Ghada Amer and Reza Farkhondeh are a contemporary artistic duo renown for their imagery of the female figure. The finished works are completed in embroidery. The team met whilst they were attending college in Nice, France at the Villa Arson.
Ghada Amer was born in Cairo, Egypt in the year 1963. Her family moved to the United States in 1974. Amer received her art education in Paris and Nice, France earning a M.F.A. from Des Hautes Etudes Art Plastique.
Amer has worked in many mediums including painting, drawing, printmaking, sculpture, and installation art. She often explores the female form.
Price range for the duo: Sorry none available. Works by Ghada Amer range from $20,000 to $250,000 for an original acrylic. No price schedule for Reza Farkhondeh.
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva was a Portuguese/ French painter who worked in an abstract style. Maria da Silva was born in Lisbon, Portugal in the year 1908.
The artist enjoyed art as a child and enrolled at the Academy of Art in Lisbon, Portugal when she was 11 years old.
She studied with much of the well established artists in many fields including Fernand Léger and Stanley W. Hayter the master engraver.
After completing her studies she began to exhibit in Paris, France in her early 20s, moving to the city in the early 1930s. She also married an artist she met there named Árpád Szenes.
In this clip a great montage of works by the artist:
The artist exhibited at the Sao Paulo Art Biennial in 1961.
Maria Helena Vieira da Silva passed away in 1992.
Price range information: The artist produced prints which start at $5,000. She also worked in oils, gouache, and watercolor. Prices range from $50,000 to $1 million dollars.
What I enjoy most about the artist’s work is her flow and movement of shapes. Another contemporary artist whose work is very abstract and similar to Da Silva, but with a nod to the field of architecture, is the artist Julie Mehretu.
Wang Keping is a contemporary Chinese artist renown for his modernist sculpture works often with the female form. Wang Keping was born in Beijing, China in the year 1949.
His figures usually have increases focus in the legs, breasts, and butt. I find his figures to be very abstract like the English artist Henry Moore.
Here we view a great interview from 2009. Wang Keping talks about the Chinese art market:
Price range information: Works range from $10,000 to $150,000.
In this clip we view a gallery show featuring his work:
The artist is now based out of Paris, France.
Keping works with bronze occasionally but uses wood for the most part.
The artist was inspired by an artist recently featured here, Constantin Brancusi.
Agathe de Baillencourt is a French painter renown for her abstract style. Agathe de Bailliencourt was born in Paris, France in the year 1974. Baillencourt is a drawer, painter, and installation artist.
Agathe de Bailliencourt attended the Ecole Boulle located in Paris.
Although her work is quite abstract in some pieces we get the suggestion of an interior with a door or the exterior with a flag. These are my favorite works of the artist. She has a wonderful use of color and also the clever inclusion of text in her paintings.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
The artist enjoys painting in her studio but she also exposes herself to an entirely different approach by executing very large installation works that take up many meters of space. Her installation works often have a theme of comparing the straight man made shapes with the natural and organic flowing lines we observe in nature.
The artist is now based out of Berlin, Germany.
We close by watching the artist complete an on site installation via time lapse photography:
Constantin Brancusi was a Romanian sculptor renown for his modernist style. Constantin Brancusi was born in Hobita, Romania in the year 1876. His parents were hard working laborers.
Brancusi ran away from home before he was a teen and eventually worked in the grocery business. A businessman saw a violin the artist made from things he found around the house. The businessman sponsored Brancusi’s collegiate career. The artist attended the local college of arts and crafts followed by a the Bucharest School of Fine Arts.
The artist is often called the patriarch of modern sculpture. Brancusi worked for a few months with famed sculptor Auguste Rodin.
The artist studied in Romania, Germany, before finishing up at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts located in Paris, France.
In this clip we view a show featuring Brancusi with our fellow admirer of art, the great James Kalm:
Constantin Brancusi passed away in 1957, at the age of 81 years old.
The artist is part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art located in New York City.
Price range information: The artist was a prolific painter and sculptor. Works range from $20,000 to $10 million.
I love the innovative use of shapes developed by Brancusi in his paintings and sculpture work.
Amedeo Modgiliani was an Italian artist renown for his Modernist style of portraying human faces. Amedeo Modigliani was born in Livorno, Tuscany, Italy in the year 1884. He worked as a painter and sculptor having modest success whilst he was alive. Modigliani’s work became highly sought after upon his death.
His family was Jewish and his great grandmother had moved to Italy as a refugee. The artist family owned many businesses over the years including lending money, education centers of learning, and mining.
The artist’s mother predicted he would become an artist when Modigliani was 11 years of age. During his childhood and teenage years he was often sick with diseases including pleurisy (the inflammation of the lining of the lungs) , typhoid fever, and tuberculosis(which would take his life before the age of 40.)
Modigliani attended the Academia de Belle Arts located in Florence, Italy. He also attended the Instituto di Belle Arti also located in Florence.
A few years after finishing college Modigliani relocated in Paris, France.
In this clip a great montage of works that show Modigliani’s style of elongating the face and figure:
Amedeo Modigliani passed away in 1920 at the age of 35 years of age from tuberculosis meningitis. The artist enjoyed drinking as well as recreational narcotics.
The artist was renown for his work with the nude female figure. Here one of his most famous nude works is discussed:
Price range information: Works range from pencil works at $40,000 to original oils such as Reclining Nude on a Blue Cushion which sold for $112 million dollars in 2012.
Modigliani’s style was often imitated but never duplicated. He was a fantastic style of painting and sculpting the female figure.
Guillaume Bottazzi is a French artist renown for his large scale abstract murals which are located on many industrial buildings throughout the city of Paris, France.
Guillaume Bottazzi was born in the year 1971.
Below a brief glimpse of the artist at work in his studio followed by a gallery show and images from a show:
The artist has completed more than 40 public works over his brief career. He has completed many works in Europe and Japan.
Below a link to the website of Guillaume Bottazzi:
Guillaume Bottazzi is a an amazing artist whose work is based on the layering of paint, wonderful organic shapes, and wide variety of color and patterns. With such unique shapes and brilliant color Bottazzi is a true master of abstract art.
Fafi is a French street artist renown for her sexy female cartoons. She calls her cartoon ladies “Fafinettes.” These characters represent her feelings at given moment in time.
Unlike most street artists Fafi works with traditional materials such as paint and brushes rather than aerosol paint.
The artist began her street art work in 1994 in Toulouse, France.
A wonderful montage of “Fafinettes”:
She is very successful commercially working with such international brands as Adidas, Sony, and Coca Cola.
Fafi is now based out of Paris, France.
The artist has created two books.
Price range information: Sorry none available.
In this clip we view a great clip featuring Fafi in collaboration with the Adidas company:
Fafi has created a great niche for self. She does a great job at capturing the vivacious curves of the female figure.
Willy Ronis was a French photographer (The first image is the artist himself.) Willy Ronis was born in Paris, France in the year 1910. His parents had left their home countries of Odessa and Lithuania because of their treatment of Jewish people. His father ran a portrait photography studio and his mother gave piano lessons.
His father would pass away from cancer in the mid 1930s and Ronis took over the family business of shooting portraits. This business would fail soon after his father’s death, and Willy Ronis would go on to be a free lance photographer.
Price range information: Most works priced between $2,000 and $20,000.
The artist became the first French photographer to work for the magazine Life.
Ronis was the recipient of a gold medal award at the 1957 Venice Biennial.
Below a wonderful selection of images by Willy Ronis:
Willy Ronis passed away in 2009.
Similar to other luminaries such as Diane Arbus, Willy Ronis did a wonderful job at capturing the feeling of a moment. Be it romance or a cat that is taken by a bird or a something in a window, the artist was magnificent at documenting fleeting moments of time.
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