French painter Gustave Courbet is best-known as the father of Realism, who painted stirring portrayals of ordinary life and real working people with great pathos and understanding. As such, rustic, naturalistic browns like BROWN STONE were a vital ingredient in his storytelling capacities, allowing him to convey the earthy, rugged realism of life as it…
All posts by Rosie Lesso
The life of American textile artist Judith Scott is a remarkable story – one of struggle, survival, and strength found through the power of creativity. Born with Down’s Syndrome and diagnosed as deaf, Scott spent much of her early life in a care home. Years later, through the encouragement of her sister Joyce, Judith uncovered…
Soft, dusty and muted pinks like SAHARA ROSE were a mainstay in the art of American minimalist artist Agnes Martin, painted in modulated, uneven textures to suggest faded memories and nostalgic longing. Martin was adept at combining simple geometric patterns like stripes, bands and grids with these muted, romantic colours – this was her way…
German, early 20th century artist Josef Albers spent his lifetime exploring the ambient properties of colour, and how their interactions could alter perceptions in the human eye. He experimented with just about every chromatic relationship possible, in a language of stark, simple geometric abstraction, allowing the radiance of his stacked colours to take centre stage….
Henry Moore is best-known today as an esteemed sculptor who made a significant contribution to post-war British art. Through his world-renowned sculptures and drawings, he opened up a daring new language of abstraction, one influenced by the nuanced shapes and forms of the human body, and the way one person relates to another. But perhaps…
Carrie Mae Weems is one of the most radical photographers to emerge out of contemporary America. In her deeply emotive imagery, she examines how our social relationships define who we are, and give us a sense of belonging in an increasingly uncertain world. Perhaps it’s no surprise then, that Weems became a mother at a…
FIERY RED was a red-hot tool in the hands of Spanish painter and printmaker Joan Miro, adding flashes of intense, blazing heat to his daring Surrealist designs. He developed a deeply personal language that was playful and child-like, made up of swirling biomorphic forms and scattered geometric shapes coupled with brilliant dashes of black calligraphic…
Abstract Expressionist painter Willem De Kooning was obsessed with pink, making it a defining feature in many of his most renowned works of art. These include his formative paintings of women, caught up in great tangles and ribbons of expressive colour. While De Kooning eventually abandoned these figurative references for a language of pure abstraction,…
Portuguese textile artist Vanessa Barragão makes vast, richly textured and all-encompassing textile creations resembling the flora and fauna of coral reefs, rendered with the traditional crafts of crochet, hand-tufting, felting, embroidery and macrame. On one hand, she draws our attention to the unfathomably complex wonder of coral reef systems, which she calls “cities at the…
French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cezanne spent much of his adult life in Provence, and his mature paintings were a response to his immediate environment, conveying the light, hazy colours and undulating forms of the South of France. Pale, airy blues like PROVENCE were a recurring feature, spreading out across vast stretches of cloudless sky, craggy…
Contemporary American fibre artist Sarah Zapata reworks the ancient traditions of weaving for the 21st century, playing with how technicoloured yarns, shaggy textures and garish colour clashes can be transformed into larger-than-life sculptures and installations. Her work may appear entirely new and experimental, but she insists it pays homage to the history of Peruvian woven…
When looking at the paintings and prints of contemporary artist Peter Doig, it is easy to link his work with the great expressionist painters of art history, from Henri Matisse to Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Paul Gauguin and Edvard Munch. Yet Doig cannily adds his own contemporary twist, through electrifyingly bright, iridescent colours like…
Alex Katz has a crisp, cool, and minimal way of capturing modern life, conveying it with breezy, airy brushstrokes and simple, vibrant colours. From early in his career, he has painted the small, yet enjoyable moments of life as they unfold around him; people at parties, his wife in the snow, buildings glinting at night…
Pioneering Polish artist Magdalena Abakanowicz was a true force of nature, whose daring, provocative sculptures pushed textiles and fibre art in bold and unexpected new directions. Throughout the 1960s and 1970s she worked exclusively with weaving, producing vast and all-encompassing sculptures, called Abakans (a nod towards her surname) that were 5 or 6 metres high,…
Throughout her long and varied career, American Abstract Expressionist and Colour Field painter Helen Frankenthaler often worked with pale, pastel pinks like CRYSTAL ROSE, letting them spill out across her paintings and prints in fluid, watery stains. With these cool, pale hues spread out across vast stretches of canvas, paper, wood or board she invoked…
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