1838-1874 Spanish Mariano Fortuny y Marsal Gallery He was born in Reus, a town near Taragona in the autonomous community of Catalonia in Spain. His father died when he was an infant, his mother by age 12, thus Mariano was raised by his grandfather, a cabinet-maker. His grandfather taught him to make wax figurines. At the age of 9, at a public competition in his town a local patron, Domingo Soberno, encouraged further study. At the age of 14 years he moved to Barcelona with his grandfather. A sculptor, Domingo Taleru, secured him a pension of to allow him to attend the Academy of Barcelona. There he studied for four years under Claudio Lorenzale, and in March of 1857 he gained a scholarship that entitled him to two years of studies in Rome starting in 1858. There he studied drawing and grand manner styles. In 1859, he was called by the Spanish government to depict the campaigns of the Spanish-Moroccan War. The expedition lasted for only about six months, and he returned to Spain in the summer of 1860. The battle of Tetuan by Mariano Fortuny (1863-73)Since the days of Velazquez, there had been a tradition in Spain of memorializing battles and victories in paint; and on the basis of his experiences, Fortuny was commissioned by the city of Barcelona to paint a large canvas diorama of the capture of the camps of Muley-el-Abbas and Muley-el-Hamed by the Spanish army. He began his composition of The battle of Tetuan on a canvas fifteen metres long; but though it worked on and off on it during the next decade, he never finished it. The greater influence of this travel on Fortuny was his subsequent fascination with the exotic themes of the world of Morocco, painting both individuals and imagined court scenes. He visited Paris in 1868 and shortly afterwards married Cecilia de Madrazo, the daughter of Federico Madrazo, who would become curator of the Prado Museum in Madrid. Together, they had a son, Mariano Fortuny y Madrazo, who became a well-known fashion and tapestry designer. Another visit to Paris in 1870 was followed by a two years' stay at Granada, but then he returned to Rome, where he died somewhat suddenly on the 21st of November 1874 from an attack of tertian ague, or malaria , contracted while painting in the open air at Naples and Portici in the summer of 1874. Fortuny paintings are colorful, with a vivacious iridescent brushstroke, that at times recalls the softness of Rococo painting but also anticipates impressionist brushwork, Fortuny??s recollection of Morocco is not a costume ball, but a fierce, realistic portrait which includes bare-chested warriors. Richard Muther states: ??his marvellously sensitive eye ?? discerned the stalls of Moorish carpet-sellers, with little figures swarming, and the rich display of woven stuffs of the East; the weary attitude of old Arabs sitting in the sun; the sombre, brooding faces of strange snake-charmers and magicians. This is no Parisian East??every one here speaks Arabic??. Fortuny often painted scenes where contemporary life had still not shaken off the epaulets and decorations of ancient traditions such a the ????Burial of a matador???? and couples signing marriage contracts (La Vicaria). Each has the dazzle of bric-a-brac [1]ornament, but as in his painting of the ????Judgement of the model????, that painterly decorative air of Rococo and Romanticism was fading into academicism and left to confront the naked reality of the represented object. He inherited Goya??s eye for the paradox of ceremony and reality.  Related Paintings of Mariano Fortuny y Marsal :. | The Choice of a Model | la vicaria | Odalisque | Carnisseria publica | Fortuny-s Garden |
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Antonin Chittussi
(1 December 1847 - 1 May 1891) was a Czech Impressionist landscape painter. He was born in Ronov nad Doubravou to a Czech mother and a father of Italian descent. He was fascinated by the landscape of South Bohemia and of the Bohemian and Moravian Highlands. In particular, his smaller pictures replete with quick, easy brushstrokes are among the most admired of Czech landscape painting. He died in Prague.
Donatello
Italian Early Renaissance Sculptor, 1386-1466,Italian sculptor. He was the most imaginative and versatile Florentine sculptor of the early Renaissance, famous for his rendering of human character and for his dramatic narratives. He achieved these ends by studying ancient Roman sculpture and amalgamating its ideas with an acute and sympathetic observation of everyday life. Together with Alberti, Brunelleschi, Masaccio and Uccello, Donatello created the Italian Renaissance style, which he introduced to Rome, Siena and Padua at various stages of his career. He was long-lived and prolific: between 1401 and 1461 there are 400 documentary references to him, some for nearly every year.
gosta adrian-nilsson
Gösta Adrian-Nilsson, GAN, född 2 april 1884 i Lund, död 29 mars 1965 i Stockholm, svensk konstnär och författare. Räknas som en betydande pionjär inom den svenska modernistiska konsten. GAN debuterade som konstnär 1907 med en utställning på Lunds universitets konstmuseum. Efter studier i bl.a. Köpenhamn for han 1913 till Berlin för att studera modernismen. I Berlin kom han genom författaren Herwarth Waldens galleri Der Sturm i kontakt med futurism, expressionism och kubism. Influerad av dessa ismer skapade GAN sedan sin nya, modernistiska stil. 1916 flyttade han till Stockholm där han genom sin modernistiska konst och sin propaganda för den nya konsten, väckte stor uppmärksamhet. Att GAN var homosexuell avspeglas i flera av hans verk. Till exempel var han periodvis nästan maniskt fixerad vid sjömän och han dyrkade maskulin kraft. Andra favoritmotiv var manliga idrottsutövare. Samtidigt var den homosexuella erotiken både förbjuden och tabubelagd och GAN tvingades att leva ett dubbelliv. Mellan 1920 och 1925 bodde och arbetade GAN i Paris där han kom i kontakt med Fernand L??ger. Kontakten med denne ledde till att GAN:s inriktning mot kubismen förstärktes. Under 1930-talet anslöt han sig till surrealismen. Förutom oljemålningar finns akvareller med folkvisemotiv samt gobelängkartonger bland hans verk. Dessa "säljbara" verk gjorde GAN dock i de flesta fall av ekonomiska skäl snarare än konstnärliga. Han skrev även dikter, noveller och barnböcker.