separation rather than divorce, as French law required an even division of property in the case of divorce and Picasso did not want Khoklova to have half his wealth. The two remained legally married until Khoklova's death in 1955.

Picasso carried on a long-standing affair with Walter and fathered a daughter, Maia, with her. Marie-Thérèse lived in the vain hope that Picasso would one day marry her and hanged herself four years after Picasso's death.

The photographer and painter Dora Maar was also a constant companion and lover of Picasso. The two were closest in the late 1930s and early 1940s and it was Maar who documented the painting of Guernica.

After the liberation of Paris in 1944, Picasso began to keep company with a young art student, Françoise Gilot. The two eventually became lovers, and had two children together, Claude, and Paloma. Uniquely among Picasso's women, Gilot left Picasso in 1953, allegedly because of abusive treatment and infidelities. This came as a severe blow to Picasso.

He went through a difficult period after Gilot's departure, coming to terms with his advancing age and his perception that he was an old man, now in his 70s, who was no longer attractive, but rather grotesque to young women. A number of ink drawings from this period explore this theme of the hideous old dwarf as buffoonish counterpoint to the beautiful young girl, including several from a six-week affair with Geneviève Laporte, who in June 2005 auctioned off the drawings Picasso made of her.

Picasso was not long in finding another lover, Jacqueline Roque. Roque worked at the Madoura Pottery, where Picasso made and painted ceramics. The two remained together for the rest of Picasso's life, marrying in 1961. Their marriage was also the means of one last act of revenge against Gilot. Gilot had been seeking a legal means to legitimize her children with Picasso, Claude and Paloma. With Picasso's encouragement, she had arranged to divorce her then husband, Luc Simon, and marry Picasso to secure her children's rights. Picasso then secretly married Roque after Gilot had filed for divorce in order to exact his revenge for her leaving him.

In addition to his manifold artistic accomplishments, Picasso had a film career, including a cameo appearance in Jean Cocteau's Testament of Orpheus. Picasso always played himself in his film appearances.

Later works
In the 1950s his style changed once again as he began looking at the art of the great masters, and making new art about it. He made a series of works based on Velazquez's painting of Las Meninas. He also based paintings on works on art by Goya, Poussin, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix. During this time he lived at Cannes and in 1955 helped make the film Le Mystère Picasso (The Mystery of Picasso) directed by Henri-Georges Clouzot.

Picasso had constructed a huge gothic structure and could afford large villas in the south of France, at Notre-dame-de-vie on the outskirts of Mougins, in the Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur. The media would give him much attention, though they were often more interested in his personal life than his art.

He was commissioned to make a maquette for a huge 50 foot high sculpture to be built in Chicago, Illinois, known usually as the Chicago Picasso. He approached the project with a great deal of enthusiasm, designing a sculpture which was ambiguous and became somewhat controversial. What the figure is exactly is not known; it could be a bird, a horse, a woman or a totally abstract shape. The sculpture, one of the most recognizable landmarks of downtown Chicago was unveiled in 1967. Picasso refused to be paid $100,000 for it, donating it to the people of Chicago.

In his 80s and 90s, Picasso, no longer quite the energetic dynamo he had been in his youth, struggled with impotency. To a man for whom sex was such an important part of life (and of his public persona), this was a serious life change and Picasso seems to have dealt with it by redoubling his already prolific artistic output.

Picasso's final works were a mixture of styles, his styles and periods changing right until the end of his life. Devoting his full energies to his work, Picasso became more daring, his works more colourful and expressive, and from 1968 through 1971 he produced a torrent of paintings and hundreds of copperplate engravings. At the time these works were dismissed by most as pornographic fantasies of an impotent old man or the slapdash works of an artist who was past his prime. One long time admirer, Douglas Cooper, called them "the incoherent scribblings of a frenetic old man". Only later, after Picasso's death, when the rest of the art world had moved on from abstract expressionism, did the critical community come to see that Picasso had already discovered neo-expressionism and was, as usual, ahead of his time.

Pablo Picasso died on April 8, 1973, and was interred at Castle Vauvenargues' park, in Vauvenargues, Bouches-du-Rhône. Jacqueline Roque prevented his children Claude and Paloma from attending the funeral. His final words were "drink to me". And he died while drinking.

Legacy
At the time of his death, he had many paintings, as he had kept off the art market what he didn't need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Picasso left no will, his death duties (estate tax) to the French state, were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.

The film Surviving Picasso was made about Picasso in 1996, as seen through the eyes of Françoise Gilot. Anthony Hopkins played Picasso in the movie.

In 1999, Picasso's Les Noces (The Marriage of Pierrette) sold for more than USD $51 million.

Some paintings by Picasso rank among the most expensive paintings in the world. On May 4, 2004 Picasso's painting Garçon à la pipe was sold for USD $104 million at Sotheby's, thus establishing a new price record (see also List of most expensive paintings).

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Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni, commonly known as Michelangelo, (March 6, 1475 – February 18, 1564) was a Renaissance artist and poet.

Michelangelo is famous for creating the fresco ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, as well as the Last Judgment over the altar, and The Martyrdom of St. Peter and The Conversion of St. Paul in the Vatican's Cappella Paolina; among his many sculptures are those of David and the Pietà, as well as the Doni Virgin, Bacchus, Moses, Rachel, Leah, and members of the Medici family; he also designed the dome of St. Peter's Basilica.

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Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (July 15, 1606 – October 4, 1669) is generally considered one of the greatest painters in European art history and the most important in Dutch history.

Rembrandt was also a proficient printmaker and made many drawings. His contributions to art came in a period that historians call the Dutch Golden Age (roughly equivalent to the seventeenth century), in which Dutch culture, science, commerce, world power and political influence reached their pinnacles.

"No artist ever combined more delicate skill with more energy and power," states Chambers's Biographical Dictionary. "His treatment of mankind is full of human sympathy" (J.O. Thorne: 1962).

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Leonardo da Vinci (Vinci, Italy, April 15, 1452 – May 2, 1519, Cloux, France) was an Italian Renaissance polymath: an architect, musician, anatomist, inventor, engineer, sculptor, geometer, and painter. He has been described as the archetype of the "Renaissance man" and as a universal genius, a man infinitely curious and infinitely inventive. He is also considered one of the greatest painters that ever lived.

In his lifetime, Leonardo — his surname is unknown, "da Vinci" means "from Vinci" — was an engineer, artist, anatomist, physiologist and much more. His full birth name was "Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci", meaning "Leonardo, of ser Piero from Vinci". Leonardo is famous for his paintings, such as the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper, as well as for influential drawings such as the Vitruvian Man. He designed many inventions that anticipated modern technology, such as the helicopter, tank, use of solar power, the calculator, etc., though few of these designs were constructed or were feasible in his lifetime. In addition, he advanced the study of anatomy, astronomy, and civil engineering. Of his works, only a few paintings survive, together with his notebooks (scattered among various collections) containing drawings, scientific diagrams and notes.

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