Funk art Roy De Forest

Roy De Forest (11 February 1930 – 18 May 2007) was an American painter, sculpture, and teacher. He was involved in both the Funk art and Nut art movements in the Bay Area of California. De Forest's art is known for its quirky and comical fantasy lands filled with bright colors and creatures, most commonly dogs.
Roy De Forest was born in North Platte, Nebraska to migrant farm workers during the Great Depression. De Forest's family lost their farm in Nebraska due to the harsh economic conditions during the Great Depression and were forced to move to Yakima, Washington. In Yakima, the De Forest's bought a new farm, where they harvested pears and plums. De Forest described the socio-economic status of his family as ‘not well off". Farm life had an important impact on De Forest's art. In his early art, De Forest experimented with landscape, which was inspired by the open land of his farm. Later in his career, De Forest began painting animals and other fantasy creatures in his art, which was inspired by growing up around farm animals

 De Forest claims that "the aspect of invention in painting is the major factor in what you would call my style of painting."De Forest rejected traditional styles of painting. He claimed that "rather than, say, taking an image and then finding a way to express it in paint, sometimes I think about how to use a paint and then find an image that fits it."  De Forest's style depicts journeys to fantasy lands filled with creatures, some familiar, some not. These lands were quirky, comical, and crowded, filled with texturized, hallucinogen colors. He describes himself as a "obscure visual constructor of mechanical delights."

 De Forest believed in having a great amount of variety in paintings. He believed that everything in a painting should differ in size, shape, etc. De Forest rejected bilateral symmetry, instead preferring randomness. An example of this are the dots he adds in his work, which have become sort of a trademark these dots are a trademark of his art.
De Forest is most known for the use of animals and fantasy creatures in his art, in particular, dogs. He became inspired to use animals in his artwork because he grew up on a farm and was constantly surrounded by dogs, cows, horses and other animals. He enjoyed adding creatures into his art because they reminded him of his past. De Forest believed that these animals also made his paintings more fun to make.

 De Forest's work grew more representational as his career continued, and began to include suggestions of maps and motifs evocative of persons and animals as his career continued. By the late 1960s this transformation was nearly complete, as De Forest's work now freely mixed patterns and non-objective elements along with recognizable forms such as people, landscapes, and most notably, animals.Wikipedia

Nude art Eliseu Visconti

Eliseu Visconti, born Eliseo d'Angelo Visconti (30 July 1866, Giffoni Valle Piana, Italy – 15 October 1944, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) was an Italian-born Brazilian painter, cartoonist, and teacher. He is considered one of the very few impressionist painters of Brazil. He is considered the initiator of the art nouveau in Brazil.Wikipedia

Classicism 

Claire Falkenstein

Claire Falkenstein (July 22, 1908 – October 23, 1997) was an American sculptor, painter, printmaker, jewelry designer, and teacher, most renowned for her often large-scale abstract metal and glass public sculptures.
Claire Falkenstein was born on July 22, 1908, in Coos Bay, Oregon. Her father managed a lumber mill. Claire attended Anna Head School in the Oakland–Berkeley, California area after her family moved there.She attended the University of California at Berkeley, and graduated in 1930 with a major in art and minors in anthropology and philosophy. She had her first one-woman exhibition, at a San Francisco gallery, even before graduation.[6] Her art education continued in the early 1930s at Mills College, where she took a master class with Alexander Archipenko, and met László Moholy-Nagy and György Kepes.Wikipedia

American sculptor Claire Falkenstein is best known for her fusions of tangled copper and melted glass. She worked with a variety of material, including traditional wood and stone, as well as experimenting with plastic, steel, glass, and aluminum. Likewise, she produced a wide range of forms, including furniture, fountains, wallpaper, jewelry, and large public works. From 1950 through the early ‘60s she lived in Europe, where she met Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. There she created her most famous commission, the doors for the Peggy Guggenheim Museum in Venice, a twisted web of metal and colored glass. In post-war Paris she worked with simple materials that could be found at the hardware store, especially wire, which she used to “draw” sculptural forms. “Everything is drawing,” she said. “Sculpture is drawing.”(artsy.net)

Norman W. Lewis

Norman W. Lewis (July 23, 1909 – August 27, 1979) was an African-American painter, scholar, and teacher. He is associated with Abstract Expressionism who also used representational strategies to focus on black urban life and his community's struggles. Lewis was African-American, of Bermudian descent.
Norman Wilfred Lewis was born in Harlem, New York to Bermudan parents. Always interested in art, he had amassed a large art history library by the time he was a young man. A lifelong resident of Harlem, he also traveled extensively during the two years that he worked on ocean freighters. An important early influence was the sculptor and teacher Augusta Savage, who provided him with open studio space at her Harlem Community Art Center. He also participated in WPA art projects, alongside Jackson Pollock, among others.Lewis began his career in 1933, with earlier mostly figurative work. He at first painted what he saw, which ranged from Meeting Place (1930), a swap meet scene, and The Yellow Hat (1936), a formal Cubist painting, to Dispossessed (1940), an eviction scene, and Jazz Musicians (1948), a visual depiction of the bebop that was being played in Harlem.Norman Lewis was the only African- American artist among the first generation of Abstract Expressionists.His work was overlooked many times because of his political involvement, and also because of the area where he lived. His skin colour at this time period had a major impact on his work life.

 In the late 1940s, his work became increasingly abstract. His total engagement with abstract expressionism was due partially to his disillusionment with America after his wartime experiences in World War II. It seemed extremely hypocritical that America was fighting "against an enemy whose master race ideology was echoed at home by the fact of a segregated armed forces."[4] Seeing that art does not have the power to change the political state that society was in, he decided that people should develop their aesthetic skills more, instead of focusing on political art. Tenement I (1952), Harlem Turns White (1955), and Night Walker No. 2 (1956) are all examples of his style. Twilight Sounds (1947) and Jazz Band (1948) are examples of his interest in conveying music.

 One of his best known paintings, Migrating Birds (1954), won the Popular Prize at the Carnegie Museum's 1955 Carnegie International Exhibition, the New York Herald-Tribune calling the painting "one of the most significant of all events of the 1955 art year." His signature style in those decades included repetitive ideographic or hieroglyphic elements that allowed Lewis to incorporate narrative sequences into his paintings.Wikipedia