b Pontormo, nr Empoli, 26 May 1494; d Florence, 31 Dec 1556). Italian painter and draughtsman. He was the leading painter in mid-16th-century Florence and one of the most original and extraordinary of Mannerist artists. His eccentric personality, solitary and slow working habits and capricious attitude towards his patrons are described by Vasari; his own diary, which covers the years 1554-6, further reveals a character with neurotic and secretive aspects. Pontormo enjoyed the protection of the Medici family throughout his career but, unlike Agnolo Bronzino and Giorgio Vasari, did not become court painter. His subjective portrait style did not lend itself to the state portrait. He produced few mythological works and after 1540 devoted himself almost exclusively to religious subjects. His drawings, mainly figure studies in red and black chalk, are among the highest expressions of the great Florentine tradition of draughtsmanship; close to 400 survive, forming arguably the most important body of drawings by a Mannerist painter. His highly personal style was much influenced by Michelangelo  Related Paintings of Pontormo, Jacopo :. | Group of the Dead | Halberdier | St Luke | Vertumnus and Pomona | Deposition |
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Wilhelm Busch
1832 Wiedensahl/Hannover-1908,was a German caricaturist, painter and poet who is known for his satirical picture stories. After studying first mechanical engineering and then art in Dusseldorf, Antwerpen and Munich, he turned to drawing caricatures. One of his first picture stories, Max and Moritz (published in 1865), was a huge success. Max and Moritz as well as many of his other picture stories are regarded as one of the main precursors of the modern comic strip. Max and Moritz, for instance, has been an inspiration for the Katzenjammer Kids. Wilhelm Busch also wrote a number of poems in a similar style to his picture stories. Besides that he produced more than 1,000 oil paintings that weren't sold before his death in 1908. He was also active as a sculptor.
Hirshfield Morris
American artist 1872-1946 American painter of Russian-Polish origin. He claimed to have carved wooden ceremonial objects as a young boy, but ceased to create until he retired from his clothing manufacturing concern and began to paint. When Sidney Janis was arranging an exhibition of American folk art for MOMA in 1939, he saw Hirshfield's naive works in a gallery in New York. He exhibited two in the show and organized a one-man show for the artist in 1943; he also purchased two works, including Beach Girl (1937; New York, MOMA). In such paintings Hirshfield based large areas of the overall design on the fabrics with which he worked during his years in business, and his outlined forms on the art of patternmaking.
Elie Nadelman
Polish-born American Abstract Sculptor, 1882-1946,was an American sculptor, draughtsman and collector of Polish birth. Nadelman studied briefly in Warsaw and then visited Munich in 1902 where he became interested in Classical antiquities at the Glytothek. He lived in Paris from 1904 to 1914, closely involved with the avant-guarde, exhibiting at the Societe des Artistes Independants and at the Salon d'Automne from 1905 to 1908. His first solo exhibition in 1909 at the Galerie Druet, Paris, revealed a large series of plaster and bronze classical female heads and full-length standing nudes and mannered Cubist drawings; the latter purchased by Leo Stein, who had brought Picasso to Nadelman's studio in 1908. For the most detailed and accurate studies of Nadelman's work from 1905-12, which was of crucial importance for early 20th c. modern sculpture, see Athena T. Spear in Bibliography. He moved to the United States (becoming an American citizen in 1927) during the outbreak of World War I, married Mrs. Viola Flannery, a wealthy heiress,and assembled a large, museum quality collection of folk sculpture.