MMaxi

Original name "Selbstbildnis als Soldat"

Otto Dix (December 2, 1891 - July 25, 1969) was a German expressionist and anti-war painter and a veteran of the First World War. His most famous paintings were a (1928) triptych Metropolis and Trench Warfare (1932).

Otto Dix was born in Untermhaus, Germany, now a part of the city of Gera. In 1910, he entered the Dresden School of Arts and Crafts and supported himself as a portrait painter.

When the First World War erupted, Dix enthusiastically volunteered for the German Army. He was taken to a field artillery regiment in Dresden. In the fall of 1915 he was assigned as a non-commissioned officer of a machine-gun unit in the Western front and took part of the Battle of the Somme. He was seriously wounded several times. In 1917, his unit was transferred to the Eastern front until the end of hostilities with Russia. Back in the western front, he fought in the German Spring offensive. He earned the Iron Cross and reached the rank of vice-sergeant-major.

Dix was profoundly affected by the sights of the war. He would later tell about his recurring nightmare where he was crawling through destroyed houses. He produced a series of drawings and prints that reflected that traumatic period.

In the Weimar Republic Dix studied at the Dresden Art Academy, became a founder of the Dresden Secession, and was a contributor to the Neue Sachlichkeit exhibition in Berlin in 1925. His paintings became his expression of the bleaker side of life, especially war. He used realistic pictures of disfigured soldiers as his model. His 1923 painting The Trench, which depicted dismembered and decomposed bodies of soldiers in a trench after a battle caused such a furor that the Wallraf-Richartz Museum hid the painting behind a curtain. In 1925 the then-mayor of Cologne, Konrad Adenauer, cancelled the purchase of the painting and forced the director of the museum to resign.

Like the work of his friend and fellow veteran George Grosz, Dix's material was extremely critical of contemporary German society and often dwelled on the act of Lustmord, or sexual murder. Dix's postwar depictions of soldiers and veterans very clearly illustrates their invisibility within contemporary German society, a concept also developed in Erich Maria Remarque's All Quiet on the Western Front.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany, they regarded Dix as a degenerate artist and had him sacked from his post as an art teacher at the Dresden Academy. He later moved to Lake Constance. Dix's paintings The Trench and War cripples were exhibited in the Nazi exhibition of degenerate art, Entartete Kunst. They were later burned.

Dix was forced to join the Nazi-controlled Imperial chamber of Fine Arts in order to be able to work as an artist at all and had to promise to paint only landscapes. He still painted an occasional allegorical painting that criticized Nazi ideals. In 1939 he was arrested on a trumped-up charge of being involved in a plot against Hitler but was later released.

During World War II Dix was conscripted into the Volkssturm. He was captured by French troops at the end of the war and released in February 1946.

Dix eventually returned to Dresden. After the war most of his paintings were religious allegories or depictions of post-war suffering.

Otto Dix died in Singen, Germany, in 1969.

Painting on the Poster Self-Portrait with Hand to Cheek, 1910 Abertina, Vienna.
The book "Egon Schiele Love and Death" by Jane Kallir is one of my favorit Art Books of all time.

Guernica is a painting by Pablo Picasso, inspired by Picasso's horror at the Nazi German bombing of Guernica, Spain on April 26, 1937 during the Spanish Civil War. The air raid destroyed the city, killing an estimated 1600 people and injuring many more.

The huge mural was produced under a commission by the Spanish Republican government to decorate the Spanish Pavilion at the Paris International Exposition (the 1937 World's Fair in Paris). Picasso said as he worked on the mural:
"The Spanish struggle is the fight of reaction against the people, against freedom. My whole life as an artist has been nothing more than a continuous struggle against reaction and the death of art. How could anybody think for a moment that I could be in agreement with reaction and death? ... In the panel on which I am working, which I shall call Guernica, and in all my recent works of art, I clearly express my abhorrence of the military caste which has sunk Spain in an ocean of pain and death".

Today, Guernica symbolizes the destructive impact of all war.

I remember visiting the Musée National Picasso on my first ever visit to Paris. I think some time in 1989.
It was the first time I was ever in a Museum, not counting the small museum of Sacred Art in Funchal Madeira.
I got a terrible Headache at the time, not because i did not like the experience on the contrary.
I loved it, I made the mistake of triyng to see the all Museum in one visit.
I was not sure at the time if i was going to ever return to Paris.
Now I try to visit the Picasso Museum everytime i'm in Paris.
I will visit the Museo Reina Sofia in Madrid where Guernica is on display soon.
Thank you cexhib.
MMaxi 
 

Caravaggio
Biography

Full Name:
Michelangelo Merisi di Caravaggio
Born:
1571
Died:
1610
Michelangelo Merisi left his birth town of Caravaggio in the north of Italy to study as an apprentice in nearby Milan. In 1593 he moved to Rome, impatient to use his talents on the biggest stage possible.

Caravaggio's approach to painting was unconventional. He avoided the standard method of making copies of old sculptures and instead took the more direct approach of painting directly onto canvas without drawing first. He also used people from the street as his models. His dramatic painting was enhanced with intense and theatrical lighting.

Caravaggio's fate was sealed when in 1606 he killed a man in a duel. He fled to Naples where he attempted to paint his way out of trouble, he became a Knight, but was then imprisoned in Malta and then finally he moved to Sicily. He was pardoned for murder in 1610, but he died of a fever attempting to return to Rome.

Simon Schama on Caravaggio


"In Caravaggio's time it was believed that artists were given their talent by God to bring beauty to the world and to put mortal creatures in touch with their higher selves or souls. Caravaggio never did anything the way it was supposed to be done.

In this painting of the victory of virtue over evil it's supposed to be David who is the centre of attention, but have you ever seen a less jubilant victory? On his sword is inscribed "Humilitus Occideit Superbium", that is, humility conquers pride. This is the battle that has been fought out inside Caravaggio's head between the two sides of the painter that are portrayed here.

For me the power of Caravaggio's art is the power of truth, not least about ourselves. If we are ever to hope for redemption we have to begin with the recognition that in all of us the Goliath competes with the David."

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (juin 1599 – 6 août 1660), dit Diego Vélasquez en français, est un peintre du siècle d'or espagnol ayant eu une influence considérable à la cour du roi Philippe IV. Il est généralement considéré, avec Francisco Goya et Le Greco, comme l’un des plus grands artistes de l’histoire espagnole. Son style, tout en restant très personnel, s’inscrit résolument dans le courant baroque de cette période. Ses deux visites effectuées en Italie, attestées par les documents de l’époque, eurent un effet décisif sur l’évolution de son œuvre. Outre de nombreuses peintures à valeur historique ou culturelle, Diego Vélasquez est l’auteur d’une profusion de portraits représentant la famille royale espagnole, d’autres grands personnages européens ou même des gens du commun. Son talent artistique, de l’avis général, a atteint son sommet en 1656 avec la réalisation de Les Ménines, son principal chef-d’œuvre.

À partir du premier quart du XIXe siècle, le style de Vélasquez fut pris pour modèle par les peintres réalistes et impressionnistes, en particulier Édouard Manet. Depuis, des artistes plus contemporains comme Pablo Picasso et Salvador Dalí ont rendu hommage à leur illustre compatriote en recréant plusieurs de ses œuvres les plus célèbres.



Pope Innocent X (Jambattista Pamfili) (1644-1655). Jambattista Pamfili was born in Rome on May 6, 1574. His parents were Camillo Pamfili and Flaminia de Bubalis. As a young man Jambattista studied jurisprudence at the Collegio Romano and graduated as bachelor of laws at the age of twenty. Soon afterwards Clement VIII appointed him consistorial advocate and auditor of the Rota. Gregory XV made him nuncio at Naples. Urban VIII sent him as datary with the cardinal legate, Francesco Barberini, to France and Spain, then appointed him titular Latin Patriarch of Antioch, and nuncio at Madrid. He was created Cardinal-Priest of Saint Eusebio in August 1626. He was a member of the congregations of the Council of Trent, the Inquisition, and Jurisdiction and Immunity. In 1644, a conclave was held at Rome for the election of a successor to Urban VIII. On 15 September Pamfili was elected, and ascended the papal throne as Innocent X. During his hold of the post the papal relations with France aggravated to such an extent that France invaded the Ecclesiastical States. On the contrary, the relations with Venice became very friendly. Innocent X aided the Venetians financially against the Turks in the struggle for Candia, while the Venetians on their part allowed Innocent to fill the episcopal vacancies in their territory, a right which they had previously claimed for themselves. Innocent X, as his predecessor Urban VIII, refused to acknowledge the new independent kingdom of Portugal and its newly elected king and did not give his approbation to the bishops nominated by the king. Thus it happened that towards the end of Innocent's pontificate there was only one bishop in the whole of Portugal. Innocent X was often irresolute and suspicious. He died in Rome on January 7, 1655.

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