Modest Cuixart - European Contemporary Art

Modest Cuixart  (1925-2007)

"Painter, draftsman, printmaker and scenographer Spanish. He was born in Barcelona on November 2, 1925 and passed away in Palamós (Girona) on October 31, 2007.In 1944 he joined the Faculty of medicine, but abandoned it in 1946 to devote himself completely to painting. In 1948 he participated in the founding of the magazine Dau al set and in the Group of the same name, being the first and most important manifestation of Spanish surrealism of post-war linking innovative movements after the war with the avant-garde of the first third of the century, together with Arnau Puig, Joan Brossa, Tharrats and Tàpies. Two years later, took part in the "second week of art" organized by the "School of Altamira", where he became friends with Willi Baumeister, Lloréns Artigas, Luis Felipe Vivanco and Ricardo Gullón, among others.In 1951 he travelled to France, alternating her residence between Lyon and Paris. His first paintings and drawings, in the Decade of the 1940s, are assigned to expressionism. Then it went through a surreal stage linked to fantastic and dreamlike, images in the time of "Dau to Set". In the Decade of the fifties evolved into a painting informalist and material that uses the "dripping" and collage, to end up going to a painting which will progressively accentuating of expressionist figuration, with a special interest in the female figure and "erotic" images. Cuixart Antigone of the Ballet Moderne de Paris made a substantial graphic works, as well as decorations and theatrical costumes, including those carried out for the ballet in 1964. In 1958 he won prize Torres García and in 1959 the painting prize of the 'V biennial of São Paulo".The Dau al Set room organized in 1975 a sample retrospective which incorporated his work from the first steps of 1942. Representative pieces of each of the phases crossed by Cuixart, from his time there could see magicista and surrealist of Dau al Set, up to the abarrocada and neomodernista figuration of recent times, passing through his abstract phase of calligrams, "dripping", collages and painting material from mid-1950s, and the period through which blooms materic and the viscous exuberancias of informalism diluted slowly giving space to those sensual presence and obsessive frivolous woman with Hat plant, disturbing allegories of the grim reaper who populate his latest paintings. Despite the incessant changes and fluctuations of the interest of the painter between the materials and the strictly formal, exists in Cuixart a constant that gives unity to the whole of his contribution: the magical element, the use of a hermetic language of symbols, the embodiment of a dark mystery magma; in the words of the poet Joan Perucho: "Cuixart is taca les mans amb the fosca". "(thebiography.us)

Jan Koblasa - Czech sculptor, artist and poet

Jan KOBLASA (1932-2017)  Czech poet, graphic, painter, scenographer, sculptor, writer, university educator and artist .
"Jan Koblasa was born on October 5th 1932 in Tabor. Koblasa is one of the leading figures in European sculpture second the 20th century. His expressive symbolic, avant-garde work is oriented development studies at the Prague Academy of Fine Arts (1952-1958). With several young protesters then initiates establishment of the "Klub" (from 1957 group Spidrové), reacting to recessions neodadaistickou zmrtvělost and absurdity of the time. Impressed concrete music, expressionism, and existential philosophy tries to even the statues paintings express my sense of life. Becomes the leader of the younger generation and one of the prominent nekonformního, radically oriented art. Attend the first informal, then Czechoslovak prestigious exhibitions of modern art at home and abroad. The occupation of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, it captures in Italy. Coming back. Gaining asylum in northern Germany. In 1969, based in Kiel at the Fachhochschule Study Muthesius free sculpture, which the professor leading up to 1998. He lives in Hamburg, where his work is well received and respected. The specific form of expressive, content-rich expression, which first went through phases of radical abstraction, holds unconventional views of man and his destiny. Contributes to the emphasis on a mythical archetype of cinematography, in which the message is Koblasa analogy to the current life experience. Until now prepared - mostly in Europe - about a hundred solo exhibitions. In his work has won numerous awards and his works own the world's major collections. Representative of the artist's monograph published in Czech and German."(galerieubetlemskekaple.cz)

Jerzy Duda-Gracz

"Jerzy Duda-Gracz painter, illustrator, graphic artist and scenographer. Born on March 20th, 1941 in Częstochowa. Died on November 5th, 2004 in Łagów.He graduated from the Graphic Faculty at the Katowice-branch of the Academy of Fine Arts in Kraków.
Duda-Gracz's art contains elements of both grotesque and irony on one hand and of sentimentalism and nostalgia on the other. The latter derives from a world which, in the painter's own words, 'departs, dies, which has more in common with the world of dreams, childhood memories' – the 'post-industrial landscape world'. He is, however, known primarily for works with more bitter overtones which comment on the socio-political reality of the past decades, beginning with the communist-era Poland and ending with the beginnings of the transformation. Formally, his art did not evolve much throughout the decades. Duda-Gracz's paintings, thinly-layered but with visible brush strokes, became less colour driven but stuck to the same expression of realism and grotesque. On one hand, he tapped into – what was often noticed – Polish painting from the late 19th and early 20th century (especially Witold Wojtkiewicz) and Flemish 17th century realism, but also into contemporary and local styles – kapism and the art of Silesian outsiders from the Janowska Group." (culture.pl )

 

Jozef Szajna

Born in 1922 and died in 2008, Jozef Szajna was a Polish painter, scenographer and theorist. Jozef Szajna studied at the Academy of Fine Arts of Krakow before getting enrolled in the Polish army. He was taken prisoner and sent to the concentration camps of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. Since the 50s, He teaches at the Academy of Fine Arts of Krakow and at the Academy of Fine Arts of Warsaw. Jozef Szajna founded the theatre Ludowy in Nowa Huta and the Studio Centrum Sztuki in Warsaw. He is an honorable member of the International Association of Artists of Plastics arts at the UNESCO. He has obtained several prizes including the grand order of restored Poland, the 1st, 2nd and 3rd prize from the Ministry of Culture and the World Culture Prize. His pieces are exhibited in numerous museum collections including at the National Museum of Warsaw and at the Center of Polish Scultpture of Orosk.