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Robert Peluce: Painting

Wendy Campbell — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 14:00:19 +0000

Robert Peluce was a painter, sculptor, and animator. Born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1937, Peluce studied at East Los Angeles City College and the Chouinard Art Institute.

“Peluce was an artist unlimited by subject matter, materials or medium. With a fanciful imagination and well-crafted technique, he had an exceptional ability to blend the antics of animation with the sophistications of art. For Peluce, life’s foibles and contradictions were subjects for illumination through sight gags and puns that expressed the seriousness of play and the tragedy of humor.

For what we could consider ordinary and take for granted, Peluce would command our attention by subtly nudging our sensibilities, drawing us into a world of relationships, and focusing on our perceptions of the world. We can no longer hide behind the masks of normality or take lightly our mundane actions. Peluce sees to it that we become aware of life’s absurdities and the dangers of taking it all too seriously.” (from Lamy Avery Gallery)

His work has been exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions and has won many US and international awards including the Peabody Award in 1997. Robert Peluce died on April 12, 2004.

To see more of Peluce’s work, visit Glass Garage Fine Art.

Naoto Hattori: Mini Prints

Wendy Campbell — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 15:00:31 +0000

Japanese born surrealist Naoto Hattori has released some new work in the form of affordable signed and numbered mini-prints.

Hattori studied graphic design in Tokyo before moving to New York to study at the School of Visual Arts where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts in illustration in 2000. As well as painting, he works in editorial, CD and book covers, flyers, posters, skateboard and snowboard design.

To see more of Hattoris’s work, visit NaotoHattori.com.

Found on: Creep Machine

Henry Moore: 1898 – 1986

Wendy Campbell — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 15:00:49 +0000

Recognized as the most important British sculptor of the 20th century, Henry Spencer Moore was born on July 30, 1898, in Castleford, Yorkshire. Moore had an early interest in sculpting however he began his career as a teacher in Castleford. After serving in the military during World War I, Moore studied at Leeds School of Art on an ex-serviceman’s grant. In 1921 he won a Royal Exhibition Scholarship to study sculpture at the Royal Academy of Art in London. Between 1924 – 1931 Moore was an Instructor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy. His first solo exhibition was held at the Warren Gallery, London, in 1928

“Throughout his life Moore’s appetite for the history of world sculpture was insatiable. Drawings of sculptures in his early sketchbooks indicate that Palaeolithic fertility goddesses, Cycladic and early Greek art, Sumerian, Egyptian and Etruscan sculpture, African, Oceanic, Peruvian and Pre-Columbian sculpture particularly interested him. Moore believed passionately in direct carving and in ‘truth to materials’, respecting the inherent character of stone or wood. Almost all of his works from the 1920s and 1930s were carved sculptures, initially inspired by Pre-Columbian stone carving.”

Moore married Irina Radetsky in 1929. A student of painting at the Royal College, she would be Moore’s model for a series of life drawings over a six year period.

Moore’s sculpture of the 1930s was influenced by the work of Picasso, Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti. “The subject-matter of Moore’s work of 1932–6 is, in some cases, no longer readily identifiable, although the human, psychological element informs even the seemingly abstract work of the 1930s.”

In the 1930s Moore was a member of Unit One, a group of artists lead by English landscape painter Paul Nash. From 1932 to 1939 he taught at the Chelsea School of Art. Moore was “an important force in the English Surrealist movement, although he was not entirely committed to its doctrines; Moore participated in the International Surrealist Exhibition at the New Burlington Galleries, London, in 1936.”

In 1940 Moore was appointed an official war artist and was commissioned by the War Artists Advisory Committee to execute drawings of life in underground bomb shelters. From 1940 to 1943 he focused almost entirely on drawing. His first retrospective took place at Temple Newsam, Leeds, in 1941 and he was given his first major retrospective in the United States by the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1946. Moore won the International Prize for Sculpture at the Venice Biennale of 1948.

Moore’s bronze Reclining Figure commissioned by the Arts Council for the Festival of Britain in 1951 was key in Moore’s development. “Previously the holes in his sculptures were dominated by the solid forms surrounding them but here ‘the space and the form are completely dependent on and inseparable from each other’ His work became less frontal and more completely three-dimensional. The reclining figure and the mother and child remained the dominant subjects of his sculpture.”

After the mid-1950s, many of Moore’s sculptures were made from natural objects including bones, shells, pebbles and flint stones.

Until the mid-1950s Moore made numerous preparatory drawings for his sculptures as well as pictorial studies of interiors and sculptures in landscape settings. He drew little between 1955 and 1970 but during the last 15 years of his life, he devoted more of his time to drawing for pleasure, independent of his sculpture. He first made prints in 1931, and he experimented with a process he called collograph. By the end of his life Moore had produced 719 prints.

“Moore executed several important public commissions in the 1950s, among them Reclining Figure, 1956–58, for the UNESCO Building in Paris. In 1963 the artist was awarded the British Order of Merit. In the 1970s there were many major exhibitions of Moore’s work, the finest being at Forte di Belvedere, overlooking Florence (1972). The Henry Moore Sculpture Centre in the Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto, opened in 1974. It comprises the world’s largest public collection of Moore’s work, most of it donated by him between 1971 and 1974. In 1977 the Henry Moore Foundation was established at Much Hadham, and Moore presented 36 sculptures to the Tate Gallery in 1978.”

Henry Moore died in Much Hadham, Hertfordshire, on August 31, 1986.

Sources: Guggenheim, MoMA, Wikimedia Commons (images), Tate, Flickr

Kazuhiko Nakamura: Surreal Cyberpunk

Wendy Campbell — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 17:00:44 +0000

Inspired by surrealism and cyberpunk styles of art, Japanese artist Kazuhiko Nakamura is drawn to 19th century machine designs and armor, among other stylistic aspects of that time period. His work is created in a portrait style, while still containing a puzzle-like quality.

Born in Hyogo, Japan, in 1961, Nakamura began making digital art in 1996. His work has appeared in many computer graphic books and magazines. One reviewer commented, “Kazuhiko Nakamura’s art is a surreal hybrid of man and machine, a hard marriage of metal and flesh.” (bio from Device Gallery).

To see more of Nakamura’s work, visit his Mechanical Mirage website.

Exquisite Corpse: Surreal Art Collaboration

Wendy Campbell — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 15:00:39 +0000

This week’s Deviant is not a single artist but the Exquisite Corpse surreal art collaboration group on Deviant Art. “Exquisite corpse (also known as “exquisite cadaver” or “rotating corpse”) is a method by which a collection of words or images is collectively assembled, the result being known as the exquisite corpse or cadavre exquis in French. Each collaborator adds to a composition in sequence, either by following a rule (e.g. “The adjective noun adverb verb the adjective noun“) or by being allowed to see the end of what the previous person contributed.”

“The technique was created by Surrealists and is similar to an old parlour game called Consequences in which players write in turn on a sheet of paper, fold it to conceal part of the writing, and then pass it to the next player for a further contribution. Surrealism principal founder André Breton reported that it started in fun, but became playful and eventually enriching. Breton said the diversion started about 1925, but Pierre Reverdy wrote that it started much earlier, at least before 1918.” (Wikipedia)

To see more collaborations, visit the Exquisite Corpse Group page on Deviant Art.