Oil Paintings, Art and Wall Decor Blog

Art genera and styles

American Realism - Edward Hopper

Edward Hopper’s classic works captured the authenticity of urban and rural American life with emotions and beauty that have placed them among the lasting and popular images of the American 20th century landscape.

Edward Hopper was born July 22, 1882, 25 miles north of New York City. After a short stretch in the Commercial Art school in New York City, Hopper transferred to the New York School of Art, founded a few years back by the American Impressionist William Merritt Chase. Hopper continued to study illustration but also learned to paint from the most influential teachers of that time, including Chase, Robert Henri and Kenneth Hayes Miller.

Hopper was eager to keep learning the trade and traveled to Paris so he could get inspired by the Impressionist movement that took Paris by storm. He visited Europe three times from 1906 to 1910. After returning to the United States in 1910, Hopper never visited Europe again. He was set on finding his own way as an American artist, and the transition toward an individual style can be detected in the works that followed like Room in New York, painted in 1932.

Painting didn’t come easy for Edward Hopper. Each canvas represented a long, painful conception spent in solitude. There were no sweeping brushstrokes from a fevered mind, no electrifying “Van Gogh like” stroke of genius. He painstakingly considered, added and took out ideas for months before he squeezed even a drop of oil onto his palette.

Despite his extensive consideration, Hopper created more than 800 known paintings, watercolors and prints. His best works are of purified yet eerie scenes in remote New England towns and Off-Broadway New York City scenes and architectures. His bleak yet warm interpretation of early 20th century American life, are melodramas submerged with vigor.

Hopper is arguably the best and most admired American realist of the 20th century, encapsulating a generation’s memories so vividly that we can hardly look at a toppled house, or gas-station near a deserted road except through his eyes. His ability to relate to both rural America and to the wild urban scene of New York City in the same stroke of solitude and vitality unites us all under Hopper’s palette.

Rene Magritte - Turning Ordinary into Extraordinary

Though considered by many as a Surrealist, René Magritte was in essence a highbrow painter; his artworks served as vessels for the transformation of abstract thought into visual expression. Magritte was obsessive in redoing his previous oil paintings, ever changing and attempting to portray thoughts through the introduction of subtle compositional changes. Such thoughts were abundant, and Magritte was and still is considered an extraordinary painter, creating more than a thousand oil paintings over the course of five decades.

Magritte was born in 1898, in Belgium, the dull landscape and gloomy skies may well have influenced his flat, moody creations. He began to paint at the age of twelve, and studied art at the Academy in Brussels from 1916 to 1918. In 1926, while earning a living designing advertisements and posters, Magritte joined several friends in the formation of the Belgian Surrealist group. Magritte and his associates showed contempt to the misuse of Freudian theories in art. The group wanted to expand conscious understanding of reality by displaying utterly improbable scenes. The fantastic compositions that resulted were made even more absurd by Magritte’s witty charm.

Rather than paint the conscious world, Magritte created an inverse world, carrying us with him through the looking glass in search of bizarre settings, weird objects of absurd scale, and distortions of the laws of time and matter. He reveled in making the ordinary appear strange, tearing objects from their usual contexts and planting them into utterly inappropriate settings. His legacy is apparent mostly in the works of later contemporary Pop artists like Andy Warhol, who borrowed familiar images and icons from the mass cultural landscape and presented them in a new context, thereby injecting them with new meaning. Magritte painted in the abyss between our visions and the physical world, between our attempts to rationalize every phenomenon, and the absurdity that continues to encompass life despite all efforts to suppress it.

Magritte’s most famous work, Son of Man, is actually a self portrait of Magritte. The painting portrays a man in a suit and a bowler hat (a reacurring motif in Magritte’s creation) standing in-front of a small brick wall. In the horizon is an ocean and cloudy skies. The man’s face is largely covered by a hovering green apple. The painting depicts the biblical story of Adam and Eve, and how the modern businessman is faced with the same temptation Adam faced soon after the creation. About the painting Magritte said, “Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see, but it is impossible. Humans hide their secrets too well…”

A Van Gogh discovered under another Van Gogh

A lost Van Gogh has been found this month, Wild Vegetation, hidden under another painting. It was discovered in an x-ray of The Ravine, which Van Gogh painted on the same canvas four months later. The Van Gogh Museum said that the painting underneath the Ravine matches an actual drawing that they had from Van Gogh at the time.

The Real Impressionists

This is a trailer of the “Impressoinists,” a BBC original series about the life and work of the early Impressionists. The story is narrated through the eyes of old Claude Monet during the 1920’s as he reflects back on the early days of the Impressionist movement.

This promo shows great moments in the life of Monet, Manet, Degas and Cezanne.

Finally a TV series about the life of the impressionist, if you get a chance, try and locate this series, it is really fun to watch and you can learn a lot about the era and what these artists went through in order to change the face of Traditional Art. It is an opportunity to see what inspired these artists and how there art propelled them to greatness.

Come celebrate the most important art movement of Modern times with the “Impressionists.”

Salvador Dali - Mixing Film and Oil Paintings

This summer the Tate Museum in London is hosting the Dali and Film exhibition. The show articulates the effect of Salvador Dali’s film had on his early Surrealist creation.

By showing the film in a gallery setting next to his Surrealist oil paintings it is apparent the influence film had on Salvador Dali, and how he shifted images and themes from the big screen to the canvas.

It is easy to associate images of masturbation, castration and bodily corruption that you find in Dali’s films from that era with the early Surrealist works such as The First Days of Spring, The Great Masturbator, Illumined Pleasures and The Accommodations of Desire - all painted in the year his 1929 silent film, Un Chien andalou, was made.

Dali continued to make films all the way through 1946. He collaborated with greats such Hitchcock and Disney. I find his later films hard to view and lack the impact of his early works. The same is true for his Surrealist works on canvas.

The many faces of Paul Gauguin

I found an interesting study about the paintings of Paul Gauguin. It turns out, Paul Gauguin used to embed faces inside his paintings.

In an artist’s study, it turns out that “There is always a face on the edge of the canvas watching from the background. Obvious faces, partial faces and impressionistic faces.”

This video is a never before seen exhibition of the hidden faces of Paul Gauguin:

Paul Gauguin’s Greatest Works

A banker by profession, Paul Gauguin became one of the giants of impressionism by the end of the 19th century. Gauguin was a friend to many of the great artists of his time like Pissaro and Van Gogh. His art influenced many of the artists that followed like Matisse and Picasso.

This is a great interview of George Shackelford, from the Museum of Fine Art Boston about the life of Paul Gauguin. It is especially interesting to learn about one of his most important paintings – “Who are we? Where are we going?”

This video was done as an introduction to an important exhibition of the Boston and Paris Museums combining their Gauguin collections. The exhibition, which opened in Paris in 2003 commemorated the centennial year of Gauguin’s death.

Modigliani - The future of art is in a woman’s face

I saw a great movie about the life of Amedeo Modigliani last night, the movie depicts the story of Modigliani and his bitter rivalry with Pablo Picasso, and his tragic romance with Jeanne Hebuterne.

Modigliani is portrayed by Andy Garcia who is wonderful and gives so much of his passion to the screen, similar to the passion we see in the portraits of the Italian artist.
I found the movie enthralling and captivating.

In the movie there are a couple of very interesting scene including this one that depicts a meeting between Modigliani, Picasso and Renoir…

Modigliani loved women and painted women all the time, the recurring theme of his art (according to the movie) is that “the future of art is in a woman’s face.” I think that’s just beautiful…

If you are a fan of art and of that period in art history, you should definitely check this movie out.

A look inside the world of Gustav Klimt

Gustav Klimt is one of the most admired artists of the past year. His “Portrait of Adelle Bloch-Bauer I” broke the record for most expensive oil painting ever bought. Klimt is a rare combination of East meets West as his art is heavily influenced with Eastern symbolism, colors and dies. His art was always considered contentious as it is saturated with profanity and nudity.

This is a short animation film that is trying to take a glimpse into the world of Gustav Klimt, I hope you enjoy the ride:

The animation of this film incorporates many of the Gutav Klimt masterpieces. See if you can spot the paintings used in the film… See the Gustav Klimt Oil Paintings Gallery…

Mondrian Painting Art Game

The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian painted compositions of rectangular planes in primary colors.
This unique art form has been a source of inspiration to many artists during the Twentieth Century. His work is considered deceivingly simple, as his art is as deep and as passionate as it gets.

Want to make your own Mondrian painting? Take a look at this cool painting game to Make Your Own Mondrian Oil Painting!