MAGICAL REALISM OF JULIE HEFFERNAN

Julie Heffernan is a contemporary American painter known for her Baroque-inspired fantasy portraits and landscapes. Influenced by allegories, politics, and literature, Heffernan’s work explores a sensual fantasy realm where plants and animals coexist in harmony within a lush, plentiful atmosphere. In a reoccurring series, she paints women standing in full skirts made out of ripe fruit or blooming flowers. “When I look back on my work, I realize I was wrestling with my own psychic and physical growth,” the artist has said. “I realize now that when I was doing the flower skirts, they were about a burgeoning sexuality. […] Now I’ve shifted my work entirely to the tortured landscape. I’m looking around for new metaphors for my own present-day experience.” Heffernan notably employs an aesthetic based on the traditional oil painting techniques of Northern Renaissance artists—such as Hierronymous Bosch—while maintaining a wholly contemporary atmosphere that seems to come more from science fiction than art historical tropes. Born in 1956 in Peoria, IL, Heffernan went on to receive her BFA from the University of California Santa Cruz and an MFA from the Yale University School of Art in 1985, where she worked alongside fellow figurative painter Lisa Yuskavage. Today, Herffernan’s works are in the collections of the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Knoxville Museum of Art, the Norton Museum of Art in West Palm Beach, and the Virginia Museum of Fine Art in Richmond, among others. She lives and works in New York, NY.

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SOURCE: http://www.artnet.com/artists/julie-heffernan/

RENE MAGRITTE’S SURREALISM

Rene Magritte was born in Lessines, in the province of Hainaut, in 1898, the eldest son of Leopold Magritte, who was a tailor and textile merchant, and Regina (nee Bertinchamps), a milliner until her marriage. Little is known about Magritte’s early life. He began lessons in drawing in 1910. On 12 March 1912, his mother committed suicide by drowning herself in the River Sambre. This was not her first attempt; she had made many over a number of years, driving her husband Leopold to lock her into her bedroom. One day she escaped, and was missing for days. She was later discovered a mile or so down the nearby river, dead. According to a legend, 13-year-old Magritte was present when her body was retrieved from the water, but recent research has discredited this story, which may have originated with the family nurse. Supposedly, when his mother was found, her dress was covering her face, an image that has been suggested as the source of several oil paintings Magritte painted in 1927-1928 of people with cloth obscuring their faces, including Les Amants.

Magritte’s earliest oil paintings, which date from about 1915, were Impressionistic in style. From 1916 to 1918 he studied at the Academie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, under Constant Montald, but found the instruction uninspiring. The oil paintings he produced during the years 1918-1924 were influenced by Futurism and by the offshoot of Cubism practiced by Metzinger. Most of his works of this period are female nudes.

In 1922 Magritte married Georgette Berger, whom he had met as a child in 1913. From December 1920 until September 1921, Magritte served in the Belgian infantry in the Flemish town of Beverlo near Leopoldsburg. In 1922-1923, he worked as a draughtsman in a wallpaper factory, and was a poster and advertisement designer until 1926, when a contract with Galerie la Centaure in Brussels made it possible for him to paint full-time. In 1926, Magritte produced his first surreal oil painting, The Lost Jockey (Le jockey perdu), and held his first exhibition in Brussels in 1927. Critics heaped abuse on the exhibition. Depressed by the failure, he moved to Paris where he became friends with Andre Breton, and became involved in the surrealist group.

Galerie la Centaure closed at the end of 1929, ending Magritte’s contract income. Having made little impact in Paris, Magritte returned to Brussels in 1930 and resumed working in advertising. He and his brother, Paul, formed an agency which earned him a living wage.

Surrealist patron Edward James allowed Magritte, in the early stages of his career, to stay rent free in his London home and paint. James is featured in two of Magritte’s pieces, Le Principe du Plaisir (The Pleasure Principle) and La Reproduction Interdite, an oil painting also known as not to be reproduced.

Magritte wished to cultivate an approach that avoided the stylistic distractions of most modern painting. While some French Surrealists experimented with new techniques, Magritte settled on a deadpan, illustrative technique that clearly articulated the content of his pictures. Repetition was an important strategy for Magritte, informing not only his handling of motifs within individual pictures, but also encouraging him to produce multiple copies of some of his greatest works.

Magritte died of pancreatic cancer on 15 August 1967 in his own bed, and was interred in Schaerbeek Cemetery, Evere, Brussels.

GUSTAV KLIMT’S ALL ART IS EROTIC

Gustav Klimt was born in 1963 and died in 1918 in Austria.

His father worked as a gold engraver, but was not very successful in his trade; for this reason, the family did not live a great life, and Klimt was raised in poverty stricken areas, with very little as a young child. In 1876, when he was 14 years old, Klimt enrolled in the Vienna Public Arts Schools; he was noticed right away for the talent and the art forms he created. Because of this, he received his first commission to create art for public viewing, while he was studying.

During the 1880s, Gustav Klimt, his brother Ernst, and Franz Matsch, begin a productive cooperation. They begin to do work in theaters, in churches, and public work in museums; many of the pieces which they created, were ordered by patrons who frequented the locations which they created works for. During this time, Gustav Klimt also created a piece for the Burg Theater, as well as the Kunsthistorisches Museum, which is located in Vienna. The Allegories collection that he submits, is seen as a creative, and timeless piece; because of the work, he is commissioned to do a second piece for the museum. In this second collection, the style which includes gold paint, abstract space in the art, and exotic symbolism of the female figure, is a prominent style, which he sticks with for future pieces that he creates.

Many of Klimt’s women were painted in evocative and erotic positions that emphasised sensuality and sex. They brazenly confronted the viewer with their gaze as well as their nudity. They were controversial images but appealed to a new sensibility, a celebration of sexuality that was only just emerging in a city and a society that was the playground of another famous Austrian, Sigmund Freud. In the same year, Freud published Three Essays On The Theory Of Sexuality a book that was to profoundly challenge attitudes to sex. Like Freud, Klimt wanted to put sexuality in the public sphere. Up until about 1914, many of the pieces that he created, took on this sexual under pining, and were not widely accepted, in part due to their graphic nature, and in part because of the time period that he lived in and worked in.

It was criticized due to the erotic and exotic nature. Although symbolism was used in his art forms, it was not at all subtle, and it went far beyond what the imagination during the time frame accepted. Although his work was not widely accepted during his time, some of the pieces that Gustav Klimt did create during his career, are today seen as some of the most important and influential pieces to come out of Austria.

SOURCE: https://www.gustav-klimt.com/

GIORGIO DE CHIRICO’S ART

“I paint what I see with my eyes closed.”
-Giorgio de Chirico-

Giorgio de Chirico was born to Italian parents in Volos, Greece, on July 10, 1888. In his art, he sought to evoke the hidden meanings behind everyday life, and his enigmatic scenes of empty cities, menacing statues, mysterious shadows and strange combinations of everyday objects inspired the artists of the Surrealist movement in the 1910s, De Chirico died in Rome, Italy, on November 19, 1978.
He first studied art at the Higher School of Fine Arts in Athens. After the death of his father in 1905, de Chirico’s mother moved her three children to Munich, where de Chirico completed two years of study at the Academy of Fine Arts. After leaving the Academy he continued to educate himself, taking a particular interest in the philosophical writings of Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. He returned to Italy in 1908, traveling to Milan and Turin and settling in Florence.
As a young artist, de Chirico was inspired by the European Symbolist artists and their use of dream-like imagery. His earliest signature works combined a Symbolist sensibility with his love of the classical antiquities of Greece and Italy and his philosophical musings on the true nature of reality. In paintings De Chirico depicted dramatically lit city piazzas inhabited only by one or two figures, a statue or mysterious shadows.

In 1911, de Chirico traveled to Paris, France, where his brother, Andrea (also known as Alberto Savinio), was living. There, he exhibited his work and met a number of influential avant-garde artists and writers, including Pablo Picasso and Constantin Brancusi.
Meanwhile, World War I had begun, and de Chirico and his brother were drafted into the Italian Army in 1915. In 1917, he met artist Carlo Carrà, who worked with him to define his style of “metaphysical painting,” emphasizing the hidden significance of ordinary places and objects.
De Chirico’s work was greatly admired by the newly formed Surrealist school of artists and writers, who were fascinated by dream analysis and the subconscious mind.
Though de Chirico did not identify himself as a Surrealist, he briefly collaborated with the artists of this circle, showing his work in their group exhibitions in Paris and illustrating books by Guillaume Apollinaire and Jean Cocteau. However, in the 1920s, he began working in a neo-traditional style inspired by Renaissance “old masters” like Raphael and Titian, and he turned against modern art and broke ties with the Surrealists.
De Chirico’s later career was inconsistent and occasionally controversial. He worked in a variety of formats from theater design to book illustration to sculpture, but his style was subject to unpredictable changes. His reputation was damaged when falsely dated copies of his works, by both de Chirico himself and forgers, infiltrated the art market.

SOURCE: https://www.biography.com/people/giorgio-de-chirico-9246949

https://www.guggenheim.org/artwork/artist/giorgio-de-chirico

Giorgio de Chirico – La Casa Museo

SUSANNAH MARTIN’S ART AND STATEMENT

It hardly needs to be stated that we humans have a deep need to look at one another but exactly which transformations take place within us when we observe another human being, especially a naked human being? Leaving aside, to the degree that it is possible, any sexual motivation, what do we stand to gain by observing this foreign exposed “other”? What do we establish? Certainly; intimacy, sympathy, trust. In fact, their “otherness” disappears rapidly. Or does the image provoke discomfort, an uneasiness with human intimacy? Does this uneasiness reflect a lack of balance indicative of our times? What are the causes of it?

Every article of clothing, accessory, object that we acquire as good consumers contributes to our idea of identity which we form as a type of protection. Our “stuff” allows us to feel as if we are more than what we really are, mortals. While the stuff creates a shield against mortality it also serves to define and separate us from one another, the haves from the have nots. It is however the things which we have in common which bring us closer, not our differences. What we all share is our physical presence on earth, our interdependence on nature and our collective subconscious.

By stripping my people of their clothing, I am stripping them of all social indicators, status, etc. and this allows me to focus on their essential being and relationship to nature. The increasingly disturbed relationship between man and nature is at present what is behind the greatest threats to our well being and our future existence. To serve my purpose I have picked up a tie to a very classic art form with a long tradition ( at least before the 20th century) the nude in landscape. I am updating this classic appreciation of humanity and nature with a more contemporary way of looking; a more “photographic” aesthetic, more realistic gestures and compositions, less romanticism, while maintaining a tie to the long tradition of the painted nude through my use of classical painting techniques. Through this process, I hope to make my subject more accessible to people today, lest we believe that man´s state of union with nature, and with his fellow man, is a memory of the past, lost forever.

SUSANNAH MARTIN’S ART AND STATEMENT

GREENSEA

STUART LUKE GATHERER’S ART

Stuart Luke Gatherer was brought up in the Eastern Highlands of Scotland, and graduated from Edinburgh College of Art in 1995 with an MA in Fine Art. His paintings entice the viewer to interact with contemporary scenes from the vantage point of an unseen onlooker. This creates a psychological ambiguity that is emphasised by strong forms and colours modelled in dramatic light and shade.

Stuart Luke Gatherer

RENSO CASTANEDA ZEVALLOS

He was born in Lima Peru in 1970 and lives in New York actually – Graduateded of the National School autonomous superior of Beautiful Arts of peru in the specialty of Painting of 1989-95 -Obtained in 1993 the First Honorable Mention in Drawing in the promotion called Venancio Shinki – -Conversatorio: The naked one in the Contemporary Painting in the National School of Fine Arts Rafael Rodriguez Padilla, Guatemala C.A. -1996- Painting, Sculpture and Engraving, Museum of Modern Art, Quito, Equator – International Auction Reconstruction 2000, Museum of Contemporary Art Sof?a Imber, Caracas, Venezuela 1999 -2002- Peruvian Painters, National Historic Museum Sao Paulo, Brazil -2004 counts on a painting in the permanent collection of the MoLAA (Museum of Latin-American Art of los Angeles, California- USA) SOLO EXHIBITIONS 2004- Appearances, Tamara Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2004- Appearances, Museum of the Americas, Old San Juan, Puerto Rico 2003- Evading memories, O&Y Gallery, Coral Gables –Florida, USA 2003- Covered with Skin, Tamara Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2001- Perpetual Fragments, Tamara Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico 2001-Instants, Praxis International Gallery Art, Lima, Peru 2000- Structure of Senses, Tamara Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico 1999- Expecting Illusions, Praxis International Art Gallery, Lima, Peru 1999- Remembranzas Guatemalan Institute of Hispanic Culture,Guatemala, C.A. 1999- Discovering Secrets, Cultural Center The Coves, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala 1999- Of Inside toward was, Praxis International Art Gallery, Lima, Peru 1998- Without Wrappings, Cultural Center Ricardo Palma, Lima, Peru 1996- Oils, Gallery of the American Peruvian Institute, Lima, Peru COLLECTIVE EXHIBITIONS has carried out approximately 100 of the ones that emphasize the following: 2004- Colective exhibition, Light Street Gallery, Baltimore , USA 2004- Peruvian Painters, Avima Gallery, Alicante, Espana 2004- Paintings from Peru, Cultural Center Cervantes, Tel Aviv, Israel 2003- RomanceAntillano Tamara Gallery, San Juan, Puerto Rico – Spirit of peru Is Art Gallery, Philadelphia, USA 2002- Peruvian Painters, National Historic Museum Sao Paulo, Brazil – Art Peru, Power International Gallery, Coral Gables, Florida, USA – Peruvian Scapades, Sunjin Galleries, Singapore 2001- Exposition of Paintings, Association of Peruvian Institutions in USA and Canada, Hotel Hilton, -Miami, Florida, USA – FIA 2001 Latin American Fair of International Art, Caracas, Venezuela 2000-Paintings, Residence of the Ambassador of Peru in Singapore International Auction Reconstruction 2000, Museum of Contemporary Art Sof?a Imber, Caracas, Venezuela

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