The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork - Gothic architecture

 Gothic architecture is most familiar as the architecture of many of the great cathedrals, abbeys and churches of Europe.
 The Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork (Polish: zamek w Malborku; German: Ordensburg Marienburg) is a 13th-century Teutonic castle and fortress located near the town of Malbork, Poland. It is the largest castle in the world measured by land area and a UNESCO World Heritage Site.It was originally constructed by the Teutonic Knights, a German Roman Catholic religious order of crusaders, in a form of an Ordensburg fortress. The Order named it Marienburg in honour of Mary, mother of Jesus. In 1466, during the division of Prussia into eastern and western parts, the castle and town became part of western Royal Prussia, a region of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. It served as one of the several Polish royal residences, interrupted by several years of Swedish occupation, and fulfilling this function until the First Partition of Poland in 1772. Following Germany's defeat in 1945, the land was reassigned to Poland. Heavily damaged during World War II, the castle was renovated under the auspices of modern-day Poland in the second half of the 20th century and most recently in 2016. Nowadays, the castle hosts exhibitions and serves as a museum.The castle is a classic example of a medieval fortress and, on its completion in 1406, was the world's largest brick castle.[3] UNESCO designated the "Castle of the Teutonic Order in Malbork" and the Malbork Castle Museum a World Heritage Site in December 1997.It is one of two World Heritage Sites in the region, together with the "Medieval Town of Toruń", which was founded in 1231.
Castle is also one of Poland's official national Historic Monuments (Pomnik historii), as designated on 16 September 1994. Its listing is maintained by the National Heritage Board of Poland. Wikipedia

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Pavel Filonov - Russian avant-garde artist

Pavel Nikolayevich Filonov (January 8, 1883 – December 3, 1941) was a Russian avant-garde painter, art theorist, and poet. Filonov was born in Moscow on January 8, 1883 (Gregorian calendar) or December 27, 1882 (Julian calendar). In 1897, he moved to St. Petersburg where he took art lessons. In 1908, he entered St. Petersburg Academy of Arts, from which, he was expelled in 1910.
In 1910–1914, he took part in the arts group Soyuz Molodyozhi created by artists Elena Guro and Mikhail Matyushin. In 1912, he wrote the article The Canon and the Law, in which, he formulated the principles of analytical realism, or "anti-Cubism". According to Filonov, Cubism represents objects using elements of their surface geometry but "analytical realists" should represent objects using elements of their inner soul. He was faithful to these principles for the remainder of his life. During the years 1913 to 1915, Filonov was close to Vladimir Mayakovsky, Velimir Khlebnikov, and other futurists. He co-illustrated Khlebnikov's Selected Poems with Postscript, 1907–1914 alongside Kazimir Malevich during this time. In the autumn of 1916, he enlisted for service in World War I, and served on the Romanian front. Filonov participated actively in the Russian Revolution of 1917 and served as the Chairman of the Revolutionary War Committee of Dunay region.In 1919, he exhibited in the First Free Exhibit of Artists of All Trends at the Hermitage. In 1923, he became a professor of St. Petersburg Academy of Arts and a member of the Institute for Artistic Culture . He organized a large arts school of Masters of Analytical Realism (over seventy artists). Their work influenced suprematism and expressionism.
In 1929, a large retrospective exhibition of Filonov art was planned at the Russian Museum; however, the Soviet government forbade the exhibition from going forward. From 1932 onward, Filonov literally starved but still refused to sell his works to private collectors. He wanted to give all his works to the Russian Museum as a gift so as to start a Museum of Analytical Realism. He died of starvation on December 3, 1941 during the Nazi Siege of Leningrad. Under the umbrella of Universal Flowering, Filonov put forth a manner of working that proceeded from the particular to the general. He believed that objects and fields should be built up from small details and bits and stated that doing it the other-way-round was nothing short of "charlatanism". To this end, he worked, and required his students to work, with very small brushes in painting and the finest of points when drawing. Wikipedia

Maciej Józefowicz - Graphics

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John Balossi

John Balossi (May 28, 1931 – April 8, 2007) was a painter and sculptor.
"Painter, sculptor, printmaker, watercolorist, ceramicist, and teacher. Balossi studied at Columbia University, where he earned his BFA in 1956 and his MFA in 1960. Between 1956 and 1960 Balossi worked as a commercial artist and managed a gallery with J. Peplinsky, another young artist. He moved to Puerto Rico in 1960 and from 1962 to 1988 taught at the Río Piedras Campus of the University of Puerto Rico. Balossi was the recipient of an honorable mention at the First UNESCO Painting Salon and first prize at the Fifth. He worked principally in sculpture, using a variety of materials such as stone, wood, terracotta, hammered aluminum plates, iron (soldered), and ceramic clay; he joined the Manos Group of ceramicists in the eighties. Balossi was known as a colorist, and both his paintings and ceramic works almost always portrayed horses or female figures."(mapr.org)

 

Jan Groover - Fine Art Photography

Jan Groover (April 24, 1943 – January 1, 2012) was an American photographer who spent the last part of her life in Montpon-Menesterol, France, with her husband, a painter and critic named Bruce Boice. Groover was born in Plainfield, New Jersey and died in 2012 at Montpon-Ménestérol.Groover received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in 1965 from Pratt Institute, and a Master of Arts in 1970 from Ohio State University.Groover was noted for her use of emerging color technologies. In 1979, Groover began to use platinum prints for portraits and still lifes, transforming everyday items into beautiful, formal still lifes. In 1987, critic Andy Grundberg noted in The New York Times, “In 1978 an exhibition of her dramatic still-life photographs of objects in her kitchen sink caused a sensation. When one appeared on the cover of Artforum magazine, it was a signal that photography had arrived in the art world - complete with a marketplace to support it.”Groover also used early 20th century camera technology, such as the banquet camera, for elongated, horizontal presentations of otherwise pedestrian items. In a New York Times review of Groover’s work exhibited at Janet Borden Inc., New York, in 1997, critic Roberta Miller called Groover’s work “beautiful and masterly in the extreme.”Jan Groover’s work was the subject of a mid-career retrospective at the Museum of Modern Art in 1987, for which an accompanying catalogue was printed. Her work has also been the subject of one-person exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art; Cleveland Museum of Art; the Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC; and the International Museum of Photography, George Eastman House, Rochester, New York.Wikipedia

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