(1736 - 1809) was a distinguished Russian painter who specialized in portraits. Fyodor Rokotov was born into a family of peasant serfs, belonging to the Repnins. Much in his biography is obscure. He studied art in Saint Petersburg Academy of Arts. After buying back his freedom in the end of 1750s he became established as a fashionable painter. In 1765, Rokotov was elected an Academician, but he did not work as a professor in the Academy long, because it interfered with his painting. He returned to Moscow in 1765, where he lived for the rest of his life. He had a lot of commissions there, becoming one of the best portrait painters of his time. Among his best-known portraits are Portrait of Alexandra Struyskaya (1772), sometimes called the Russian Mona Lisa and admittedly the most celebrated piece of the 18th-century Russian painting; Portrait of Countess Elisabeth Santi (1785), and Lady in a Pink Dress.  Related Paintings of Fyodor Rokotov :. | Portrait of Catherine II of Russia. | Portrait de Nikita A. Demidoff | Maria Vorontsova by Rokotov | Portrait of A.P.Struiskaya | Emperor Paul I as a Child |
Related Artists:
giacomo balla
Balla is often portrayed as a painter closely associated with Italian Futurism although in fact, like a number of others associated with the group, his work crossed into a number of creative disciplines including fashion and the applied arts. In 1914 he wrote the Manifesto on Menswear, later retitled Antineutral Clothing, a dramatic exhortation to dispense with the mundaneity of everyday menswear in favour of dynamic, expressive, and aggressive Futurist clothing. Like his fellow Futurists he sought to sweep away all vestiges of Italy cultural heritage in favour of an emphatically 20th-century way of life. He conceived of Futurist menswear as allowing its wearers to respond to mood changes through pneumatic devices that can be used on the spur of the moment, thus everyone can alter his dress according to the needs of his spirit. It could also be animated by electric bulbs. He had an exhibition at the Casa DArte Bragaglia in Rome in 1918, in conjunction with which he co-published his Colour Manifesto. He was also committed to Futurist applied arts and furniture, brightly painted and with richly animated surfaces, and showed them at his Futurist House in 1920, the year in which he collaborated on the journal Roma futurista. He also exhibited at the Paris Exposition des Arts D??coratifs et Industriels of 1925 and the International Exhibition at Barcelona in 1929. However he failed to get his Futurist designs put into mass production and during the 1930s gradually distanced himself from such an outlook.
Vicente Lopez y Portana
(September 19, 1772, Valencia, Spain CJuly 22, 1850, Madrid, Spain) was a Spanish painter, considered the best portrait painter of his time. Vicente Lepez y Portaña was born in Valencia on September 19, 1772. His parents were Cristebal Lepez Sanchordi and Manuela Portaña Meer. Vicente Lepez began formally studying painting in Valencia at the age of thirteen, he was a disciple of father Antonio de Villanueva, a Franciscan monk, and he studied at the Academy of San Carlos in his native city. He was seventeen when he won first prize in drawing and coloring receiving a scholarship to study in the prestigious Academia Real de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid. For the following three years in Madrid, he apprenticed with the Valencian painter, Mariano Salvador Maella. Vicente Lepez returned to Valencia in 1794 and subsequently became vice-director of painting at the Academy where he had studied as a boy. In 1795 he married Maria Piquer, they had two sons: Bernardo Lepez Piquer and Luis (1802-1865), who were also painters, following their father's style but with little accomplishments. In 1801 Lepez was named President of the Academy of San Carlos.
John Kane
1860-1934 American painter of Scottish birth. In 1879 Kane emigrated to western Pennsylvania. He worked as a bricklayer, coal miner, steel worker and carpenter in the Ohio River valley and, in 1890, began to sketch local scenery. After losing his leg in a train accident in 1891, he was employed painting railway carriages. When his son died in 1904, Kane left his family and spent years wandering and working in odd jobs; his earliest surviving paintings date from around 1910. Settling in Pittsburgh, he worked as a house painter and in his spare time painted portraits, religious subjects, the city's urban landscape and memories of his Scottish childhood. In 1927 the jury of the Carnegie International Exhibition, Pittsburgh, encouraged by the painter-juror Andrew Dasburg (b 1887), accepted Kane's Scene in the Scottish Highlands (1927; Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mus. A.). Kane's success, at first considered a hoax by the press, was based on the modernist interest in primitive and folk art. His work was regarded as non-academic and boldly original, and he became the first contemporary American folk artist to be recognized by a museum. Larimer Avenue Bridge (1932; Pittsburgh, PA, Carnegie Mus. A.) is characteristic of his style with its meticulous detail, flat colour and dominant green and red. Though he sketched and painted on the site, Kane freely transposed pictorial elements to create a more pleasing composition. This innate compositional sense is evident in his Self-portrait (1929; New York, MOMA).