South African Art History – Gerard Sekoto 9 December 1913 – 20 March 1993 The Life and Art of Gerard Sekoto Gerard Sekoto was a South African artist and a musician. He is recognised as the pioneer of urban black art and social realism. His work has been exhibited in Paris, Stockholm, Venice, Washington, and […]
Michaelangelo 1508-1512 Vatican The Sistine Chapel. Now when I was 18 I visited the Sistine Chapel and it was an amazing experience and when I went outside there were two Australian girls and they walked up to me and with a strong accent asked ‘what makes this painting so special?’. Now, everything inside the Catholic […]
Velázquez 1656 Madrid Velázquez’s Las Meninas. Well this painting is quite an insane painting and it really really changed painting and this is why it’s so important. Usually oil painting would be a royal king or queen or kaiser or other royal someone standing on their own isolated wearing very wealthy robes, furr, all the […]
Boticelli 1485 Uffizi Florence Venus by Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli is probably one of the most famous Renaissance artists, it’s important to know the great Renaissance artists and just the order that they came in because we’ve got early Renaissance, middle Renaissance, high Renaissance, and it’s important to know where you are in the Renaissance because […]
Johannes Vermeer 1665 Netherlands The Girl with the Pearl Earring, a famous painting by Johannes Vermeer. Why is this amazing painting so famous? Once again it summarises a very important Zeitgeist in history. This is a painting capturing the Dutch Golden Age. She is also known in a loving way as the Mona Lisa of […]
Gustav Klimt 1907–1908 Vienna Allow me to introduce you to The Kiss, such a beautiful and intimate painting, done by none other than Gustav Klimt. It is about 1.8 metres squared. Now this painting, believe it or not, was seen as sacrilege, scandalous, pornographic, sexual and way too intimate be displayed in the public. So, […]
Pablo Picasso 1937 Madrid Now to introduce you to Picasso’s famous painting Geurnica. This monumental artwork (yes it is huge! Measuring 7.77 metres wide and 3.49 metres tall). It is one of Picasso’s most celebrated artworks. But why? It captures the Zeitgeist of the Spanish Civil war. Guernica shows the tragedies of war and the […]
Edvard Munch 1893 Norway There is a painting that struck a chord by summarising the genius but also capturing the Zeitgeist in the ignorance of the American public before Van Gogh rose to fame: the Iconic scream by Edvard Munch. With this painting there is a few things that are important, first of all Edvard […]
Vincent van Gogh 1889 Moma N.Y. Next up is Starry Starry Night by the wonderful Van Gogh. He was the stereotypical impoverished artist that struggled his entire life and whose genius went unnoticed and un-celebrated until after his death. Starry Night is quite famous: the vibrancy, the way the colours bounce, the fact that it […]
Leonardo da Vinci 1495-1498 Milan And the next painting we have another Leonardo da Vinci. As previously mentioned this guy is a genius and well worth celebrating. Now, why on Earth is The Last Supper so famous? There are two major reasons and both of them happen in two different time periods. The first time […]