Gustave Loiseau | Paris painting

French painter🎨 Gustave Loiseau (3 October 1865-10 October 1935) was born in Paris into an affluent commercial family.

He was largely self-taught and during his youth he worked with a decorator, painting the outskirts of Paris in his free time.

An inheritance from his grandmother provided him with a certain degree of financial comfort and independence that allowed him to concentrate fully on paining and to move to Montmartre.

Here he met Maxime Maufra, with whom he remained friends for the rest of his life.

He enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs for a year, the only training in colour and drawing which he received.

Giorgio Morandi | Modern Still Life painter

Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 - June 18, 1964) was born on July 20, 1890, in Bologna, Italy, one of the oldest and most prestigious University towns in Europe. 

Nearly all his life was spent there working quietly in a modest studio and apartment that he shared with his three sisters. Except for occasional trips to Venice, Florence or Rome for exhibitions of his paintings and etchings, or summer excursions to the village of Grizzana in the Apennine hills above his native city, Morandi scarcely ever left Bologna. 

Antonietta Raphaël | The Roman School

Antonietta Simonovna Raphaël Mafai (1895 - 5 September 1975) was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana (Roman School) movement together with her husband Mario Mafai.

She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially after World War II, dominated her output.

They highlighted the tender and vibrant carnality present in stone, with works such as Miriam dormiente (Sleeping Miriam) and Nemesis.

Mario Mafai | The Roman school

Mario Mafai (12 February 1902 - 31 March 1965) was an Italian painter. With his wife Antonietta Raphaël he founded the modern art movement called the Scuola Romana, or Roman school.

Mafai left school very early, preferring to attend, with Scipione, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma.

His influences in those years were Roman galleries and museums, and the Fine Arts Library at Palazzo Venezia.

Jonas Lie | Expressionist painter

Jonas Lie (April 29, 1880 - January 18, 1940) was a Norwegian-born American painter.

He is best known for colorful paintings of coastlines of New England and city scenes of New York City.

Jonas Lie was born in Moss, in Østfold county, Norway.

His father Sverre Lie, was a civil Norwegian engineer and his mother Helen Augusta Steele, was an American from Hartford, Connecticut.

His father was a brother of Thomasine Lie who had married their cousin Jonas Lie, the famous Norwegian author, whom the painter was named after.

Boris Grigoriev | Russian Avant Garde movement

Boris Dimitrievitch Grigoriev /Бори́с Дми́триевич Григо́рьев was a Russian painter born in Moscow. He was a part of the Russian Avant Garde movement who also wrote regularly for the magazine “Satyricon” and “New Satyricon”. For biographical notes -in english and italian- see Part 1 - Boris Grigoriev [1886-1939].

Paul Cézanne | The Drawings / Watercolours

"C’è una logica colorata: il pittore non deve che obbedire a lei, mai alla logica della mente".

"There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other".

Paul Cézanne

Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen | Surrealist /Abstract painter

Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen (December 24, 1909 - September 13, 1957) was a Danish painter, writer and art theorist.

Born in Copenhagen, he studied under Axel Revold at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1927-1929, and then, under Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky at Bauhaus Dessau from 1930 to 1931.

He was a Surrealist painter and agitated for the style in several publications.

Stanislas Lepine | Seine painting

Born in Caen in 1836, Victor Edouard Stanislas Lépine (1836-1892) began his artistic career following the manner of the ship-painter Johan Barthold Jongkind and specialising in the rendering of nautical views such as Sailing Boats in Caen Harbour. In 1855 the painter moved to Paris and in 1859 he made his début at the Salon, exhibiting Port of Caen, Moonlight Effect.
Stanislas Lépine specialised in painting picturesque urban views, recurrently choosing to feature the River Seine and the old streets of Paris. In 1860 Lépine undertook a more professional apprenticeship under the guidance of Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot and during this period met the artist Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904).

Harald Engman | Cityscape painter

Harald Rudyard Engman (1903-1968) was a Danish painter. Above all, he is remembered for his fierce use of satire in criticizing and resisting the German occupation of Denmark during World War II.

Little has been published about Engman's life. It is known that he traveled as a working seaman and spent some time living in New York City's Chinatown around 1920.

He began to show paintings in Copenhagen in the mid 1920s. He became part of a group of self-styled "Underground Painters".

His shows always inspired controversy as he utilized caricature and satire to mercilessly criticize social ills and those in power especially the growing power of the Nazi Party in Germany.