Three Men Walking II
1949 BRONZE
76.5 × 33 × 32.4 CM (30 × 13 × 12¾ IN)
METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
By 1947, Giacometti had adopted what was to become his characteristic style—long, thin figures in three main themes: walking man, standing woman and the bust or head. His figures seem detached and isolated as they concentrate on their inner thoughts, stepping forward in equal distances, without looking at each other.
One of the many young artists who had gathered round Matisse and Picasso, Alberto Giacometti emerged as a major Surrealist sculptor in the 1920s. After World War II, he developed his sculpture, drawings, paintings and printmaking into a unique and individual style. Giacometti’s work has been particularly influential to artists and designers in the 21st century.
The son of a Post-Impressionist painter, Giacometti was born in Borgonovo, near Stampa in Switzerland. He began to draw, paint and sculpt at an early age and studied at the École des Beaux-Arts in Geneva from 1919. In 1921 he traveled to Italy, where he was impressed by the works of Alexander Archipenko (1887–1964) and Cézanne at the Venice Biennale. He was also profoundly moved by the works of Giotto and Tintoretto. In 1922, he settled in Paris. He first studied in Archipenko’s studio and then with the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle (1861–1929). In 1927, he moved into a studio with his brother Diego, and exhibited his work in Paris. He also shared an exhibition with his father in Zurich.
The following year, Giacometti participated in another exhibition in Paris; the work sold immediately and the experience brought him into contact with the Surrealists. He befriended one of the group in particular, André Masson (1896–1987), and was taken on by the group’s main art dealer, Pierre Loeb (1897–1964). By 1930, he had joined the Surrealist circle and worked with them until 1934, the same year that his first American solo exhibition opened in New York. His success continued and he mixed with other artists such as Miró and Picasso and writers including Paul Éluard and André Breton. He contributed articles and illustrations for Breton’s magazine Le Surréalisme au Service de la Révolution.
Giacometti’s early works had used the natural shapes of large stones to create figurative forms, but by the time he worked with the Surrealists, he was constructing figures out of various materials, basing his ideas on Cubism and Surrealism. Much of his work also showed the influence of the primitive African art he had seen at the Musée de l’Homme, an ethnographic museum that opened in Paris in 1937. In the late 1930s, he concentrated on pictorial and sculptural studies of the human figure, working directly from models, which was completely against the Surrealists’ beliefs. During the early 1940s, he became friends with Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–80) and Simone de Beauvoir (1908–86). Consequently, he became the first sculptor to explore Existentialist ideas in his work. He spent World War II in Geneva and in 1946 he returned to Paris. This was the beginning of a new style in which his figures became elongated, slender and fragile. After the 1950s, Giacometti received honors for his work and he continues to inspire and influence, but his figures still remain obscure and elusive.
Key Works
Hands Holding the Void 1934, YALE UNIVERSITY ART GALLERY, NEW HAVEN, CT, US
Man Pointing 1947, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
Figure in the Studio 1954, ART GALLERY OF NEW SOUTH WALES, SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA
Woman of Venice II 1956, METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART, NEW YORK, US
Head of Diego 1958, PALM SPRINGS DESERT MUSEUM, PALM SPRINGS, CA, US
ROTHKO
1903–1970 • COLOR FIELD, NEW YORK SCHOOL, ABSTRACT EXPRESSIONISM
No. 10
1950 OIL ON CANVAS
229.2 × 146.4 CM (90¼ × 57 IN)
THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
With his canvases covered with color, Rothko became known as a Color Field painter, although he refused to adhere to any label. Color to him was “merely an instrument.” In the early 1950s, he painted these soft-edged areas of yellow, aligned vertically against the blue ground. Such juxtapositions evoke various emotions in viewers when contemplating the work.
The Russian-born American painter Mark Rothko, born Marcus Rothkowitz, is usually classified as an Abstract Expressionist painter, although he rejected the label as he was more concerned with the investigation of meaning through his art. Inspired first by Joan Miró and the Surrealists, he later developed Color Field painting, saturating huge canvases with large blocks of solid color.
To avoid persecution in their homeland of Dvinsk in Russia, Rothko’s Jewish family emigrated to Oregon in the US when he was ten years old. Extremely well educated, he could speak Russian, Yiddish and Hebrew, but this only served to make him more conspicuously different from other boys of his age.
Rothko excelled at school and in 1921 he attended Yale University, where he studied English, French, European history, elementary mathematics, physics, biology, economics, the history of philosophy and psychology. However, in 1923 he left Yale and moved to New York, where he attended the Art Students’ League under the Expressionist painter Max Weber (1881–1961) for a short time. During the 1930s, he became influenced by Matisse, painting compositions comprising flat areas of color, and in 1935 he co-founded “The Ten,” a group of artists who painted in Expressionist styles. He soon moved into a more Surrealistic phase inspired by Max Ernst (1891–1976) and Miró, but from about 1947, he began developing his distinctive mature style, abandoning any realistic representations and painting large, hazy-edged patches of color. His canvases were usually large and the colors appeared to float, emitting feelings of tranquility. He said he was not an abstract artist and not interested in color relationships, but in expressing human emotions. He drew on his own inner feelings and said: “The people who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience as I had when I painted them.”
For most of his career, Rothko remained poor. He taught at the California School of Fine Arts in San Francisco over the summers of 1947 and 1949, and in the summer of 1948, he collaborated with artists including Clifford Still (1904–80), Robert Motherwell (1915–91) and Barnet Newman (1905–70) in running a New York art school called The Subjects of the Artist. He also taught in the art department at Brooklyn College from 1951 for three years. By that time, his reputation was growing and he was becoming successful. However, as an extremely intelligent and thoughtful man, he feared that his work was misunderstood. He suspected that people bought his paintings simply because they were fashionable and that the true purpose of his work—the expression of human emotions—was not being realized. By 1958, these expressions were becoming increasingly somber. He began replacing bright reds, yellows and oranges with dark blues, browns and maroons, and his last works were a series of monochromatic canvases. He committed suicide in his studio at the age of 67.
Key Works
Untitled (Three Nudes) c.1926–35, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
No. 3 / No. 13 1949, MUSEUM OF MODERN ART, NEW YORK, US
Untitled 1949, NATIONAL GALLERY OF ART, WASHINGTON, DC, US
Light Red over Black 1957, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
Black on Maroon 1959, TATE MODERN, LONDON, UK
DALÍ
1904–1989 • SURREALISM, MAGICAL REALISM