Kurt Trampedach - Surrealism

Kurt Trampedach (1943 – 2013) was a Danish painter and sculptor.Trampedach studied at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1963 to 1969. He had his artistic breakthrough by the end of the sixties. He has often made distorted self-portraits and portraits of his own wife. Portraits of horses, and of larged headed babies were other favorite motifs. His dark style was particularly inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn. Painting was a way for him to work with his own psyche, with frequent bouts of depression and mania. In 1983 Trampedach's studio in Copenhagen was set on fire destroying many paintings. In 1984 he received the Eckersberg Medal.Wikipedia

Alina Szapocznikow - Polish Artist and Sculptor

"Sculptor and artist. Born on May 19, 1926, in Kalisz and died on March 2nd, 1973, in Praz-Coutant, France.zapocznikow was one of the most original woman sculptors in contemporary art. Inspired by the personal experience of her long battle with a fatal illness, she created a visual language of her own to reflect the changes going on in the human body, introducing new materials to the sculptor's repertoire with which she courageously and effectively experimented to create moving works with an uncommon power of expression.During the German occupation, she spent the years 1940-1942 with her mother in the Pabianice ghetto (her father died in 1938). From there she was transferred to the Łódź ghetto, and then - via Auschwitz - to the camps of Bergen-Belsen and Teresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. After the war she decided to study sculpture.From 1945 to 1946 she trained in Otokar Velimski's studio, later moving on to study at the Academy of Art and Industry in Prague (supervised by Josef Wagner). From 1948 to 1950 she studied at the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, working in Paul Niclausse's studio as a student. She came back to Poland in 1951 and began to participate in artistic life, taking part in competitions to create public monuments to Chopin (with Oskar Hansen), to Polish-Soviet Friendship, to the Warsaw Heroes, the victims of Auschwitz and Juliusz Słowacki. In 1963 she moved to France for good. In Paris she became involved with the Nouveau Réalisme movement (along with Arman, César and Niki de Saint-Phalle), led by the critic Pierre Restany. However, Szapocznikow retained her originality, remaining a sensitive artist focused mostly on issues of intimacy.Since for a long time she was interested mostly in her own body, one could assume that there was something narcissistic in her work. Even while radically transforming the masses of her new sculptures, she still observed biological forms. Her shapes may not have been concrete, but they remained legible enough for the viewer to realize that the sculptor was striving to find forms of expression for her fascination with the "impact force of the biology of life", as Janusz Zagrodzki wrote. Szapocznikow herself said at the time that she was interested in "searching for form, searching for the greatest expression of sensuality or dramatic quality". This was in keeping with her fascination with what happens to a human being in liminal moments. "The fleeting moment, the trivial moment – these are the only symbols of our earthly existence", she wrote. This conviction was spawned by her personal experiences with war, death and illness. Szapocznikow's sculptures were almost entirely focused on memorizing the body and "recording" the impermanent. Her designs for monuments referred more to the collective experience; later, her art would become primarily the record of one female body subject to the pressure of suffering.(Author: Małgorzata Kitowska-Łysiak, Art History Institute of the Catholic University of Lublin, February 2003. Updated by Agnieszka Le Nart, November 2011.culture.pl )

Kurt Trampedach

Kurt Trampedach (13 May 1943 – 12 November 2013) was a Danish painter and sculptor.Trampedach studied at the Danish Academy of Fine Arts from 1963 to 1969. He had his artistic breakthrough by the end of the sixties. He has often made distorted self-portraits and portraits of his own wife. Portraits of horses, and of larged headed babies were other favorite motifs. His dark style was particularly inspired by Rembrandt van Rijn. Painting was a way for him to work with his own psyche, with frequent bouts of depression and mania. In 1983 Trampedach's studio in Copenhagen was set on fire destroying many paintings. In 1984 he received the Eckersberg Medal.
With his wife he moved to Sare in the French Pyrenees where he lived in a house built by himself, raising animals and painting.
In April 2002 his house and studio in France was burned down while he was in Denmark preparing an exhibition. And within a month his studio in Copenhagen was set on fire, destroying seven large paintings. Trampedach himself barely escaped the flames. Trampedach claimed that the fire in Copenhagen had been an attempt at his life by jealous colleagues. Some people claimed that he had started the fire himself, but in 2005 a French-Moroccan was sentenced for the crime in France, although the Copenhagen fires continue unresolved. After the fires he was struck by a severe depression and did not paint for the last years of his life. Kurt Trampedach died at his home in Southern France on 12 November 2013 at the age of seventy.Wikipedia

Jan Zrzavy

Jan Zrzavy (5 November 1890 – 12 October 1977) was a leading Czech painter, graphic artist, and illustrator of the 20th century.He was born in Okrouhlice near Německý Brod in Bohemia (present-day Czech Republic). He studied privately in Prague and then attended the UMPRUM there for 2 years starting in 1907, before being expelled. He first visited France in 1907, returning to Paris and Brittany frequently until 1939, but maintaining close links to his homeland.
After the war he became an associate professor at Palacký University of Olomouc from 1947 to 1950. Later he maintained private studios in Prague and Okrouhlice. He grew increasingly recognized on a national and international level in the 1950s and 1960s, and was honoured a title of a National Artist in 1965. He died in Prague on October 12, 1977.Zrzavý was a key member of the Czech, and more broadly European, modernism movement the early part of the 20th century. Although he is regarded as a symbolist he was heavily influenced by European Medieval art. Throughout his life he was also inspired by spectacular landscapes, both abroad (France, Italy, and Greece) as well as in his native country (Vodňany, Okrouhlice, Prague). He reworked many of his themes multiple times. He was admired by and written about by one of the founders of the Czech artistic movement called Poetism, Karel Teige.Wikipedia