Art Spheres: My Collection of Paintings

sabato 15 marzo 2008

My Collection of Paintings

I use this blog mainly to store pictures of my paintings. I don't pretend to be an artist, but enjoy painting. For me it is a great plasure to leave the strivings and worries of intensive work days behind and for an hour, or two, disappear into a creative process that tends to engulf me entirely.

I also like to show my pictures to others and ask them if they create a response or provoke some interesting thoughts and opinions. To that end, I invite you to share your impressions with me.

You may purchase any of the pictures on display. They are all painted in acrylic and framed.

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The Battle of San Romano

Jeanne Hébuterne

Gentle, shy, and delicate , Jeanne Hébuterne was Amadeo Modigliani’s wife and favorite model. In 1920, two days after Modigliani’s death from tuberculosis Jeanne threw herself out of a fifth-floor apartment window, killing herself and her unborn child , leaving a two year old girl behind. The orphan, who also was named Jeanne, grew up knowing virtually nothing of her parents. However as an adult she researched their lives and wrote an excellent biography of her father and his art "Modigliani : Man and Myth."

Nuba wrestlers, photographed by George Rodger

The Nuba people of Sudan was made world famous by two oustanding photographers with completely opposite experiences of World War II. George Rodger had been a war correspondent. He took the horrifying photos of mountains of corpses in liberated Bergen Belsen. Rodger traveled to the Nuba “to relieve myself from the horrors of the European slaughterhouse”. Rodger’s photos fascinated Leni Riefenstahl, intimate friend of Adolf Hitler and famous for propaganda movies about the Nuremburg Party Rallies and the Berlin Olympics. In the early 1970s, Reifenstahl sporadically stayed with the Nuba and later published two famous books with photographs. Nowadays, the Nuba have suffered from the wars in Sudan.

Nicolaj Diulgheroff “Rational man”

Matisse painting Lydia Delectorskaya

The lady resting her head on her arm is Lydia Delectorskaya. In 1932, Lydia met another Russian emigree at a bus stop. Lydia was told that an artist nearby needed a model. She went off the bus by Matisse’s house, rang the doorbell and asked to be taken on. Matisse painted her intensively in the 1930s and 1940s. Lydia supervised his business affairs - hiring staff and models, keeping records and dealt with gallery owners. When Matisse became an invalid for the rest of his life, after a colostomy operation in 1942, it was Delectorskaya who nursed him.

Angels of Sodom & Moses saved from the Water

Gustave Moreau was Matisse’s teacher at École des Beaux-Arts. He was a Symbolist painter of exotic worlds , inhabited by gods and etheric androgyns. Moreau’s jewel-like paintings, which recall Medieval illuminated manuscripts or Mughal miniatures, made his wicked friend Edgar Degas state: ” He would have us believe that the gods wear watch chains”. However, in the 1870s Moreau began to create compositions combined of pure areas of colour, where lumps of paint emerge as figures. After I made a painting of only shapes and colours I saw that a lump of colour could be a descending angel and called my abstract work “Angel descending after the Apocalypse” a name Moreau could have used.

Faiyum portrait from the Antikensammlung in Munich

I saw an exhibition with mummy portraits from Roman Egyptian tombs found in the Faiyum Oasis. They hung one by one at eye level in a dark room and it was a strange experience to look straight into the faces of people dead since 2 000 years. Their portraits were painted in such a way that I felt these persons to be my contemporaries. Time became an illusion. Together with Faiyum portraits I also tried to paint fantasy depictions of Roman ladies against a background of Pompeian red, but I did not succeed in obtaining the right glow

"Portrait d'une négresse." Le Louvre

I am probably more of a colourist than a drawing artist. My "African Lady” is somewhat unproportioned and not comparable to the French woman artist Marie-Guillemine Benoist’s "Portrait d'une négresse" from the year 1800. This painting has been called "perhaps the most beautiful portrait of a black woman ever painted”. The sitter was probably a servant brought back from the Antilles by Benoist’s sailor brother-in-law. However, there is not the least suggestion of servitude in the painting. The young lady is dressed up like a Greek lady from Classical time..

Rembrandt and Picasso

I am far from being the first one to distort nudes by Rembrandt. Above is an example of Picasso''s version of Bethseda bathing. The model is the same lady as in my painting - Rembrandt's wife Saskia van Uylenburgh. After Saskia died in tuberculosis, only thirty years of age, Rembrandt lived together with Geertje Dircx. He did not marry her because it would mean the loss of Saskia's inheritance. When Geertje left Rembrandt, and tried to sell jewelery that had belonged to Saskia, Rembrandt went to court and had Geertje locked up in a madhouse. To afford paying for the burial of his last lover, Hendrickje Stoffels, Rembrandt sold Saskia's grave.

Picasso: Gertrude Stein

In the manner of Andy Warhol I have made several images of Pablo Picasso's magnificent painting of his very good friend and mentor Gertrude Stein. Like Warhol's Marilyn Monroe, Gertrude Stein is also some kind of icon: An early unpredjudiced connaisseur and promoter of Modern Art, a highly original author and not the least an open lesbian in a time when such persons where treated with open disdain. Picasso has been able to convey the monumentality of this magnificent women, who was both mentally and physically strong.

Shepard Fairey: Progress and Hope

Self Portrait by Henri Rosseau, owned by Picasso

I n 1908, Pablo Picasso and his Bohemian artist pals throw a wild banquet in honour of Henri Rousseau, the greatest naïf painter ever. The party was probably meant to be some kind of joke on behalf of the serious, but untrained Henri, who was called the Douanier (the customs officer) since he had spent most of his life at river duty stations of Paris. When he left the party Henri told Picasso: "You and I are the two most important artists of the age - you in the Egyptian style, and I in the modern one." Everyone laughed at what Rosseau had said in earnest, considering it to be a hilarious proof of his naivity. Though I think Rosseau was right. His paintings still look fresh and modern, and after all there is something of Egyptian monumentality over Picasso’s art. Furthermore, Egyptian Fayum portaits have a timeless, “modern flavour”.

Goya: Aun aprendo

Like Rembrandt, Goya was constantly drawing and like the Dutch master, the Spaniard's output is very varied, depicting a wide variety of human existence, as well as strange dream worlds. Goya was particularly interested in drawing impressions from poverty and hardship. I copied and coloured an apparently quickly executed sketch of a beggar. Goya often wrote short comments on his sketches, the one reproduced here was sketched by Goya when he was completely deaf and over 80 years old, it carries the caption "I am still learning".

Art Spheres

sabato 15 marzo 2008

My Collection of Paintings

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After Paolo Uccello

After Piero della Francesca

Sphinx

Torsos

After Modigliani

After Leni Riefenthal

Flowers Close-up

Morning Light

Evening Light

FuturoCubismo

Futuristic Dreamscape

Milking a Goat

After Rembrandt

A Suspicious Lion

After Matisse

After Matisse

Apocalypse

After Matisse

Tree trunks by Juan Dolio

Fayum Portraits

Roman Ladies

Impressions of Africa

Chair and Lady

Twilight by the Sea

Nudes

After Rembrandt

Two Dimensions

Vision of a Dancer

After Picasso

After Picasso

After Picasso

After Picasso

After Picasso

Barack Hussein Obama

After Matisse

A Fayum Couple

Fayum Lady

Fayum Youngster

Fayum Man

Belgian Interior

Shapes

After Matisse

After Matisse

Juno

A Spanish Beggar

After Michelangelo

Coming out from behind the Veil

Behind Veil 1

A woman who does not run with the wolves

Wolf

Wolf Woman

Looking into the well

Vicky

1800 Century African

Kafka

North African Metaphysics

North African Metaphysics 2

Haitian 1

Haitian Lady 1

Haitian Lady 2

Falling

Caring, Carrying

Dilip

Jean Gabin

Senegalese Girl

Exposed with shadow and landscape

After Rembrandt

Bridge

Faceless Bather

My studio seen from the street

The Battle of San Romano

Polyptych of the Misericordia

The Sphinx of San Michele

Jeanne Hébuterne

Nuba wrestlers, photographed by George Rodger

Rouen Cathedral in Sunlight