Emmy Lou Packard was a wonderful printmaker and also a close friend of Frida Kahlo. Emmy Lou Packard was born in the year 1914 in El Centro, California. Packard began her artistic career assisting Diego Rivera in some of his art. Packard studied formally at the California School of Fine Arts and earned a degree from the University of California at Berkeley.
I enjoy the wonderful shapes the artist creates in working with flowering plants and vegetables. Each one is the same basic shape, but changed just slightly so that it becomes a field full of movement and lively shapes. Even in works with a view of a field from far away, the rows of vegetation are each made unique. Even the lines of a telephone pole are made to look very artistic, even Art Deco in style.
The artist worked in oils and gouache.
Packard passed away in 1988.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
Packard was a fantastic artist who used her art to promote causes she cared deeply for including children and women. Art can be powerful!
Wolfgang Paalen was born in Vienna, Austria in 1905. Paalen was associated with both the abstract expressionist and Surrealist movements.
His father was an inventor and his mother a leading actress. The family always lived in a beautiful living space including a castle whilst the family lived in Germany.
Paalen studied with painter Fernand Leger.
Paalen married an artist and author named Alice Rahon. She will be the next entry! Rahon was a minimalist and modernist painter.
The artist was inspired to move to Mexico by the famous artist Frida Kahlo. At this stage of his life the artist was working in the Surrealist style. The artist also painted in San Francisco, California. He would later lose his friendship with Kahlo and her husband Diego Rivera over their political beliefs.
The artist worked with ink and oils as his favorite mediums.
In this clip we view an abstract work by Paalen. The close ups are wonderful to see how much color the artist uses:
Wolfgang Paalen committed suicide in 1959 at the age of 54 years old.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
I enjoy his type of Surrealism. Paalen created very unique shapes and gives the viewer a feeling of being in outer space, or at least a world far different from earth.
I am really impressed with the works of this artist known for his murals. A wonderful expressionist painter that seem to capture the mood of his subjects perfectly.
A short clip showing a short portfolio of works by Diego Rivera.
A collection of murals painted by Diego Rivera.
An extremely rare clip showing both Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo having fun in their leisure time.
The artist worked in many mediums. Pencil, ink, watercolor, gouache, oils, and egg tempera.
Diego Rivera was born on December eighth of 1886 in Guanajuato, Guanajuato. His large mural works in Mexico helped him become the leader of the Mexican Renaissance Movement. The artist was born to a very wealthy family and Diego Rivera was descended from Spanish royalty.
The artist started professional art classes at the very young age of ten years old. He attended the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City. After this he was sponsored by a governor to attend art academies in Europe. He studied with artists Eduardo Chicharro and even had a portrait of himself painted by Modigliani.
At this time in Paris(1913- 1917), Cubism was making a big push led by Pablo Picasso. Rivera became interested in the new wave of Impressionism and started to exhibit and sell his works.
In 1920 the Mexican ambassador to France sent Rivera to Italy from France to study the frescoes and different styles of art. At the urging of the Minister of Education Rivera returned to Mexico from Italy in 1921 and began his work for the Mexican Mural program. In 1922 he painted his first significant mural titled “Creation” in Mexico City, he even wore a revolver to guard himself from the right wing students.
In 1922 he joined the Communist Party and after that his work always had a heavy social aspect to it.
In 1927 he traveled to Russia to help celebrate Communism. He was commissioned by the Red Army Club but was thrown out of the country for taking part in some anti-Soviet political ideas. The artist returned to Mexico.
His second wife was Frida Kahlo, they are shown together in a clip above. They were married in 1929, she was his second wife.
Among his commissions were the San Francisco Stock Exchange, the American Ambassador to Mexico, the Rockefeller Center, and the Detroit Institute of the Arts.This series of works in Detroit was during the McCarthy period of the United States. You could be found guilty of being a communist sympathizer.
high price range: $1 million
low price range: lithographs for 2,000 and small watercolors 5,000 to 7,000
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