Portrait of the Painter Anton Peschka, 1909 P.C.

Although Schiele's 1909 paintings and Drawings are obviously indebted to Klimt, they also provide the first evidence of the artist's individual creative persona.
His nascent direction can be documented in three important portraits from this period: two of them depicting academy classmates , Anton Peschka and Hans Massmann.
Both the Peschka and Massmann portraits are clear take-offs on Klimt if one can call it that!
They make similar use of decorative patterning , while exaggerating the off-center, triangular silhouettes seen in Klimt's painting's of Adele Bloch-Bauer and Fritza Riedler.


MMaxi

Vincent Van Gogh, Self Portrait

This is a portrait of the Netherlands' most famous nineteenth-century artist, Vincent van Gogh. His piercing eyes seek out the viewer; the portrait is personal and direct. It is painted in short, firm lines using many colours; a style characteristic of Van Gogh's later work. Van Gogh painted this portrait in 1887 when he was living in Paris. He lived there for two years, during which time he became acquainted with the work of the Impressionists and modern artists such as Paul Gauguin and Toulouse-Lautrec. Of the many (around thirty-five) self portraits Van Gogh made, twenty-nine were painted when he was in Paris.

Self portraits
In his self portraits, Van Gogh often pictured himself in working clothes, although sometimes also in a smart suit. This self portrait shows the artist in his best attire with his grey felt hat and a tie. Van Gogh's self portraits are often seen as studies of the personal psyche, though for the painter this was certainly not the most important aspect. These are above all exercises in portraiture and experiments in new techniques. Here the artist has used several painting techniques in a single picture. The face is built up using small, precisely placed lines of paint, while his clothes are depicted using rougher, looser marks.

Saving money
Many of Van Gogh's self portraits were produced out of necessity. The painter had no money with which to hire models and acquaintances were not always willing to make themselves available. And so, to gain experience in portrait painting, Van Gogh used himself as a model. The painter regarded his self portraits above all as study material; he did not make them as complete art works to be sold. This is apparent from the consistently small scale of the portraits and the cheap materials he used. This self portrait, for example, has been painted on cardboard. The brown colour of the cardboard can still be seen in some parts of the background.

Early work
Van Gogh became famous with the style used in this self portrait - short lines of paint and lively colours. From the time he spent in Paris until his death, he continued to paint in this way. Previous to this he made very different work: drawings and paintings of peasant life in Nuenen, Brabant, and in the region around The Hague. Van Gogh portrayed the farmers and workers in their everyday environments. For this he used a realistic style and sombre colours.

Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890)
Vincent van Gogh was born in the Brabant town of Zundert, where his father was a pastor. His uncles were art-dealers and Vincent began his career working for them at Goupil & Co. in The Hague. After several years in the art business Van Gogh decided to pursue another course. He became a lay preacher in England and later became involved in missionary work in Belgium. In 1880 he decided to become an artist. For several months he worked in The Hague with the painter Anton Mauve, an in-law whose work Van Gogh greatly admired. While in The Hague he also met George Breitner, with whom he regularly went on outdoor painting excursions. Later Van Gogh worked mainly in Nuenen in Brabant, where he portrayed farming life in sombre colours, as can be seen in his famous painting the 'Potato Eaters'.

France
After a short period of study in Antwerp, in the winter of 1885, Van Gogh moved to Paris, where he painted a large number of self portraits. Through his brother Theo, an art dealer, he met many French artists including Toulouse-Lautrec and Paul Gauguin. Influenced in part by Impressionism and *Pointillism , he developed his characteristic style with separate streaks of paint and clear, brilliant colours. In 1888 Van Gogh moved to Arles in the South of France, where he painted the countryside and the people. Because of the mental problems he suffered, the artist was admitted several times to an institution. Between these crises he continued to paint feverishly, until his death in 1890.

Pointillism is a method of painting in which the paint is applied in a series of tiny dots of different colours on the canvas. When seen from a distance, the dots merge more or less into a total picture. This method, originally developed by the impressionists, was employed consistently and systematically by artists such as George Seurat and Paul Signac. These French painters were known as pointillists or 'neo-impressionists'. Their manner of working influenced European artists such as the Belgian Theo van Rysselberghe and the Dutch painter Jan Toorop.

Happy Birthday Billy, The 20's are finished long live the 30's.

b. 1871, Turin; d. 1958, Rome

Giacomo Balla was born in Turin on July 18, 1871. In 1891 he studied briefly at the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti and the Liceo Artistico in Turin and exhibited for the first time under the aegis of the Società Promotrice di Belle Arti in that city. He studied at the University of Turin with Cesare Lombroso about 1892. In 1895 Balla moved to Rome, where he worked for several years as an illustrator, caricaturist, and portrait painter. In 1899 his work was included in the Venice Biennale and in the Esposizione internazionale di belle arti at the galleries of the Società degli Amatori e Cultori di Belle Arti in Rome, where he exhibited regularly for the next ten years. In 1900 Balla spent seven months in Paris assisting the illustrator Serafino Macchiati. About 1903 he began to instruct Gino Severini and Umberto Boccioni in divisionist painting techniques. In 1903 his work was exhibited at the Esposizione internazionale d’arte della città di Venezia and in 1903 and 1904 at the Glaspalast in Munich. In 1904 Balla was represented in the Internationale Kunstausstellung in Düsseldorf, and in 1909 exhibited at the Salon d’Automne in Paris.

Balla signed the second Futurist painting manifesto of 1910 with Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, Luigi Russolo, and Severini, although he did not exhibit with the group until 1913. In 1912 he traveled to London and to Düsseldorf, where he began painting his abstract light studies. In 1913 Balla participated in the Erste deutsche Herbstsalon at Der Sturm gallery in Berlin and in an exhibition at the Rotterdamsche Kunstkring in Rotterdam. In 1914 he experimented with sculpture for the first time and showed it in the Prima esposizione libera futurista at the Galleria Sprovieri, Rome. He also designed and painted Futurist furniture and designed Futurist “antineutral” clothing. With Fortunato Depero, Balla wrote the manifesto Ricostruzione futurista dell’universo in 1915. His first solo exhibitions were held that same year at the Società Italiana Lampade Elettriche “Z” and at the Sala d’Arte A. Angelelli in Rome. His work was also shown in 1915 at the Panama-Pacific International Exposition in San Francisco. In 1918 he was given a solo show at the Casa d’Arte Bragaglia in Rome. Balla continued to exhibit in Europe and the United States and in 1935 was made a member of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. He died on March 1, 1958, in Rome.

b. 1883, Cortona, Italy; d. 1966, Paris

Gino Severini was born April 7, 1883, in Cortona, Italy. He studied at the Scuola Tecnica in Cortona before moving to Rome in 1899. There he attended art classes at the Villa Medici and by 1901 met Umberto Boccioni, who had also recently arrived in Rome and later would be one of the theoreticians of Futurism [more]. Together, Severini and Boccioni visited the studio of Giacomo Balla, where they were introduced to painting with “divided” rather than mixed color. After settling in Paris in November 1906, Severini studied Impressionist painting and met the Neo-Impressionist Paul Signac.

Severini soon came to know most of the Parisian avant-garde, including Georges Braque, Juan Gris, Amedeo Modigliani, and Pablo Picasso; Lugné-Poë and his theatrical circle; the poets Guillaume Apollinaire, Paul Fort, and Max Jacob; and author Jules Romains. After joining the Futurist movement at the invitation of Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Boccioni, Severini signed the Manifesto tecnico della pittura futurista of April 1910, along with Balla, Boccioni, Carlo Carrà, and Luigi Russolo. However, Severini was less attracted to the subject of the machine than his fellow Futurists and frequently chose the form of the dancer to express Futurist theories of dynamism in art.

Severini helped organize the first Futurist exhibition at Galerie Bernheim-Jeune, Paris, in February 1912, and participated in subsequent Futurist shows in Europe and the United States. In 1913, he had solo exhibitions at the Marlborough Gallery, London, and Der Sturm, Berlin. During the Futurist period, Severini acted as an important link between artists in France and Italy. After his last truly Futurist works—a series of paintings on war themes—Severini painted in a Synthetic Cubist mode, and by 1920 he was applying theories of classical balance based on the Golden Section to figurative subjects from the traditional commedia dell’arte. He divided his time between Paris and Rome after 1920. He explored fresco and mosaic techniques and executed murals in various mediums in Switzerland, France, and Italy during the 1920s. In the 1950s, he returned to the subjects of his Futurist years: dancers, light, and movement. Throughout his career, Severini published important theoretical essays and books on art. Severini died February 26, 1966, in Paris.

Untitled 1993.

This tortured figure of a man with an erection is a self-portrait painted by Schiele near the end of his short life.
After ten years of financially unrewarding effort, Schiele had an exhibition in 1918 that was a complete success.
But the artist did not enjoy it. He and his wife died in that same year.

 

 

Amadeu de Sousa Cardoso

Self Portrait 1911, Albertina, Vienna.

Schiele originaly began wearing a long caftan or Painter's smock in emulation of Klimt's
characteristic garb. However, the costume also melded well with Schiele's allegorical concerns,
helping him cast himself as a holy figure.

Although Egon Schiele is often grouped with the german Expressionists, his key influences were predominantly Austrian. In 1890, when Schiele was born, the Austro-Hungarian Empire was near it's Artistic and economic apogee. The Second half of the nineteen century had seen an industrial boom that created a new class of wealthy capitalists. Emulating the prerogatives of the hereditary aristocracy, many members of this new class became avid art collectors and patrons, who stimulated the market for art in a nation that had previously been more appreciative of Music and Theater.



Egon Schiele was born in the provincial town of Tulln on the Danube..



"The Highest Sentiments are found in religion and art. Nature is the goal; God resides there, and I feel Him strongly, most strongly.
I believe there is no " modern " art ; there is only one art, and art is eternal"

Egon Schiele



At 1 a.m. on october 31 - All Saint's Eve- Schiele died. He was twenty-eight years old.



 

Painting on the Poster Self-Portrait with Hand to Cheek, 1910 Abertina, Vienna.
The book "Egon Schiele Love and Death" by Jane Kallir is one of my favorit Art Books of all time.