2010/02/27

Victor Hugo (French, 26 February 1802 – 22 May 1885)

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"Lucerne. Ce que je vois de ma fenêtre" ou Le vieux pont de Lucerne. 
Plume et lavis d'encre brune, crayon de graphite sur papier vélin. 13 septembre 1839.



Crépuscule ("Twilight"), Jersey, 1853-1855.



 Paysage aux trois arbres
Encre sepia, 0.430 x 0.610 m


Le Rocher de l'Ermitage dans un paysage imaginaire, 1855
Plume, encre brune et encre de Chine, frottis de fusain, gouaches blanche et bleue.




Projet de frontispice pour Le Rhin
Plume encre brune et lavis, fusain, gouache sur papier beige. 1863.
Paris, maison de Victor Hugo, Inv. 60. © PMVP


Le rocher Ortach, Vers 1864
Mine de plomb, encre brune et lavis, rehauts de bleu sur papier crème, 74 x 158 mm.




Fracta Juventus, 1864
Gouache, lavis, plume (dessin), 0.150 x 0,230 m
Musée V. Hugo, Paris



Les Travailleurs de la mer: La Pieuvre, Vers 1866
Plume, pinceau, encre brune et lavis sur papier crème 
357 x 259 mn


 "Ma destinée", 1867
Plume et lavis d'encre brune, gouache, sur papier vélin. 

Paris, Maison de Victor Hugo, Inv. 927. © PMVP


Les Travailleurs de la mer: "Figures que font les paysans quand ils voient les sarregousets"
    Plume, pinceau, encre brune et lavis, réserves (277 x 195 mn).



 Gallia
Encre sepia, lavis, plume (dessin)
Paris, Musée Victor Hugo





Vianden à travers une toile d'araignée
Plume, encres brune et violette et lavis, crayon de graphite, aquarelle, grattages, sur un feuillet d'album.
Paris, Maison de Victor Hugo, Inv. 83. © PMVP





Victor Hugo
Photographer: Nadar

Victor Hugo was almost as prolific in the visual arts as he was in literature, producing more than 4,000 drawings in his lifetime. Originally pursued as a casual hobby, drawing became more important to Hugo shortly before his exile, when he made the decision to stop writing in order to devote himself to politics. Drawing became his exclusive creative outlet during the period 1848-1851.

Hugo worked only on paper, and on a small scale; usually in dark brown or black pen-and-ink wash, sometimes with touches of white, and rarely with color. The surviving drawings are surprisingly accomplished and "modern" in their style and execution, foreshadowing the experimental techniques of Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. [source: Wikipedia]




A. Rodin: Etudes pour de la tête de Victor Hugo

Victor Hugo l'homme océan

2010/02/23

Kazimir Malevich (Russian, February 23, 1879 – May 15, 1935)

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Flower-Girl. 1903.
Oil on canvas, 80x100 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.


 Boulevard. 1903.
Oil on canvas, 56 x 66 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.




Spring. A Garden in Bloom. 1904.
Oil on canvas, 44x65 cm.
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.


High Society in Top Hats. 1908.
Watercolor and gouache on cardboard, 23.8 x 30.2 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.


The Shroud of Christ. 1908.
Gouache on paper, 23.4x34.3 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.



The Gardener. 1911
Charcoal and gouache on board. 91 x 70 cm. 
Stedelijk Museum.


  Morning in the Country after Snowstorm. 1912. 
Oil on canvas, 31 3/4 x 31 7/8 inches. 
Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York


Knife Grinder - Principle of Flickering. 1912
 Oil on canvas, 79.5x79.5 cm.
Yale University Art Gallery, USA.



 Head of a Peasant Girl. 1912-1913.
Oil on canvas, 72x74.5 cm.
Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum, Holland.



 Composition with Mona Lisa. 1914
Graphite, oil and collage on canvas. 62 x 49.5 cm. 
Private Collection.


 An Englishman in Moscow. 1914.
Oil on canvas, 88x57 cm.
Amsterdam Stedelijk Museum 


"The square is not a subconscious form. It is the creation of intuitive reason... the face of Art Nouveau! The square is a vivid and majestic newborn... the first step of pure creation of art... before it, there was naive disfigurement and copies of nature. I metamorphosed into zero forms, I went beyond zero to creation, that is, to Suprematism, the new pictorial Realism, the nonobjective creation."



  
Black Square. 1915.
Oil on canvas, 80x80 cm.
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.

Malevich for the first time showed his Black Square (now at the Tretyakov Gallery in Moscow) at the Last Futurist Exhibition 0,10 in Petrograd in 1915. A Black Square put against the sun appeared for the first time in the 1913 scenery designs for the opera Victory over the Sun.  The second Black Square was painted about 1923 with Kazimir Malevich's participation by his closest disciples, Anna Leporskaya, Konstantin Rozhdestvensky and Nikolay Suyetin, for a triptych which also included Cross and Circle (now at the Russian Museum in St. Petersburg). Some believe that the third Black Square (Tretyakov Gallery) was painted in 1929 for Malevich's one-man show, following request of Aleksey Fedorov-Davydov, Assistant Director of the Gallery, because of the poor condition of the 1915 Square. This is the "blindest", most "hopeless" square, thickly painted over black. It is as different from the first one, as Malevich's life and work were different compared to 1915. The last Square, despite the author's note "1913" on the reverse, is believed to have been created in the late twenties or early thirties. It was one of the few of Malevich's paintings which were not handed over by the artist's heirs to the Russian Museum but were kept by his family. As legend goes, it was carried behind Malevich's coffin on the day when he was buried. (Source)




Red Square. 1915
Oil on canvas, 53x53 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.




 Black Cross on White. 1915
MNAM . Paris

"I myself  withdrew to a field that is new to me, that of thought, and, to the extent of my possibilities, I will state what I see in the infinite space of the human brain." This is the prophetic conclusion of an essay written by Malevich on December 15, 1920 as an introduction to the special issue of thirty-four Suprematism drawings - dominated by crosses - from the litographic presses of Vitebsk.




 Suprematism with Eight Red Rectangles(Self Portrait). 1915.
Oil on canvas, 57.5x48.5 cm.
Amsterdam. Stedelijk Museum.




 Suprematism, 1915.
Oil on canvas, 101.5 x 62 cm
Amsterdam. Stedelijk Museum



Suprematism, 1916
Oil on canvas, 80 x 80 cm
Museum of Art, Krasnodar.




 Suprematist Composition: White Square on White. 1918
Oil on canvas, 79.4 x 79.4 cm.  
New York, MOMA
" I have cracked the links and the limitations of color. I want you to plunge into whiteness... and to swim in this infinity."



Suprematism. 1921-1927.
Oil on canvas, 72.5x51 cm.
Amsterdam. Stedelijk Museum.



 Woman with a Rake. 1928-1932. 
Oil on canvas. 100 x 75 cm. 
The Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow.




Complex Presentiment: Half-Figure in a Yellow Shirt, 1928-1932.
Oil on canvas, 99x79 cm.
The Russian Museum, St.Petersburg.




Athletes. 1928-1932
Oil on canvas, 142 x 164 cm.
The Russian Museum. St. Petersburg




Red Cavalry, 1928 - 1932
Oil on canvas, 91 x 140 cm
The Russian Museum



 
Portrait of the Artist's Wife. 1933. (Natalia Andreyevna).
Oil on canvas, 67.5x56 cm.
The Russian Museum, St. Petersburg.


 
Self Portrait, 1933. 
Oil on canvas, 73 x 66 cm. 
The Russian Museum. St. Petersburg.


 
Running Man, 1933-1934
Oil on canvas, 79 x 65 cm.
MNAM, Paris




Costumes design for the opera "Victory over the Sun". 1913
Italian pencil, watercolor, Indian ink on paper.
The Theatre Museum, St.Petersburg.



 
 Costumes design (Reciter) for the opera "Victory over the Sun". 1913



 
Textile Design with Suprematist Ornament. 1919.
India ink. and gouache on canvas. 20 x 9.6 cm. State Russian Museum.



"Gota" c. 1923-1927
Plaster, 57 x 26 x 36 cm.
MNAM, Paris.


Russian painter graphic artist and art theoretician of Polish descent., born near Kiev.  Recently Ukrainian art historians established the precise birthdate of the artist: February 23, 1879, and argues for restoration of the Polish spelling of his name. He spent most childhood in the villages of Ukraine amidst sugar-beet plantations, far from centers of culture. In 1904 he moved to Moscow and studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture and in the studio of Fedor Rerberg. 

From 1910 the artist has participated in exhibitions including Jack of Diamonds, Donkey's Tail, Soyuz Molodyozhi (Union of Youth), The Salon of Independents, Target, "0, 10".

In 1913 the Cubo-Futurist opera Victory Over the Sun (libretto by Kruchionykh, music by Matiushin) with Malevich's stage-set became a great success.
In 1915, Malevich laid down the foundations of Suprematism. He published his manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. In 1918 he designed Mayakovsky's play Mystery Bouffe, produced and directed by Vsevolod Meyerhold.

He has served as the head teacher at SVOMAS (1918), taught at the Art School in Vitebsk, and founded the UNOVIS group (Affirmers of New Art) in 1920. He has taught at High State Artistic and Technical Workshops from 1922. Served as director of State Institute for Artistic Culture, and professor at the Academy of Arts from 1922.

In 1927, he traveled to Warsaw and then to Berlin and Munich for a retrospective which finally brought him international recognition.  In 1927 he was recalled to Russia, where he returned to figurative painting (Running Man).  
Kazimir Malevich has lived and died in Leningrad.

2010/02/19

Béla Kondor (Hungarian, Febr, 17, 1931 - Dec. 12, 1972)

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Hűség / Fidelity, 1958
Oil on wood, 28 x 54 cm
The Collection Antal-Lusztig, Debrecen


Emberpár / Man and Woman, 1959
Oil on canvas, 197 x 137,5 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest


 Savonarola, 1962
Oil on fibre, 44 x 33,5 cm
Private collection



Darázskirály / The Wasp-king, 1963
Oil on fibre, 34 x 28 cm
Private collection


A Tengerész Álma / Sailor's Dream (The Old Fisherman), 1964
Mixed technique on fibreboard, 60 x 63 cm
Private collection



Bukott Angyal / Fall, The Temptation of Saint Anthony, 1967
Oil on canvas, 200x 194 cm
Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest


Építők / Construction Workers, 1968
Oil on fibreboard, 126 x 70 cm
Private Collection, Budapest


A Két Kerub / Two Cherubs, 1972
Oil and coloured pencil on fibreboard, 40 x 20 cm
Private collection