Richard Dick Wray - Abstract Expressionism Artworks

Richard Dick Wray (1933 - 2011) was an American abstract expressionist painter whose work had an influence on the art scene in Houston, Texas. After an art career spanning over 50 years, he died at age 77 of liver disease. His work continues to be showcased by art institutions and organizations across Houston, including the William Reaves Gallery, and is listed on the official website for the National Gallery of Art.

In 1955, Wray received an honorable discharge from the Army and enrolled in the School of Architecture of the University of Houston. There, he would spend the next 3 years studying various forms of architecture, until leaving the school to finish his studies at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Arts Academy of the city of Düsseldorf, Germany. Wray travelled to Europe in 1958 in order to discover what he believed was the "center" of the art world. The two years he spent in Europe—beginning in Paris and concluding in Germany—laid the foundation for his painting career. Though originally interested in architecture, Wray's interactions with the work of abstract expressionists, artists of a European avant-garde movement known as the CoBrA group and New York Abstract Expressionists (which Wray also saw for the first time in Europe) had tremendous influences on his artistic passions. In effect, Wray deviated away from architecture and, equipped with new knowledge of European expressionism, returned to Texas at age 26 to begin his career as a painter.Wikipedia

 

 

 

 

 

Angel Acosta Leon

 

 Angel Acosta Leon (1930–1964) was a Cuban painter.
Angel Acosta Leon disregarded as a painter of Cuban themes, brought up in a poor family and otherwise forgotten by critics during his lifetime, Angel Acosta Leon led a tragic life.
Studying at San Alejandro in his youth, Acosta created art for only nine years, five of which were after he matured as a painter.His earliest paintings were oils of the sea and harbor and of tree lined parks.He is generally not well-known for these early works, so there is an excellent chance of one of these paintings surfacing somewhere.From the very beginning, Acosta struggled as a painter.
His family was poor, and did not understand his need to paint.
He often lived in cramped situations, and not until he was much older could he afford to move out of his family's house and into a room at a Havana mansion.This familial alienation would become an underlying current in his works.Acosta had many themes in his work, another of which was sickness and death.

 

Albin Brunovsky

 

 Albin Brunovsky (1935 - 1997) was a Slovak painter, graphic artist, lithographer, illustrator and pedagogue, considered one of the greatest Slovak painters of the 20th century.
Over the course of his career, Brunovsky experimented with various graphic techniques and was highly influenced in his subject matter by poetry and literature, as well, of course, as by other artists. While at school he used the techniques of woodcuts and linocuts. Soon after, however, he began experimenting with "scraper" and chalk lithography. Etching were the characteristic mode of his graphic art work during the mid-1960s. He was, however, a painter too. Many of his illustrations were done in watercolor and he eventually began to paint major works. 

 

 

Mansooreh Hosseini - Iranian Contemporary Art

 

 Mansooreh Hosseini (1926 –2012) was an Iranian contemporary artist and one of the pioneers of the country’s modern art.
At a young age, it was discovered that she had a talent for drawing, which compelled her father to hire a painting tutor to help her work to her potential. Later on, she was educated at the University of Tehran in the Faculty of Fine Arts, from which she graduated in 1949. Mansooreh left Iran in the early 1950s to live in Italy, where she furthered her education at the Rome Academy of Fine Arts leading up to her artistic début at the 28th (XXVIII) Venice Biennial in 1956.After a moderately successful period in Italy, Mansooreh returned to Iran in 1959 and won several awards in the Tehran Painting Biennial. In 2004 she exhibited at the Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art.Mansooreh is known for having produced works in both figurative and abstract styles. Her works have often included elements of Kufic script. She is known, along with Behjat Sadr, to use traditional elements of both the Persian culture and that of contemporary Europeans. She is considered to be an experimentalist.She is Permanent Member of Islamic Republic of Iran's Academy of Arts.Wikipedia