Giuseppe Abbati was an Italian artist who belonged to the group known as the Macchiaioli. He was born in Naples and received early training in painting from his brother Vincenzo. He participated in Garibaldi's 1860 campaign, suffering the loss of his right eye. Afterwards he moved to Florence where, at the Caffè Michelangiolo, he met Giovanni Fattori, Silvestro Lega, and the rest of the artists who would soon be dubbed the Macchiaioli.

While his early paintings were interiors, he quickly became attracted to the practice of painting landscapes en plein air. His activity as a painter was interrupted during 1866 when he enlisted again in the army for the Third Independence War, during which he was captured by the Austrians.m

Returning to civilian life at the end of the year, he moved to Castelnuovo della Misericordia and spent the final year of his life painting in the countryside. Abbati died at the age of thirty-two in Florence after his own dog bit him, infecting him with rabies.

Tags:   giuseppe abbati abbati painter 19th century italian self portrait artist portrait portrait realism macchiaioli

© All Rights Reserved

Acrylic on canvas; 198 x 147 cm.

Valerio Adami is an Italian painter. Educated at the Accademia di Brera in Milan , he has since worked in both London and Paris. His art carries obvious influence from Pop Art. He was born in Bologna, and by 1945 he was studying painting from Felice Carena. He was accepted into the Brera Academy in 1951, and there studied as a draughtsman until 1954 in the studio of Achille Funi. In 1955 he went to Paris, where he met and was influenced by Roberto Matta and Wifredo Lam. His first solo exhibition came in 1959 in Milan.

In these early years, Adami's works were expressionistic, but around the time of his second exhibition in 1964 at Kassel, he had developed a style of painting reminiscent of French cloisonnism, featuring regions of flat color bordered by black lines. Unlike Gauguin, however, Adami's subjects were highly stylized and often presented in fragments, as seen in Telescoping Rooms (1965).

In the 1970s, Adami began to address politics in his art, and incorporated subject matter such as modern European history, literature, philosophy, and mythology. In 1971, he and his brother Gioncarlo created the film Vacances dans le désert. From 1985 to 1998, there were four retrospective exhibits of Adami's work in Paris, the Centre Julio-Gonzalez de Valence (Spain), Tel Aviv, and Buenos Aires.

Jacques Derrida, the famous philosopher, launched an investigation of Adami's works in 'The Truth in Painting', specifically on his use of the frame ('the paregon').

Tags:   valerio adami adami painter 20th century contemporary italian 1983 1980s self-portrait artist portrait portrait figure portrait surrealism cloisonnism

© All Rights Reserved

Eileen Forrester Agar was a British painter and photographer associated with the Surrealist movement. In 1924, she studied under Leon Underwood (1890–1975). She attended the Slade School of Fine Art in London from 1925 to 1926. She also studied art in Paris from 1928 to 1930.

In 1928, they lived in Paris where she met the Surrealists André Breton and Paul Éluard with whom she had a friendly relationship. She was a member of the London group from 1933. Her work was selected by Roland Penrose and Herbert Read for the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, in 1936.

Agar started to experiment with automatic techniques and new materials, taking photographs and making collages and objects.

In 1937, Agar spent days-off at Picasso and Dora Maar's home in Mougins (Alpes-Maritimes). In 1940, she was present in many surrealist exhibitions in Amsterdam, New York, Paris and Tokyo. After the World War II, she had started a new productive area. By the 1960s she was producing Tachist paintings with Surrealist elements. She died in London.

Tags:   eileen agar painter self portrait portrait expressionism english 1927 1920s agar female national portrait gallery london

© All Rights Reserved

Oil on Canvas.

© All Rights Reserved

Ivan Le Lorraine Albright was a magic realist painter and artist, most renowned for his self-portraits, character studies, and still lifes. Among Albright's typically dark, mysterious works are some of the most meticulously executed paintings ever made, often requiring years to complete. Lace curtains or splintered wood would be recreated using brushes of a single hair. The amount of effort that went into his paintings made him quite possessive of them. Even during the Great Depression he charged 30 to 60 times what comparable artists were charging, with the result that sales were infrequent. In order to survive he relied on the support of his father, and took odd carpentering jobs. An early painting of his, The Lineman won an award and made the cover of Electric Light and Power, a trade magazine. However his stooped and forlorn portrayal caused controversy among the readership, who did not consider such an image representative. The editors later distanced themselves from Albright's work.

Tags:   ivan albright albright painter 20th century american 1935 1930s self portrait artist portrait portrait art institute of chicago expressionism post impressionism magic realism

© All Rights Reserved