Oli-B is a street artist from Belgium. His work includes many vibrant colors and shapes. He says art is his therapy and creating the shapes and colors gives him an infinite supply of energy.
In this clip we view the artist create a piece in his studio:
Oli- B was born in Brussels, Belgium in the year 1984.
Oli B draws inspiration from one famous French artist already profiled here, Nikki de Saint Phalle. A goal of Oli- B’s is to transform his paintings into 3d.
Dzia is a wonderful street artist from Belgium. Dzia Krank is the fictional name for this artist renown for intricate line drawings and paintings of animals and insects. Dzia earned a M.F.A. from the Royal Academy of Art located in Antwerp, Belgium.
In addition to painting Dzia has also worked as a sculptor and even studied the art of taxidermy.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
In this clip a great selection of animals and insects painted by Dzia:
The artist is very creative and says his work is spontaneous. The end result might be something John Singer Sargent would have produced if he were a street artsist. I say this because Dzia’s works looks very loose and lively, but a tremendous amount of work and thought went into it.
What a fantastic draftsman!
If you enjoy street art dealing with animals and other creatures, be sure and check out the work of another Belgian street artist named ROA, already profiled here.
Jean Francois Suys is a fantastic artist born in Brussels, Belgium in the year 1956.
Suys was influenced by Kandinsky and his ideas on colour principles that each colour has its own energy, vibration, and character.
Many works contain acrylic paint, lacquer, and gold leaf.
price range information: Most works range from $5,000 to $10,000.
The artist is trying to start a movement of Empathism. Suys is tired of seeing art that tries to shock us and tries to have the viewer step back and take in his artwork as part of a positive force.
Jean Francois Suys is now based out of Switzerland.
The artist is a master at using color in his work. The gold leaf and the use of lacquer are great editions to his work.
Bernard Stern was a painter who was also a printmaker, and sculptor who enjoyed working with the face and figure. The artist also created a large body of rather abstract works.
His lineage is more difficult to remember than most artists! Stern was British and born in Brussels, Belgium.Stern was married first to a Vietnamese princess and later to an American woman.
He lived in all of the major artistic cities at some point. London, England and Paris, France and New York City.
Bernard Stern came from a short family and he also was very short but had a great work ethic and tremendous determination.
The artist lived an incredible life as he was born to wealthy Jewish family in Brussels, Belgium in the year 1920. He was the only son. As his family was Jewish one day all of their possessions weren’t theirs anymore and the artist didn’t panic. He had belief in himself and turned out to be a great businessman with his lampshade painting business!
Bernard Stern was also a great businessman. He created a company that specialized in painting lampshades.
The artist did marry a princess from Vietnam. The couple had three children. The marriage ended and Stern took up painting avidly once again.
Stern was known as the man who lived life at 100,000 volts!
What a great businessman and artist! The artist also had a great collection of art. What an amazing life this artist had. It seems he had the best of everything and still wanted to create art!
Bernard Stern was killed in a car accident in France in 2002 and was killed at the age of 82 years of age.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Stern is part of museum collections including the Museum of Modern Art in Paris, France and the Museum of Modern Art located in Chicago, Illinois.
What a talented artist with a very unique lifestyle !
Nicholas de Stael was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia in the year 1914. His father was a lieutenant in the army. During the time of the Russian revolution his family fled to Poland.Both of his parents died whilst he was young and de Stael was sent to Brussels, Belgium to live with another Russian family.
For his artistic education Nicholas de Stael attended the Royal Academy of Art located in Brussels, Belgium.
His first wife died from malnutrition as times were tough during the end of the second world war.
The artist was just coming into a world wide recognition in the 1950s when he began to fall apart. Plagued by depression and exhaustion Nicholas de Stael jumped from his eleventh story studio at killed himself at the age of 41 years old in 1955.
The artist inspired many students including Ed Clark.
In this clip we view a show from 2013 featuring the artist:
Farah Atassi was born in Brussels, Belgium in the year 1981. For her artistic education Atassi studied at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux- Arts in Paris, France. Atassi is renowned for her work with interior landscapes. Images of settings that people used to congregate, but are now empty. I love the interior landscape, some favorites profiled here include Lindsay Goodwin and Alexander Creswell. Atassi even makes an empty dorm room seem fresh, artsy, and as if the students just moved out. What a tremendous sense of design. The empty dorm room is below.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Atassi also spent time in the studio of artist Jean-Michel Alberola, a mixed media artist. Below is an example of an installation made out of Neon created by Alberola.
Atassi now lives and works out of Paris, France.
In this clip we view some works from the Societe Generale Collection:
Here we visit Farah Atassi in a group show. Her work is shown at 2:20 into the clip. Its great to see how large of canvas size the artist uses:
What a great depiction of the interior landscape. I love the dimensional aspect Atassi has developed in her work!
Enrico Castellani is not only a great painter, but also a great jewelry maker. Enrico Castellani was born in Castelmassa, Italy in the year 1930. When I first saw the artist’s work I thought of the American minimalist artist Donald Judd. In fact Judd was heavily influenced by Castellani whom Judd considered the Father of Minimalism.
For his artistic education Castellani attended the Academie Royale des Beaux- Arts in Italy. He also attended the Academy of Fine the national school for the Fine Arts in Belgium where he studied architecture.
He and another artist started their own gallery. They wanted to separate themselves from other artists in a similar movement. They had partaken in Abstract Expressionist movement, but their voice was something different. The gallery was called Azimut and a magazine supporting the movement was titled Azimuth.
Other artists associated with the new Art Informel movement at the same time were Lucio Fontana. You may have seen him in the news as some revolutionary abstract works have broken the one million dollar barrier at auction. Below is Fontana’s work “Attese” which sold at auction for $1.1 million dollars.
To form his highly textured surfaces he places nails down and then lies the canvas over the top. A very unique way to manipulate a flat surface.
Luc Tuymans is a wonderful contemporary artist born in Mortsel, Belgium in the year 1958. Tuymans makes references to international events that have been on the news and in the papers. He works with oils on canvas with references to photographs.
As for paint quality and color, his work is very dull and greyed out, it reminds me of the way watercolor sometimes looks brilliant when fresh, then the paint dries and sometimes the color goes away.
For his collegiate education Tuymans attended the National School for the Visual Arts in Brussels and the Koninkliijke Academy in Antwerp. He was studying the fine arts at these colleges that switched his major to art history finishing up at Vriije University in Brussels.
price range information: The artist has broken the one million dollar mark at auction with a the sale of Mwana Kitoka for $1.4 million. Below is this painting:
His wife is an artist from Venezuela named Carla Arocha. Below an example of her work, she works mainly in acrylics as in this example:
In this clip from the Tate Shots series we visit the artist in his hometown of Antwerp, Belgium:
In this clip we visit a gallery show from 2008 with the great James Kalm:
Here with the great James Kalm we visit a show featuring Luc Tuymans that took place in 2013:
The artist was born in Namur, Belgium in the year 1935. She was born Evlyne Devaux. She was known as one of few female pop artists. Her main subject was feminism and empowerment of women. She also worked with the female figure. If you like her work she reminds me of Tom Wesselman. The most interesting part about her technique was her choice of surface materials. She often used plexiglass as the surface.
Here is a great selection of works by Evelyne Axell.
Her family was upper middle class, her father was a dealer in silverware. At the age of two, she was chosen the most beautiful baby in her hometown of Namur. She would later become an actress. Her family home was destroyed as a result of World War II.
She finished high school and went to Namur School of Art, taking lessons in pottery and then switching to acting and the theater. In 1956, she married a well known Belgian film maker who specialized in shooting art documentaries.
At her husbands encouragement, she changed her acting name to Evelyne Axell and became taking small roles. In 1959, Axell relocated to France to pursue a more serious acting career. She would move back to Belgium and star in several movies including three that were made by her husband.
In 1964 Evelyne Axell gave up acting to start a new career as a painter. She enjoyed the Surrealist movement and chose Renee Magritte to be her teacher. Magritte was a friend of her husbands. Axell visited Magritte two times per month, and he helped her improve her technique and process of painting. Her husband was making many art documentaries and she went alongside him and thru his movies met such artists as Allen Jones, Peter Phillips, Pauline Boty, and Peter Blake.
First solo exhibition was in 1967. Later that year she abondoned the use of canvas and started using plexiglass and auto enamel. She perfected her technique and she worked in this style until her untimely death in 1972.
1969 brought the artist an award calling her the best young painter in Belgium. After this she increasingly made her paintings full of more sexuality, sometimes painting herself naked in some portraits.
This artist is often forgotten when it comes to Pop Art and more importantly women in Pop Art. Though she died young, she still had a prolific work output.
Price range: Not much info available here, oil painting record is $22,000.
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