Ricks Fav
Visual Artists
Only some of my Favorite Painters & Visual Artists
are Listed Here Below.
*This is still a Work-In-Progress
Visual Artists
Early Renaissance Artists
Visual art in Florence during the 15th century featured architecture, painting and sculpture. The most significant visual artists were commissioned either by the Church or by rich dynastic patrons like the Medici family.
Alessandro Botticelli (1445-1510)
One of the greatest Florentine Renaissance painters.
High Renaissance Artists
Visual art of this period was especially active in Rome, where a series of Popes employed so many visual artists on painting and sculptural projects that they nearly bankrupted the Church.
Michelangelo (1475-1564)
Greatest sculptor of all time: famous masterpieces include Pieta and David. Also known for his magnificent Genesis and Last Judgement frescoes in the Sistine Chapel.
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519)
Greatest High Renaissance oil painter and draftsman.
Raphael (1483-1520)
Renaissance painting prodigy, tapestry artist, decorated the Raphael Rooms.
Mannerist Artists
Visual artists known as Mannerists were less balanced and more extravagant than their Renaissance ancestors. This was a reflection of the uncertainties of the age.
Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-93)
Best-known for his unique fruit & vegetable portraits.
El Greco (Domenikos Theotocopoulos) (1541-1614)
Greek painter, active in Spain; noted for dazzling spiritual works and portraits.
Baroque Artists
Visual artists of the Baroque era were often commissioned by the Catholic Church to inspire the faithful, while promoting the religious teachings of Rome.
Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640)
Greatest Baroque history painter and portraitist.
Nicolas Poussin (1594-1665)
One of the greatest classical academic painters.
Dutch Realist Painters
An exception to the Counter-Reformation Baroque were the Dutch Realists, who created exquisite oil paintings of portraiture, still life and genre scenes, for their new Protestant middle-class patrons.
Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)
The world's greatest portrait artist, master of chiaroscuro technique.
Romantic Artists
Visual artists of a romantic inclination placed their trust in human nature, rather than reason and logic. Romanticism went hand in hand with symbolism, and back-to-nature philosophies.
Francisco Goya (1746-1828)
Spanish court painter, pioneer of modern art.
Theodore Gericault (1791-1824)
French painter, best known for his masterpiece The Raft of the Medusa.
Eugene Delacroix (1798-63)
Leader of French Romanticism, known also for his mural painting.
English School of Painters (1700-1900)
The English schools of figurative and landscape painting embraced a wide variety of visual artists, including painters and sculptors from Ireland. Thanks to English watercolourists like Girtin and Turner, watercolour painting matured into a fully fledged genre of landscape art.
JMW Turner (1775-1851)
The finest English watercolourist and landscape painter.
John Constable (1776-1837)
England's greatest naturalist landscape painter. Noted for The Hay Wain.
American School of Painters (c.1700-1900)
From chroniclers of Colonial America, to 19th-century society portraitists, the American school is really an umbrella term which embraces Romantic landscape artists, Realist genre painters and some of the greatest exponents of portraiture.
Thomas Cole (1801-48)
Founder of Hudson River school of American landscape painting.
James Abbott McNeill Whistler (1834-1903)
Famous for his "Nocturnes" and etchings; member of the Aesthetic Movement.
Realism School (19th Century)
Visual artists of the realist school were the first to choose everyday scenes, themes and people as subjects for their paintings.
Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796-1875)
Influential French landscape painter.
Gustave Courbet (1819-77)
Founder of French Realism art movement.
Impressionists
Visual artists like Claude Monet sought to replicate the "instant impression" of natural light. By working in the open air, close to nature, plein-air painters could best reproduce the transitory colours and effects of sunlight.
Claude Monet (1840-1926)
Founder of French Impressionism; devotee of plein-air painting.
Camille Pissarro (1830-1903)
Renowned for his cityscape and landscape paintings.
Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919)
Close friend of Monet; finest exponent of 'dappled light'.
Edgar Degas (1834-1917)
The greatest figure painter and sculptor of the Impressionist movement.
Edouard Manet (1832-83)
A key figure in the evolution of modern painting in France.
Berthe Morisot (1841-95)
Greatest female Impressionist; sister-in-law of Edouard Manet.
Mary Cassatt (1845-1926)
American Impressionist painter; inclined towards academic art style
Post-Impressionists
Merely replicating nature proved insufficient for post-Impressionist visual artists like Cezanne, Gauguin, Seurat and Whistler. Their non-natural interpretations paved the way for revolutionary movements like Cubism and Expressionism.
Paul Cezanne (1839-1906)
Master of still life, proto-Cubist landscapes.
Paul Gauguin (1848-1903)
Pioneer of colourism, influenced Synthetism, Cloisonism and Primitivism.
Vincent Van Gogh (1853-1890)
Pioneer of modern Expressionism.
Georges Seurat (1859-1891)
Founder of Neo-Impressionism - Pointillism and Divisionism colour theory.
Paul Signac (1863-1935)
Leader of Neo-Impressionists after Seurat.
Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864-1901)
Genre painter, printmaker, draftsman and illustrator.
Russian Painters
The greatest Russian visual artists of the 19th and early 20th century, from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Siberia.
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944)
Russian painter, art theorist; leader of Der Blaue Reiter art group.
Primitive/Fantasy Artists
No visual artists had more imagination than these fantasy painters.
Paul Klee (1879-1940)
Expressionist, surrealist painter renowned for his dreamlike imagery.
Henri Rousseau (1844-1910) (Le Douanier)
Naive painter, best known for The Sleeping Gypsy.
Art Nouveau Artists/Poster Designers
Visual artists who practised Art Nouveau sought novelty, but often found themselves following in the footsteps of Celtic, Byzantine or Rococo artists.
Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)
Viennese Secessionist painter, art nouveau style; best known for The Kiss.
19th Century Sculptors
The nineteenth century was an uncertain time for 3-D visual artists, whose range of interpretation had been severely curtailed by the socialism of the French Revolution. Only Rodin managed to deliver a suitably monumental message.
Auguste Rodin (1840-1917)
The greatest sculptor of the 19th century.
Fauvist Artists
These visual artists created a style which acted as a bridge between Impressionism and Expressionism.
Henri Matisse (1869-1954)
Founder of Fauvism; pioneer of colourism; noted for sculptures and gouache collages.
Expressionists
These visual artists used colour, line and composition to convey their feelings, in total contrast to the conventions of the Salon.
Edvard Munch (1863-1944)
Norwegian Expressionist painter, best known for The Scream.
Emil Nolde (1867-1956)
Oil painter, watercolourist, and printmaker noted for The Prophet woodcut.
Georges Rouault (1871-1958)
French expressionist painter, printmaker (aquatints), stained glass artist.
Franz Marc (1880-1916)
Co-founder of The Blue Rider expressionists in Munich.
Kurt Schwitters (1887-1948)
German Dada artist best known for his "Merz" collage art, multi-media "Merzbau".
Cubists
Reacting against the "prettifying nature" of Impressionism, these visual artists focused on intellectual issues concerning the two-dimensional picture-plane.
Georges Braque (1882-1963)
Co-inventor of Analytical and Synthetic Cubism.
Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Co-founder of Cubism; greatest sculptor/painter of the 20th century.
Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968)
Cubist painter, Dadaist sculptor ("readymades"), pioneer conceptual artist.
Realism School (20th Century)
Edward Hopper (1882-1967)
American artist, noted for his narrative urban genre-paintings.
Grant Wood (1892-1942)
Iowa regionalist painter, noted for his masterpiece American Gothic.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978)
America's great populist illustrator, noted for his nostalgic subject paintings.
Surrealists
These visual artists, many of whom had been members of Dada, aimed to generate an entirely new set of imagery by liberating the creative power of the unconscious mind.
Max Ernst (1891-1976)
Multi-media collage artist, painter, sculptor, inventor of frottage.
Joan Miro (1893-1983)
Spanish painter: ceramicist, etcher, lithographer, mosaicist, glass artist.
Rene Magritte (1898-1967)
Belgian classical artist, Surrealist painter.
Salvador Dali (1904-89)
Most famous member of Surrealism movement of the 1930s.
Abstract Artists
These visual artists exemplify geometric abstraction. Unfortunately, instead of discovering new pathways, most of these purists ended up repeating motifs.
Piet Mondrian (1872-1944)
Member of De Stijl design group, noted for geometric minimalist paintings.
Modern Sculptors
These visual artists discovered new rules of line and depth, new shapes, new materials and new ways of interacting with space.
Alexander Calder (1898-1976)
Inventor of kinetic sculpture (mobiles and stabiles).
Henry Moore (1898-1986)
Best known for his reclining nudes & organic forms in wood, bronze & stone.
Louise Nevelson (1899-1988)
Assemblage artist, known for her abstract "sculptured walls".
Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966)
Known for his elongated, emaciated figurative sculptures.
David Smith (1906-1965)
Highly influential American sculptor of the post-war period.
Abstract Expressionists
These visual artists, divided loosely between exponents of "action-painting" and "colour field", sought to escape the outside world and focus on their relationship with the viewer. The first major American art movement.
Mark Rothko (1903-70)
Co-inventor of Colour Field painting; noted for monumental colourist paintings.
Willem De Kooning (1904-97)
One of the key figures in American Abstract Expressionist art.
Jackson Pollock (1912-56)
Inventor of 'action-painting', a type of Abstract Expressionism.
Robert Motherwell (1915-91)
Painter, collage artist, printmaker, noted for Elegy to the Spanish Republic.
Pop Artists
These visual artists made light-hearted fun of the forms revered and worshipped by the Consumer Society of the 1960s. Suddenly art could be made of anything.
Roy Lichtenstein (1923-97)
Painter in comic-strip style; noted for benday dot paintings, like Wham!
Robert Rauschenberg (1925-2008)
Noted for his "Combines", collages, assemblages and conceptual art.
Andy Warhol (1928-87)
Most successful Pop-Artist; noted for screenprints, popular portraits.
Claes Oldenburg (b.1929)
Swedish sculptor, noted for his Pop art images of everyday objects.
Jasper Johns (b.1930)
Highly successful American painter, sculptor, printmaker, pioneer of Pop art.
Contemporary Painters
Encompassing very different styles, these visual artists exemplify all the innovative attributes of modernist and contemporary art.
Diego Rivera (1886-1957)
Leader of the Mexican Fresco Mural Renaissance.
Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986)
American semi-abstract painter.
Frida Kahlo (1907–1954)
Mexican surrealist, symbolist painter, wife of Diego Rivera.
Richard Estes (b.1932)
American painter of urban street scenes; pioneer of Superrealism.
Contemporary Sculptors
These visual artists have taken the idea of plastic art to its limits.
Richard Serra (b.1939)
American minimalist noted for his process art and public steel sculptures.
Creative Photographers
Ansel Adams (1902-84)
Landscape photographer, noted for his photography of Yosemite National Park.
Op Artist
Eunice Strunk
Landscape, minimalist, op and abstract painter
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