Art History Resource Guide

German artist, a celebrated figure of the avant-garde, noted especially for his sculptures made of felt and animal fat.

The French painter Georges Braque was one of the major artists of the 20th century, whose partnership with Picasso from 1908 to 1914 generated Cubism.

French painter and illustrator, born in Russia, noted for his richly coloured pictures of men, animals, and objects in fantastic combinations and often suspended in space.

French painter, inspired by graffiti and the untrained art of children and psychotics.

German-born US expressionist painter and graphic artist. He was a founder of the Berlin Dada group in 1918, and excelled in savage satirical drawings criticizing the government and the military establishment.

English painter, printmaker, and designer, resident in California. One of the best-known figures in 20th-century British pop art.

Mexican painter. Using vivid colour and a naive style that was deliberately based on Mexican folk art, she created deeply personal, moving, and emotional paintings.

Russian abstract painter and theorist. Usually regarded as the originator of abstract art, Kandinsky abandoned a legal career for painting at 30 when he moved to Munich.

Austrian painter. He founded the Vienna Sezession (1897), a group of painters influenced by Art Nouveau.

German graphic artist and sculptor. One of the leading expressionists, she is noted for her harrowing and often disturbing drawings, etchings, lithographs, and woodcuts on the themes of social injustice, poverty, and human suffering.

Russian artist and architect. During the 1920s he was extremely important in propagating new Russian art in Western Europe. MORE

Russian painter. He was concerned with presenting a new vision which, though not possible outside the context of a scientific and industrial society, was not directly related to the problems of functional design.

Henri Matisse, born at Le Cateau-Cambrésis (Nord,France), was one of the leaders of avant-garde art before the First World War.

Joan Miró was a Spanish painter, ceramist, and sculptor, and a leading member of the Surrealist movement.

Artist, the dominating figure of early 20th Century art. His break with tradition came with ‘Les Demoiselles d’Avignon’ (1906–7, New York), the first exemplar of analytical Cubism, a movement which he developed with Braque (1909–14).

1886–1957, Mexican mural painter, studied as a youth with Posada and other Mexican painters; husband of Frida Kahlo.

Austrian painter and draftsman known for his aggressive, nervous style and his explicitly erotic subjects.

Lithuanian-born US painter. The most distinguished of the US Social Realists, his art drew attention to social and political issues that were often particularly controversial.

Photographer (active 1898-1927) of Paris’ streets, parks, and countryside.

Photographer, born in Chanteloup, Paris, France. He worked only in black-and-white (except for some early commercial work), concerned exclusively with the capturing of visual moments illustrating contemporary life.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
French pioneer photographer and writer, b. Paris. Nadar opened a photographic studio in 1853 that became a meeting place for literary and artistic celebrities whose faces were captured in his superb portraits.

English pioneer of photography. He invented the paper-based calotype process, patented in 1841, which was the first negative/positive method. Talbot made photograms several years before Louis Daguerre's invention was announced.

French sculptor born in Romania, noted for the simplicity of his abstract forms.

Among the most inventive of 20th-century sculptors, Calder also worked as a book-illustrator and painter.

Prominent avant-garde painter and installation artist, most often associated with the manifestations of dada.

British sculptor, born in the U.S. of Russo-Polish parents.

Henry Moore, long considered England's greatest sculptor, was largely responsible for the gradual emergence of British art from provincialism into the mainstream of modern art.

French sculptor, b. Paris. Rodin's work is generally considered the most important contribution to sculpture of his century, although some recent critical opinion has found his allegorical works pretentious.