Greek-born Spanish Mannerist Painter, 1541-1614 Considered a representative of late Renaissance Spanish art, El Greco was actually born in Greece, on the island of Crete. After studying in Venice under Titian, El Greco settled in Toledo, Spain in 1577. At the time he was wildly popular, his emotionally religious paintings being just the ticket for the hometown of the Spanish Inquisition. After his death his work was largely ignored until the beginning of the 20th century; now he considered one of the inspired geniuses of Western art. His distinctive style features bold shapes and colors, with elongated and slightly distorted figures. In Toledo El Greco was in constant demand and liked living large: he maintained a private orchestra to accompany his meals.  Related Paintings of El Greco :. | The last supper | Antonio de Covarrubias y Leiva | The Modena Triptych | The Agony in the Garden | Christ Driving the Money Changers from the Temple |
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James Barry
b.Oct. 11, 1741, Cork, County Cork, Ire. d.Feb. 22, 1806, London, England. Irish James Barry Gallery was born on 9th November at Captain Lieutenant Bouchiers quarters at the Old Train Barrack Yard in Ann Street, Belfast, Co. Antrim in the north of Ireland. Although Barry lived his adult life as a man, his true gender is unknown. It is widely accepted that Barry was a woman who chose to live as a man so that he might be accepted as a university student and be able to pursue his chosen career as a surgeon.
Columbano Bordalo Pinheiro
(Lisbon, 21 November 1857 - Lisbon, 6 November 1929), who is usually referred to as Columbano, was a Portuguese Realist painter. Usually considered the greatest Portuguese painter of the 19th century, he has been compared to the likes of Wilhelm Leibl and Thomas Eakins. Columbano was the son of a mediocre romantic painter, Manuel Maria Bordalo Pinheiro, and the younger brother of the great caricaturist, Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro. He became the leading painter of his generation and the master of realism in Portuguese painting, specializing in portraiture. He was disciple of his father, of the painter Miguel Ângelo Lupi and the sculptor Simões de Almeida. After attempting twice for a bursar to study abroad finally in 1881 the countess of Edla, second wife of D.Fernando would finance his study in France. There he studied the work of French naturalist, realist and impressionist painters, like Courbet, Manet and Degas without losing his distinctive style which is often gloomy and intimist. He joined the "Grupo do Leão" (The Lion's Group), a usual meeting of artists, writers and intellectuals in a Lisbon downtown restaurant called "Leão de Ouro" (The Golden Lion) in order to discuss aesthetic issues and proclaim Naturalism against the academic art of the time. The group also included Rafael Bordalo Pinheiro, Antenio da Silva Porto, Marques de Oliveira and Jose Malhoa. He painted portraits of some of the greatest names of Portuguese society and culture of his time like Jose Maria de Eça de Queiroz, Teefilo Braga, Raul Brandão and had great psychological accuracy in defining the personality of those depicted. His most famous portrait was that of the poet Antero de Quental in 1889. In this haunting work Columbano seems to have anticipated Antero's suicide. Columbano was a well known Republican, so it wasn't surprising that after the Republic proclamation, in 1910, he was invited to design the flag of the new regime and was nominated director of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, currently the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon, of which he was in charge from 1914 to 1927. The best collection of his paintings is in the Chiado Museum, in Lisbon. He's also represented in some of the finest Portuguese museums, like the National Museum Soares dos Reis, in Porto.
Francis Picabia
French Dadaist/Surrealist Painter 1879-1953 was a well-known painter and poet born of a French mother and a Spanish-Cuban father who was an attach?? at the Cuban legation in Paris, France. Born in Paris and financially independent, he studied under Fernand Cormon and other at the Ecole des Arts Decoratifs in the late 1890s. In the beginning of his own career, from 1903 to 1908, he was influenced by the impressionist paintings of Alfred Sisley. From 1909, he came under the influence of the cubists and the Golden Section (Section d'Or). The same year, he married Gabrielle Buffe. Around 1911 he joined the Puteaux Group, which met at the studio of Jacques Villon in the village of Puteaux. There he became friends with artist Marcel Duchamp and close friends with Guillaume Apollinaire. Other group members included Albert Gleizes, Roger de La Fresnaye, Fernand Leger and Jean Metzinger. In 1913 Picabia was the only member of the Cubist group to personally attend the Armory Show, and Alfred Stieglitz gave him a solo exhibition at his gallery 291. From 1913 to 1915 Picabia traveled to New York City several times and took active part in the avant-garde movements, introducing modern art to America. These years can be characterized as Picabia's proto-Dada period, consisting mainly of his portraits mecaniques. Later, in 1916, while in Barcelona he started his well-known Dada periodical 391, modeled on Stieglitz's own periodical. He continued the periodical with the help of Duchamp in America. Picabia continued his involvement in the Dada movement through 1919 in Zurich and Paris, before breaking away from it after developing an interest in Surrealist art. (See Cannibale, 1921.) He denounced Dada in 1921, and issued a personal attack against Breton in the final issue of 391, in 1924. The same year, he put in an appearance in the Rene Clair surrealist film Entr'acte, firing a cannon from a rooftop.