NATALIA BRODSKAYA

Manet es uno de los artistas más famosos de la segunda mitad del siglo XIX, ligado por lo general a los impresionistas, aunque en realidad no era uno de ellos. Tuvo gran influencia en la pintura francesa, en parte por la eleccion de sus temas, que sacaba de la vida cotidiana, pero tambien por el uso de los colores puros y por su tecnica rapida y libre. En su propia obra se materializo la transicion entre el realismo de Courbet y los impresionistas.Nacio en la alta burguesia, decidio convertirse en pintor despues de no haber podido ingresar en la Academia Naval. Estudio con Thomas Couture, un pintor de la Academia, pero fue gracias a los numerosos viajes que realizo por Europa desde 1852 que comenzo a establecer lo que se convertiria en su propio estilo. Sus primeras pinturas fueron sobre todo retratos y escenas de genero, inspiradas por su amor por los maestros españoles como Velazquez y Goya. En 1863 presento su obra maestra Desayuno en la hierba en el Salon des Refuses. Su obra comenzo una lucha entre los defensores del arte academico y los jovenes artistas refuses (rechazados). Manet se convirtio en lider de esta nueva generacion de artistas.Desde 1864, el Salon oficial acepto sus pinturas, que todavia causaban fuertes protestas por obras como Olimpia en 1865. En 1866, el escritor Zola publico un articulo en el que defendia la obra de Manet. Por aquel entonces, Manet era amigo de todos los futuros maestros del impresionismo: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro y Paul Cezanne; influyo en el trabajo de todos, aunque no se le puede considerar estrictamente como uno de ellos. De hecho, en 1874 se nego a presentar sus pinturas en la primera exhibicion impresionista. Su ultima aparicion en el Salon oficial fue en 1882, con La barra del Folies-Bergere, una de sus pinturas mas famosas. Aquejado de gangrena en 1883, pinto naturalezas muertas con flores hasta que estuvo demasiado debil para trabajar. Murio dejando un legado de gran cantidad de dibujos y pinturas.

Since his death 100 years ago, Cézanne has become the most famous painter of the nineteenth century. He was born in Aix-en-Provence in 1839 and the happiest period of his life was his early youth in Provence, in company with Emile Zola, another Italian. Following Zolas example, Cezanne went to Paris in his twenty-first year.During the Franco-Prussian war he deserted the military, dividing his time between open-air painting and the studio. He said to Vollard, an art dealer, Im only a painter. Parisian wit gives me a pain. Painting nudes on the banks of the Arc [a river near Aix] is all I could ask for. Encouraged by Renoir, one of the first to appreciate him, he exhibited with the impressionists in 1874 and in 1877. He was received with derision, which deeply hurt him.Cezannes ambition, in his own words, was to make out of Impressionism something as solid and durable as the paintings of the museums. His aim was to achieve the monumental in a modern language of glowing, vibrating tones. Cezanne wanted to retain the natural colour of an object and to harmonise it with the various influences of light and shade trying to destroy it; to work out a scale of tones expressing the mass and character of the form.Cezanne loved to paint fruit because it afforded him obedient models and he was a slow worker. He did not intend to simply copy an apple. He kept the dominant colour and the character of the fruit, but heightened the emotional appeal of the form by a scheme of rich and concordant tones. In his paintings of still-life he is a master. His fruit and vegetable compositions are truly dramatic; they have the weight, the nobility, the style of immortal forms. No other painter ever brought to a red apple a conviction so heated, sympathy so genuinely spiritual, or an observation so protracted. No other painter of equal ability ever reserved for still-life his strongest impulses. Cezanne restored to painting the pre-eminence of knowledge, the most essential quality to all creative effort.The death of his father in 1886 made him a rich man, but he made no change in his abstemious mode of living. Soon afterwards, Cezanne retired permanently to his estate in Provence. He was probably the loneliest of painters of his day. At times a curious melancholy attacked him, a black hopelessness. He grew more savage and exacting, destroying canvases, throwing them out of his studio into the trees, abandoning them in the fields, and giving them to his son to cut into puzzles, or to the people of Aix.At the beginning of the century, when Vollard arrived in Provence with intentions of buying on speculation all the Cezannes he could get hold of, the peasantry, hearing that a fool from Paris was actually handing out money for old linen, produced from barns a considerable number of still-lifes and landscapes. The old master of Aix was overcome with joy, but recognition came too late. In 1906 he died from a fever contracted while painting in a downpour of rain.

For Claude Monet the designation impressionist always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the end of his very long life. He was so by deep conviction, and for his Impressionism he may have sacrificed many other opportunities that his enormous talent held out to him. Monet did not paint classical compositions with figures, and he did not become a portraitist, although his professional training included those skills. He chose a single genre for himself, landscape painting, and in that he achieved a degree of perfection none of his contemporaries managed to attain. Yet the little boy began by drawing caricatures. Boudin advised Monet to stop doing caricatures and to take up landscapes instead. The sea, the sky, animals, people, and trees are beautiful in the exact state in which nature created them surrounded by air and light. Indeed, it was Boudin who passed on to Monet his conviction of the importance of working in the open air, which Monet would in turn transmit to his impressionist friends. Monet did not want to enrol at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. He chose to attend a private school, LAcademie Suisse, established by an ex-model on the Quai dOrfevres near the Pont Saint-Michel. One could draw and paint from a live model there for a modest fee. This was where Monet met the future impressionist Camille Pissarro. Later in Gleyres studio, Monet met Auguste Renoir Alfred Sisley, and Frederic Bazille. Monet considered it very important that Boudin be introduced to his new friends. He also told his friends of another painter he had found in Normandy. This was the remarkable Dutchman Jongkind. His landscapes were saturated with colour, and their sincerity, at times even their naivete, was combined with subtle observation of the Normandy shores variable nature. At this time Monets landscapes were not yet characterized by great richness of colour. Rather, they recalled the tonalities of paintings by the Barbizon artists, and Boudins seascapes. He composed a range of colour based on yellow-brown or blue-grey. At the Third Impressionist Exhibition in 1877 Monet presented a series of paintings for the first time: seven views of the Saint-Lazare train station. He selected them from among twelve he had painted at the station. This motif in Monets work is in line not only with Manets Chemin de fer (The Railway) and with his own landscapes featuring trains and stations at Argenteuil, but also with a trend that surfaced after the railways first began to appear. In 1883, Monet had bought a house in the village of Giverny, near the little town of Vernon. At Giverny, series painting became one of his chief working procedures. Meadows became his permanent workplace. When a journalist, who had come from Vetheuil to interview Monet, asked him where his studio was, the painter answered, My studio! Ive never had a studio, and I cant see why one would lock oneself up in a room. To draw, yes to paint, no. Then, broadly gesturing towards the Seine, the hills, and the silhouette of the little town, he declared, Theres my real studio.Monet began to go to London in the last decade of the nineteenth century. He began all his London paintings working directly from nature, but completed many of them afterwards, at Giverny. The series formed an indivisible whole, and the painter had to work on all his can...

Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841. In 1854, the boy’s parents took him from school and found a place for him in the Lévy brothers’ workshop, where he was to learn to paint

Until the end of the 19th century Naive Art, created by untrained artists and characterised by spontaneity and simplicity, enjoyed little recognition from professional artists and art critics. Naive painting is often distinguished by its clarity of line, vivacity and joyful colours, as well as by its rather clean-cut, simple shapes, as represented by French artists such as Henri Rousseau, Seraphine de Senlis, Andre Bauchant and Camille Bombois. However, this movement has also found adherents elsewhere, including Joan Miro (who was influenced by some of its qualities), Guido Vedovato, Niko Pirosmani, and Ivan Generalic.

Manet is one of the most famous artists from the second half of the nineteenth century linked to the impressionists, although he was not really one of them. He had great influence on French painting partly because of the choice he made for his subjects from everyday life, the use of pure colours, and his fast and free technique. He made, in his own work, the transition between Courbets Realism and the work of the impressionists.Born a high bourgeois, he chose to become a painter after failing the entry to the Marine School. He studied with Thomas Couture, an Academic painter, but it was thanks to the numerous travels he made around Europe from 1852 that he started to find out what would become his own style.His first paintings were mostly portraits and genre scenes, inspired by his love for Spanish masters like Velazquez and Goya. In 1863 he presented his masterpiece Luncheon on the Grass at the Salon des Refuses. His work started a fight between the defenders of Academic art and the young refuses artists. Manet became the leader of this new generation of artists.From 1864, the official Salon accepted his paintings, still provoking loud protests over works such as Olympia in 1865. In 1866, the writer Zola wrote an article defending Manets work. At that time, Manet was friends with all the future great impressionist masters: Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, Auguste Renoir, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro and Paul Cezanne, and he influenced their work, even though he cannot strictly be counted as one of them. In 1874 indeed, he refused to present his paintings in the First Impressionist Exhibition. His last appearance in the official Salon was in 1882 with A Bar at the Folies-Bergere, one of his most famous works. Suffering from gangrene during the year 1883, he painted flower still-lifes until he became too weak to work. He died leaving behind a great number of drawings and paintings.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir war Augenzeuge vieler bedeutender Ereignisse. Sein jungerer Bruder Edmond erzahlte: Seine Kohlezeichnungen an den Mauern brachten die Eltern auf den Gedanken, dass er ein malerisches Talent besitze, und sie schickten ihn in die Lehre zu einem Porzellanmaler. Er hat also Gluck gehabt, was nicht so oft vorkommt. Bald darauf entstand das erste Bild des kunftigen Impressionisten. Er bestand 1862 die Aufnahmeprufungen an der Ecole des Beaux-Arts und nahm sein Studium in der Werkstatt von Charles Gleyre auf. Viel spater, als bereits ausgereifter Kunstler, erhielt Renoir die Moglichkeit, das Schaffen von Rembrandt direkt in Holland, die Werke von Velazquez, Goya und El Greco in Spanien und die Raphaels in Italien kennen zu lernen. Aber die erste Ausstellung der Impressionisten war fur Renoir der erste Schritt zur Behauptung seiner eigenen kunstlerischen Sicht. Ab 1873 lie er sich auf dem Montmartre nieder, wo er bis 1884 lebte. Dort fand er auch seine Familie und lernte in den 1870er Jahren seine treuesten Freunde kennen. Auf der dritten Impressionisten-Ausstellung im Jahr 1877 zeigte Renoir ein ganzes Panorama von Bildern (uber 20 Arbeiten). Darunter waren viele Landschaften, die in Paris an der Seine, in der Umgebung der Stadt und im Garten Monets gemalt worden waren, Studien von Frauenkopfen und Blumenstrauen, Portraits, aber auch Die Schaukel und Ball im Moulin de la Galette. Durand-Ruel veranstaltete 1883 auf dem Boulevard de la Madeleine in Paris die erste Einzelausstellung Renoirs, auf der 70 Werke gezeigt wurden. Damit begann fur Renoir eine Glucksstrahne. Seine Bilder wurden in London, Brussel und auf der Siebten Internationalen Ausstellung bei Georges Petit im Jahre 1886 ausgestellt. In einem Brief schrieb der Maler: Die Ausstellung von Petit ist eroffnet und soll Erfolg haben. Es ist ja so schwer, uber sich selbst zu urteilen. Ich glaube, es ist mir gelungen, einen Schritt auf dem Weg zur Achtung des Publikums zu tun, einen kleinen Schritt. Aber immerhin.

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of a group of Post-Impressionist painters who called themselves the Nabis, from the Hebrew word meaning prophet. Bonnard, Vuillard, Roussel and Denis, the most distinguished of the Nabis, revolutionised decorative painting during one of the richest periods in the history of French painting. Bonnards works are striking for their strong colours and candidness.

Mary was born in Pittsburgh. Her father was a banker of liberal educational ideas and the entire family appears to have been sympathetic to French culture. Mary was no more than five or six years old when she first saw Paris, and she was still in her teens when she decided to become a painter. She went to Italy, on to Antwerp, then to Rome, andfinally returned to Paris where in 1874, she permanently settled. In 1872, Cassatt sent her first work to the Salon, others followed in the succeeding years until 1875, when a portrait of her sister was rejected. She divined that the jury had not been satisfied with the background, so she re-painted it several times until, in the next Salon, the same portrait was accepted. At this moment Degas asked her to exhibit with him and his friends, the Impressionist Group, then rising into view, and she accepted with joy. She admired Manet, Courbet and Degas, and hated conventional art. Cassatts biographer stressed the intellectuality and sentiment apparent in her work, as well as the emotion and distinction with which she has painted her favourite models: babies and their mothers. He then speaks of her predominant interest in draughtsmanship and her gift for linear pattern, a gift greatly strengthened by her study of Japanese art and her emulation of its style in the colour prints she made. While her style may partake of the style of others, her draughtsmanship, her composition, her light, and her colour are, indeed, her own. There are qualities of tenderness in her work which could have been put there, perhaps, only by a woman. The qualities which make her work of lasting value are those put there by an outstanding painter.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir nació en Limoges, el 25 de febrero de 1841. En 1854, sus padres lo sacaron de la escuela y le consiguieron un sitio en el taller de los hermanos Lévy, donde aprendió a pintar porcelana. El hermano menor de Renoir, Edmond, opino al respecto: A partir de lo que pintaba al carbon en las paredes concluyeron que tenia habilidad para las artes. Asi fue como nuestros padres lo pusieron a aprender el oficio de pintor de porcelana. Uno de los trabajadores de los Levy, Emile Laporte, pintaba al oleo en su tiempo libre. El le sugirio a Renoir que usara sus lienzos y pinturas. Este ofrecimiento tuvo como resultado la primera pintura del futuro impresionista. En 1862, Renoir paso sus examenes, ingreso en la Escuela de Bellas Artes y, al mismo tiempo, en uno de los estudios independientes donde enseñaba Charles Gleyre, un profesor de la Escuela. El segundo, o tal vez incluso el primero de los grandes sucesos de este periodo en la vida de Renoir fue reunirse, en el estudio de Gleyre, con aquellos que se convertirian en sus mejores amigos durante el resto de su vida y que compartirian sus ideas sobre el arte. Mucho tiempo despues, cuando ya era un artista maduro, Renoir tuvo la oportunidad de ver obras de Rembrandt en Holanda, de Velazquez, Goya y El Greco en España y de Rafael en Italia. Sin embargo, Renoir vivio y respiro la idea de un nuevo tipo de arte. Siempre encontro inspiracion en el Louvre. Para mi, en la era de Gleyre, el Louvre era Delacroix, le confeso a su hijo. Para Renoir, la primera exhibicion impresionista fue el momento en que se afirmo su vision del arte y del artista. Este periodo de la vida de Renoir estuvo marcado por otro acontecimiento significativo. En 1873 se mudo a Montmartre, a la casa numero 35 de Rue Saint-Georges, donde vivio hasta 1884. Renoir siguio siendo leal a Montmartre durante el resto de su vida. Aqui encontro sus temas plein-air, sus modelos y hasta su familia. Fue en la decada de 1870 cuando Renoir conocio a los amigos que lo acompañarian el resto de su vida. Uno de ellos fue el comerciante de arte Paul Durand-Ruel, que comenzo a comprar sus pinturas en 1872. En verano, Renoir siguio pintando muchas escenas de exteriores, junto con Monet. Viajo a Argenteuil, donde Monet alquilo una casa para su familia. Edouard Manet tambien trabajaba con ellos algunas veces. En 1877, en la tercera exhibicion impresionista, Renoir presento un panorama de mas de veinte pinturas entre las que se encontraban paisajes creados en Paris, en el Sena, fuera de la ciudad y en los jardines de Claude Monet; estudios de cabezas femeninas y ramos de flores; retratos de Sisley, de la actriz Jeanne Samary, del escritor Alphonse Daudet y del politico Spuller; ademas de las obras El columpio y El baile en el Moulin de la Galette. Finalmente, en la decada de 1880, Renoir entro en una racha de buena suerte. Unos ricos empresarios, el propietario de Grands Magasins du Louvre y el senador Goujon, le encargaron unos trabajos. Sus pinturas se exhibieron en Londres y Bruselas, asi como en la Septima Exhibicion Internacional llevada a cabo en la galeria de Georges Petit en Paris, en 1886. En una carta a Durand-Ruel, que entonces se encontraba en Nueva York, Renoir escribio: Ya se inauguro la exhibicion de Petit y no va tan mal, o al menos eso dicen. Despues de todo, es dificil juzgarse a si mismo. Creo que he logrado dar un paso para ganar el respeto del publico. Es un pequeño paso, pero es algo.

Para Claude Monet, el que se le considerara “impresionista” fue siempre un motivo de orgullo. A pesar de todas las críticas que se han hecho a su trabajo, siguió siendo un verdadero impresionista has

Impressionism has always been one of the publics favourite styles of art and Impressionist works continue to enchant beholders with their amazing play of colours and forms. This book offers a well-chosen selection of the most impressive works of artists such as Degas, Monet, Pissarro, Renoir and Sisley. Mega Square Impressionism pays tribute to the subjects popularity.

Desde su muerte, hace 100 años, Cézanne se ha convertido en el pintor más famoso del siglo XIX. Nació en Aix-en-Provence en 1839 y el periodo más feliz de su vida fue su primera juventud en Provenza, en compañia de Emile Zola. Siguiendo el ejemplo de Zola, al cumplir los veintiun años, Cezanne se marcho a Paris. Durante la guerra franco-prusiana deserto de la milicia, y dividio su tiempo entre pintar al aire libre y estudiar. Al comerciante de arte Vollard le dijo: Solo soy un pintor. El ingenio parisino me fastidia. Lo unico que quiero es pintar desnudos en las orillas del Arc [un rio cercano a Aix]. Animado por Renoir, uno de los primeros en apreciarlo, exhibio con los impresionistas en 1874 y en 1877. Su obra fue recibida con desden, lo que lo hirio profundamente. La ambicion de Cezanne en sus propias palabras, era hacer del impresionismo algo tan solido y durable como las pinturas de los museos. Su objetivo era lograr algo monumental en un lenguaje moderno de tonos brillantes y vibrantes. Cezanne queria retener el color natural de un objeto y armonizarlo con las diversas influencias de luz y sombra que intentaban destruirlo; buscaba una escala de tonos que expresara la masa y el caracter de la forma. A Cezanne le gustaba pintar frutas porque se trataba de modelos pacientes y el trabajaba lentamente. No pretendia solo copiar una manzana. Mantenia el color dominante y el caracter de la fruta, pero subrayaba el atractivo emocional de la forma con un conjunto de tonos ricos y concordantes. En sus pinturas de naturalezas muertas era un maestro. Sus composiciones de vegetales y frutas son verdaderamente dramaticas; tienen peso, nobleza, el estilo de las formas inmortales. Ningun otro pintor logro darle a una manzana roja una conviccion tan calida, una simpatia tan genuinamente espiritual o una observacion tan prolongada. Ningun otro pintor de habilidad comparable reservo sus mas fuertes impulsos para las naturalezas muertas. Cezanne devolvio a la pintura la preeminencia del conocimiento, la calidad mas esencial de todo esfuerzo creativo. La muerte de su padre, en 1886, lo convirtio en un hombre rico, pero no por eso cambio su estilo de vida austero. Poco despues, Cezanne se retiro de forma permanente a su propiedad en Provenza. Probablemente se trato del mas solitario de los pintores de su epoca. Por momentos le atacaba una peculiar melancolia, una oscura desesperanza. Se volvio irascible y exigente, destruia los lienzos y los arrojaba fuera de su estudio, hacia los arboles, los abandonaba en los campos, se los daba a su hijo para que los cortara e hiciera con ellos rompecabezas o se los regalaba a la gente de Aix. A principios de siglo, cuando Vollard llego a Provenza con intenciones de adquirir todo lo que pudiera del material de Cezanne, los campesinos, que se enteraron de que un loco de Paris estaba pagando por aquellos viejos lienzos, sacaron de los graneros una considerable cantidad de naturalezas muertas y paisajes. El viejo maestro de Aix se sintio abrumado por la alegria, pero el reconocimiento le llego demasiado tarde. Murio en 1906 de una fiebre que contrajo mientras pintaba en la lluvia.

« Le père Pissarro », comme aimaient à l’appeler ses amis, était le plus sage des artistes impressionnistes. Peut être son âge, plus avancé que celui de ses camarades Monet, Sisley, Bazille et Renoir

Arriving with a bang on the post-World War I scene, the Surrealists proclaimed a revolution of thought and creation, insisting on breaking away from the past and a world that had been left in ruins. This refusal to integrate into bourgeois society was also a leitmotiv of the Dada movement, a rebellious trait that led Andre Breton to say that Dadaism was a machine had not thought to come up with new perspectives. It was this comment that gave birth to Surrealism. The Surrealists frequently collaborated with Dada artists on intellectual levels for which exclusivity had often become the general rule.In his descriptions of the Surrealists as part of a force of absolute resistance, the author approaches the movement in an exciting and original way. Balanced between provocation and cultural revolution, werent the Surrealists most of all the products of creative individualism in this period buffeted by history?

The Dada movement and then the Surrealists appeared in the First World War aftermath with a bang: revolution of thought, creativity, and the wish to break away from the past and all that was left in ruins. This refusal to integrate into the Bourgeois society lead Georg Grosz to remark of Dada, its the end of-isms. Breton asserted that Dada does not produce perspective, a machine which functions full steam, but where it remains to be seen how it can feed itself. Surrealism emerged amidst such feeling. These artists often changed from one movement to another. They were united by their superior intellectualism and the common goal to break from the norm. Describing Dada with its dynamic free-thinkers, and the Surrealists with their aversive resistance to the system, the author brings a new approach which strives to be relative and truthful. Provocation and cultural revolution: Dada and the Surrealists, arent they above all just a direct product of creative individualism in this unsettled period?

Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionists circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyres studio; most likely he first met the future impressionists at the Cafe Guerbois. He started his apprenticeship in 1853 at the studio of Louis-Ernest Barrias and, beginning in 1854, studied under Louis Lamothe, who revered Ingres above all others, and transmitted his adoration for this master to Edgar Degas. Starting in 1854 Degas travelled frequently to Italy: first to Naples, where he made the acquaintance of his numerous cousins, and then to Rome and Florence, where he copied tirelessly from the Old Masters. His drawings and sketches already revealed very clear preferences: Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Mantegna, but also Benozzo Gozzoli, Ghirlandaio, Titian, Fra Angelico, Uccello, and Botticelli. During the 1860s and 1870s he became a painter of racecourses, horses and jockeys. His fabulous painters memory retained the particularities of movement of horses wherever he saw them. After his first rather complex compositions depicting racecourses, Degas learned the art of translating the nobility and elegance of horses, their nervous movements, and the formal beauty of their musculature. Around the middle of the 1860s Degas made yet another discovery. In 1866 he painted his first composition with ballet as a subject, Mademoiselle Fiocre dans le ballet de la Source (Mademoiselle Fiocre in the Ballet The Spring) (New York, Brooklyn Museum). Degas had always been a devotee of the theatre, but from now on it would become more and more the focus of his art. Degas first painting devoted solely to the ballet was Le Foyer de la danse a lOpera de la rue Le Peletier (The Dancing Anteroom at the Opera on Rue Le Peletier) (Paris, Musee dOrsay). In a carefully constructed composition, with groups of figures balancing one another to the left and the right, each ballet dancer is involved in her own activity, each one is moving in a separate manner from the others. Extended observation and an immense number of sketches were essential to executing such a task. This is why Degas moved from the theatre on to the rehearsal halls, where the dancers practised and took their lessons. This was how Degas arrived at the second sphere of that immediate, everyday life that was to interest him. The ballet would remain his passion until the end of his days.