Mexican Social Realist Muralist, 1886-1957,Mexican muralist. After study in Mexico City and Spain, he settled in Paris from 1909 to 1919. He briefly espoused Cubism but abandoned it c. 1917 for a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of colour. He returned to Mexico in 1921, seeking to create a new national art on revolutionary themes in the wake of the Mexican Revolution. He painted many public murals, the most ambitious of which is in the National Palace (1929 ?C 57). From 1930 to 1934 he worked in the U.S. His mural for New York's Rockefeller Center aroused a storm of controversy and was ultimately destroyed because it contained the figure of Vladimir Ilich Lenin; he later reproduced it at the Palace of Fine Arts in Mexico City. With Jose Clemente Orozco and David Alfaro Siqueiros, Rivera created a revival of fresco painting that became Mexico's most significant contribution to 20th-century art. His large-scale didactic murals contain scenes of Mexican history, culture, and industry, with Indians, peasants, conquistadores, and factory workers drawn as simplified figures in crowded, shallow spaces. Rivera was twice married to Frida Kahlo.   Related Paintings of Diego Rivera :. | Self-Portrait | From Great Conquest to 1930 | No title | Rivera and Carlo | The Dancing from Tehuantepec |
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LANCRET, Nicolas
French painter (b. 1690, Paris, d. 1743, Paris). French painter, draughtsman and collector. He was one of the most prolific and imaginative genre painters of the first half of the 18th century in France, and, although after his death he was long regarded as a follower and imitator of Antoine Watteau, his work is markedly personal and often innovative. He began training as an engraver but soon apprenticed himself to Pierre Dulin (1669-1748), a moderately successful history painter; by 1708 he had enrolled as a student at the Academie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture, Paris. At an unknown date he entered the workshop of the genre and decorative painter Claude Gillot, who had been Watteau's master. This move signalled an important change of direction away from the history painting pursued by his friend Francois Lemoyne. Two contemporary biographers, Ballot de Sovot and D?zallier D'Argenville
Martin, Henri
French Post-Impressionist Painter, 1860-1943 French painter. After winning the Grand Prix at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Toulouse, he moved to Paris (1879) to study at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts there under Jean-Paul Laurens, who encouraged his interest in Veronese and other Venetian painters. The literary inspiration of his early work was reflected in such paintings as Paolo de Malatesta and Francesca da Rimini in Hell (1883; Carcassonne, Mus. B.-A.) based on Dante, for which he won a medal at the Salon of 1883. During his subsequent study in Rome, however, on a fellowship awarded to him at the Salon,
Melchior de Hondecoeter
1635-1695 Dutch Melchior de Hondecoeter Gallery Melchior d'Hondecoeter (c. 1636 ?C April 3, 1695), Dutch animalier painter, was born at Utrecht, and died in Amsterdam. After the start of his career, he painted virtually exclusively bird subjects, usually exotic or game, in a park-like landscapes. Being the grandson of Gillis d'Hondecoeter and son of Gijsbert d'Hondecoeter, as well as nephew of Jan Baptist Weenix, he was brought up by the last to the profession of painting, when his father died. Of Weenix we know that he married Gilles daughter Josina in 1638. Melchior was, therefore, also related to Jan Weenix. The latter told Arnold Houbraken, in his youth Melchior was extremely religious, praying very loud, so his mother and uncle doubted if they would have him trained as a painter. In 1659 he was working in the Hague and became a member of the painters' academy at the Hague. In 1663 Hondecoeter married Susanne Tradel in Amsterdam. While she was captious and having her sisters living in their house, Hondecoeter spent much time in his garden or drinking in the tavern in the Jordaan. On the Lauriergracht, where he used to live, he was surrounded by art dealers and various painters. Later he moved to a house on Prinsengracht. In 1686 he bought a small countryhouse in Vreeland. Hondecoeter died in the house of his daughter Isabel in Warmoesstraat but was buried in Westerkerk near his house. His inventory lists a small gallow, to keep birds in the right position, and several paintings of Frans Snyders. Melchior began his career with a different speciality from that by which he is usually known. Mr de Stuers affirms that he produced sea-pieces. One of his earliest works is a "Tub with Fish," dated 1655, in the gallery of Brunswick. But Melchior soon abandoned fish for fowl. He acquired celebrity as a painter of birds only, which he represented not exclusively, like Johannes Fyt, as the gamekeeper's perquisite after a day's shooting, or stock of a poulterer's shop, but as living beings with passions, joys, fears and quarrels, to which naturalists will tell us that birds are subject. Without the brilliant tone and high finish of Fyt, his Dutch rival's birds are full of action; and, as Burger truly says, "Hondecoeter displays the maternity of the hen with as much tenderness and feeling as Raphael the maternity of Madonnas."