Alice in Wonderland was published in 1865 by Charles Dodgson under the pen name Lewis Caroll, a story of a young girl who falls down a rabbit hole into a fantasy world of strange creatures and topsy-turvy adventures – Alice has been translated into 170 languages, sold millions of copies, inspired films, art, pop and […]
Paul Gauguin, ‘Christ in the Garden of Olives’, 1889 Paul Gauguin (1848 – 1903) Father of Modern Art, with hyper-real colours, exaggerated body proportions, strong contrasts and mystical symbols. A banker turned artist, he abandoned his middle-class life and family and sailed to Tahiti seeking primitive beauty. He dreamed of pursuing art in paradise. French born, […]
Edvard Munch, The Sick Child 1, 1896 (detail) Edvard Munch (1863 – 1944) is Norway’s most famous artist and father of Expressionism, his iconic Scream is a symbol of modern day anxiety and rivals Mona Lisa in “recognisability” even having its own emoji. Born in Kristiania (modern day Oslo), Munch – pronounced “Munc” – rejected his […]
Frida Kahlo, communist revolutionary and feminist icon, was born in Mexico in 1907 and is one of the most recognised artists of the 20th century. As a young child she contracted polio so her right leg was thinner and shorter than the left which she tried to conceal with large-skirted dresses. Tragically, as a teenager, […]
Chicken Shed (2017), inspired by a chicken shed in Norfolk. Photo: Rachel Whiteread/Tate Whiteread is a contemporary English artist who creates mainly sculptures, usually casts of the inside of objects – negative space – which bear the marks of every day human use – eg “One Hundred Spaces” (pictured), an installation of 100 jewel-like resin […]
Perry’s pots – Brexiteers and Remainers Grayson Perry’s new exhibition at the Serpentine Gallery provocatively – as ever the master of iconoclasm – titled The Most Popular Art Exhibition Ever! centres round 2 large pots which record the Nation’s feelings about Brexit: one pot representing the Brexiteers and the other the Remainers. The pots are sized […]
Alberto Giacometti with his plaster sculptures at the Venice Biennale, 1956. Photograph: Alinari/Roger-Viollet Alberto Giacometti was born in the Swiss Alps in 1901, eldest son of a well-known Impressionist painter. He is famous for his tall, thin, bleak figures – humans honed almost to knife sharpness. He began his artistic career as a Surrealist but […]
Hurvin Anderson, Is it OK to be black? 2016. (Detail) The Turner Prize was set up in 1984 to encourage wider appreciation of contemporary art and has become one of the best known visual art prizes in the world. Each year 4 artists are short-listed. They must be “British” which means either working mainly in […]
Edward Hopper, Gas, 1940. Oil on canvas. 66.7 x 102.2 cm. Collection of Museum of Modern Art, New York. Mrs. Simon Guggenheim Fund, 1943 Photo © 2016. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence The Fall was the Wall Street stock market crash of 1929 which triggered the greatest economic depression in US history. […]
Detail from Play Within a Play, 1963. Private collection. © David Hockney Hockney is one of the world’s greatest living artists, and the retrospective is Tate Britain’s bestselling exhibition ever. He still works daily, and is currently designing a large stained glass window in Westminster Abbey to honour the Queen. Appointed to the Order of Merit […]
