Today, The Grandma has been reading poetry. She likes Max Jacob's works a lot. He was born on a day like today in 1876.
Max Jacob (12 July 1876-5 March 1944) was aFrench poet, painter, writer, and critic.
After spending his childhood in Quimper, Brittany, he enrolled in the Paris Colonial School, which he left in 1897 for an artistic career. He was one of the first friends Pablo Picasso made in Paris. They met in the summer of 1901, and it was Jacob who helped the young artist learn French. Later, on the Boulevard Voltaire, he shared a room with Picasso, who remained a lifelong friend (and was represented as the monk in his painting Three Musicians, which Picasso painted in 1921).
Jacob introduced him to Guillaume Apollinaire, who in turn introduced Picasso to Georges Braque. He would become close friends with JeanCocteau, Jean Hugo, Christopher Wood and Amedeo Modigliani, who painted his portrait in 1916. He also befriended and encouraged the artist Romanin, otherwise known as French politician, and future Resistance leader Jean Moulin. Moulin's famous nom de guerre Max is presumed to be selected in honor of Jacob.
Jacob, who was Jewish, claimed to have had a vision of Christ in 1909, and converted to Catholicism. He was hopeful that this conversion would alleviate his homosexual tendencies.
Max Jacob is regarded as an important link between the symbolists and the surrealists, as can be seen in his prose poems Le cornet à dés (The Dice Box, 1917-the 1948 Gallimard edition was illustrated by Jean Hugo) and in his paintings, exhibitions of which were held in New York City in 1930 and 1938.
His writings include the novel Saint Matorel (1911), the free verses Le laboratoire central (1921), and La défense de Tartuffe (1919), which expounds his philosophical and religious attitudes.
The famous psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan attributed the quote The truth is always new to Jacob.
Having moved outside Paris in May 1936, to settle in Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Loiret, Max Jacob was arrested on 24 February 1944 by the Gestapo, and interned at Orléans prison (prisoner #15872).
Jewish by birth, Jacob's brother Gaston had been previously arrested in January 1944, and deported to the concentration camp Auschwitz along with their sister Myrthe-Lea; her husband was also deported by the Nazis at this time. A cousin, Andrée Jacob, survived by living under an assumed name and worked in the Resistance movement Noyautage des administrations publiques.
Following his incarceration at Orléans, Max was then transferred to Drancy internment camp from where he was to be transported in the next convoy to Auschwitz. However, said to be suffering from bronchial pneumonia, Max Jacob died on 5 March in the infirmary of La Cité de la Muette, a former housing block which served as the internment camp known as Drancy.
First interred in Ivry after the war ended, his remains were transferred in 1949 by his artist friends Jean Cassou and René Iché (who sculpted the tomb of the poet) to the cemetery at Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire in the Loiret département.
Today, The Grandma has been reading about Cubism,the early-20th-centuryavant-garde art movement.
Cubism is an early-20th-century avant-garde art movement thatrevolutionized European painting and sculpture, and inspired related movements in music, literature and architecture.
In Cubist artwork, objects are analyzed, broken up and reassembled in an abstracted form -instead of depicting objects from a single viewpoint, the artist depicts the subject from a multitude of viewpoints to represent the subject in a greater context.
Cubism has been considered the most influential art movement of the 20th century. The term is broadly used in association with a wide variety of art produced in Paris (Montmartre and Montparnasse) or near Paris (Puteaux) during the 1910s and throughout the 1920s.
The movement was pioneered by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and joined by Jean Metzinger, Albert Gleizes, Robert Delaunay, Henri Le Fauconnier, Juan Gris, and Fernand Léger.
One primary influence that led to Cubism was the representation of three-dimensional form in the late works of Paul Cézanne. A retrospective of Cézanne's paintings was held at the Salon d'Automne of 1904, current works were displayed at the 1905 and 1906 Salon d'Automne, followed by two commemorative retrospectives after his death in 1907.
In France, offshoots of Cubism developed, including Orphism, abstract art and later Purism. The impact of Cubism was far-reaching and wide-ranging. In France and other countries Futurism, Suprematism, Dada, Constructivism, Vorticism, De Stijl and Art Deco developed in response to Cubism.
Early Futurist paintings hold in common with Cubism the fusing of the past and the present, the representation of different views of the subject pictured at the same time or successively, also called multiple perspective, simultaneity or multiplicity, while Constructivism was influenced by Picasso's technique of constructing sculpture from separate elements. Other common threads between these disparate movements include the faceting or simplification of geometric forms, and the association of mechanization and modern life.
Historians have divided the history of Cubism into phases.
In one scheme, the first phase of Cubism, known as Analytic Cubism, a phrase coined by Juan Gris a posteriori, was both radical and influential as a short but highly significant art movement between 1910 and 1912 in France.
A second phase, Synthetic Cubism, remained vital until around 1919, when the Surrealist movement gained popularity. English art historian Douglas Cooper proposed another scheme, describing three phases of Cubism in his book, The Cubist Epoch. According to Cooper there was Early Cubism, (from 1906 to 1908) when the movement was initially developed in the studios of Picasso and Braque; the second phase being called High Cubism, (from 1909 to 1914) during which time Juan Gris emerged as an important exponent (after 1911); and finally Cooper referred to Late Cubism (from 1914 to 1921) as the last phase of Cubism as a radical avant-garde movement.
Douglas Cooper's restrictive use of these terms to distinguish the work of Braque, Picasso, Gris (from 1911) and Léger (to a lesser extent) implied an intentional value judgement.
Cubism burgeoned between 1907 and 1911. Pablo Picasso's 1907 painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon has often been considered a proto-Cubist work.
In 1908, in his review of Georges Braque's exhibition at Kahnweiler's gallery, the critic Louis Vauxcelles called Braque a daring man who despises form, reducing everything, places and a figures and houses, to geometric schemas, to cubes.
Cubism was an attack on the perspective that had been known and used for 500 years. It was the first big, big change. It confused people: they said, 'Things don't look like that!'
Today, The Grandma has travelled to Gernika to remember the terrific bombing that suffered the town on a day like today in 1937 when Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, requested by Francisco Franco, attacked this Basque town and killed more that 1,600 civilians.
Gernika is a symbol of resistance and peace and the permanent commitment of fighting against fascism in all of it faces.
Gernika is a town in the province of Biscay, in the Basque Country. The town of Gernika is one part of the municipality of Gernika-Lumo.
On April 26, 1937, Gernika was bombed by Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe, in one of the first aerial bombings. The attack inspired Pablo Picasso's painting Guernica, depicting his outrage at the attack.
The village is situated in the region of Busturialdea, in the valley of the Oka river. The river ends in an estuary that gives its name to the village of Gernika. Its mouth is known as Urdaibai's estuary's heart.
The town of Gernika was founded by Count Tello on April 28, 1366, at the intersection of the road from Bermeo to Durango with the road from Bilbao to Elantxobe and Lekeitio. The strategic importance of the site was increased by the fact that it lay on a major river estuary, where vessels could dock at the port of Suso.
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, Gernika was the scene of the Bombing of Guernica by the Condor Legion of Nazi Germany's Luftwaffe and the Italian Aviazione Legionaria.
According to official Basque figures, 1,654 civilians were killed, but German sources report a round figure of 300 civilians killed in the bombing, according to the German Bundeswehr Magazine.
The raid was requested by Francisco Franco to aid in his overthrowing the Basque Government and the Spanish Republican government. The town was devastated, though the Biscayan assembly and the Oak of Gernika survived.
The Bombing of Gernika, which went on continuously for three hours, isconsidered the beginning of the Luftwaffe doctrine of terror bombing civilian targets in order to demoralize the enemy.
Pablo Picasso painted his Gernika painting to commemorate the horrors of the bombing and René Iché made a violent sculpture the day after the bombing. It has inspired musical compositions by Octavio Vazquez (Gernika Piano Trio),René-Louis Baron, and Lenny White, and poems by Paul Eluard (Victory of Gernika), and Uys Krige (Nag van die Fascistiese Bomwerpers). There is also a short film from 1950, by Alain Resnais, titled Gernika.
Celebrations were staged in 1966 to mark the 600th anniversary of the founding of the town. As part of these celebrations, a statue of Count Tello, made by local sculptor Agustín Herranz, was set up in the Fueros Square.
Gernika is historically the seat of the parliament of the province of Biscay, whose executive branch is located in nearby Bilbao.
In prior centuries, Lumo had been the meeting place of the traditional Biscayan assembly, Urduña and chartered towns like Gernika were under the direct authority of the Lord of Biscay, and Enkarterri and the Durango area had separate assemblies. All would hold assemblies under local big trees.
As time passed, the role of separate assemblies was superseded by the single assembly in Gernika, and by 1512, its oak, known as the Gernikako Arbola, became symbolic of the traditional rights of the Basque people as a whole.
The trees are always renewed from their own acorns. One of these trees, the Old Tree, lived until the 19th century, and may be seen, as a dry stump, near the assembly house. A tree planted in 1860 to replace it died in 2004 and was in turn replaced; the sapling that had been chosen to become the official Oak of Gernikais also sick so the tree will not be replaced until the earth around the site has been restored to health.
A hermitage was built beside the Gernikako Arbola to double as an assembly place, followed by the current house of assembly, Biltzar Jauregia in Basque, built in 1826.
On April 26, 1937, during the Spanish Civil War, the town was razed to the ground by German aircraft belonging to the Condor Legion, sent by Hitler to support Franco's troops. For almost four hours bombs rained down on Gernika in an experiment for the blitzkrieg tactics and bombing of civilians seen in later wars.
In 1987, the 50th anniversary of the bombing was commemorated as the town hosted the Preliminary Congress of the World Association of Martyr Cities.
1988 saw the setting up of the monument Gure Aitaren Etxea, by Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida, and in 1990 Large Figure in a Shelter, by British sculptor Henry Moore, was erected beside it. These monuments are symbolic of Gernika-Lumo as a city of peace.
As part of the Symbol for Peace movement, Gernika has twinned with several towns, including Berga (Catalonia-1986), Pforzheim (Germany-1988) and Boise, Idaho (United States-1993). The twinning agreements include co-operation in the fields of culture, education and industry.
After sixty-one years, in a declaration adopted on April 24, 1999, the German Parliament formally apologized to the citizens of Gernika for the role the Condor Legion played in bombing the town. The German government also agreed to change the names of some German military barracks named after members of the Condor Legion. By contrast, no formal apology to the city has ever been offered by the Spanish government for whatever role it may have played in the bombing.
Today, The Grandma wants to remember one of the most important French poets of the last century, PaulÉluard,who was born on a day like today in 1895. She likes his poetry and she wants to read about his exciting life in those convulse time.
Éluard was a witness of important events like the WWI and WWII, the Spanish Civil War, The Russian Revolution and the Moroccan Revolution and his poems are great reflexions of his livings.
Before talking about Éluard, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Elementary Language Practice manual (Grammar 42 & Checkpoint 7).
Paul Éluard (14 December 1895-18 November 1952), was a French poet and one of the founders of the surrealist movement.
Éluard was born in Saint-Denis, Seine-Saint-Denis, France, the son of Eugène Clément Grindel and wife Jeanne-Marie Cousin. His father was an accountant when Paul was born but soon opened a real estate agency. His mother was a seamstress. Around 1908, the family moved to Paris, rue Louis Blanc. Éluard attended the local school in Aulnay-sous-Bois before obtaining a scholarship to attend the Ecole Superieure de Colbert. At the age of 16, he contracted tuberculosis, interrupted his studies, and remained hospitalized until April 1914 in the Clavadel sanatorium near Davos.
There he met a young Russian girl of his age, Helena Diakonova, whom he nicknamed Gala. He confided in her of his dream of becoming a poet, of his admiration for poets dead of hunger, sizzling dreams and of his parents’ disapproval. She wrote to him that you will become a great poet. They became inseparable. She believed in him and gave him the confidence and encouragement and provided him with the sense of security he needed to write. She listened and was involved in the creation of his verses. She became his muse and the critic, always honest, and told him which images she preferred, which verses she disliked. He was then particularly inspired by Walt Whitman. In Clavadel, Éluard also met the Brazilian poet Manuel Bandeira. They became friends during their hospitalization in the sanatorium, and kept in touch by mail after returning to their respective countries.
In April 1914, Paul Éluard and Gala were both declared healthy again and sent home, to Paris and Moscow respectively. The separation was brutal. Europe was on the brink of war. Paul was mobilised. He passed his physical and was assigned to the auxiliary services because of his poor health. He suffered from migraine, bronchitis, cerebral anaemia and chronic appendicitis and spent most of 1915 under treatment in a military hospital not far from home. Paul’s mother came to visit him and he talked for hours about his beloved, opening his heart to her and slowly rallying her to his cause. Her initial hostility towards Gala slowly faded away, and she started calling her the little Russian. However, Paul’s father, who had also been mobilised, remained adamant that she could not come to Paris.
Gala & Paul Éluard
In Moscow, Gala listened to no one. Her love for Paul gave her an unshakable faith that they would be reunited again. She wrote to Paul’s mother to befriend her and finally convinced her stepfather to let her go to Paris to study French at the Sorbonne. She took a boat to Helsinki, then reached Stockholm before embarking for England. Once in London, she took a train to Southampton before taking a boat to rally Dieppe, and finally took a train to Paris.
In June 1917, Paul was sent to Hargnicourt to work in one of the military evacuation hospital, 10 kilometres from the front line. The poet was given a chair, a desk and a pen to painfully write to the families of the dead and the wounded. He wrote more than 150 letters a day. At night he dug graves to bury the dead. For the first time since Clavadel, shaken by the horrors of the war, Paul started writing verses again. Gala wrote to him I promise you our life will be glorious and magnificent.
On 14 December 1917, Paul Éluard turned 21 and wrote to his mother I can assure you, that your approval will be infinitely precious to me. However, for all our sakes, nothing will change my mind. He married Gala on 20 February 1918. However, he announced to his parents and newlywed wife that when he went back to the front line he would voluntarily join the real soldiers in the trenches. Gala protested and threatened to go back to Russia to become a nurse on the Russian front. But nothing would do, and for the first time Paul resisted her. Let me live a tougher life, he wrote her, less like a servant, less like a domestic. Two days after getting married, Paul left for the front line.
There, living conditions were severe. Éluard wrote to his parents Even the strongest are falling. We advanced 50 kilometres, three days without bread or wine. His health suffered. On 20 March 1917 he was sent to a military hospital with incipient pleurisy.
On 10 May 1918 Gala gave birth to a baby girl who was eventually named Cécile, died 10 August 2016.
Paul Éluard, Salvador Dalí, André Breton and others
In 1919, Éluard wrote to Gala: War is coming to an end. We will now fight for happiness after having fought for Life. Waiting to be sent home, he published Duty and Anxiety and Little Poems for Peace. Following the advice of his publisher, he sent the poems to various personalities of the literary world who took a stand against the war. Gala helped him to prepare and send the letters.
In 1919, Jean Paulhan, an eminent academic and writer, responded to his letter expressing his admiration. He referred him to three young writers who had started a new journal called Literature. He encouraged Paul to go and meet them.
The three young poets Jean Paulhan recommended to Paul were André Breton, Philippe Soupault and Louis Aragon.
The meeting with Paul took place in March 1919. Paul was intimidated. He was shy and blushing. He was still a soldier and wearing his war uniform. It was the best omen for the three poets, who all showed great courage during the war. Paul brought with him his poems and read them to the jury. They were seduced by the young man and liked his work. They decided to publish one of his texts in the next edition of Literature.
Wounded and scarred by the war the four poets found solace in their friendship and poetry. Against a society that wanted to channel them into being good and useful citizens, they chose a life of bohemia. They refused the bourgeois middle-class aspirations of money, respectability and comfort and rejected its moral codes. They hated politicians and the military or anyone with ambitions of power. They rejected all constraints. Their ideal was freedom and they felt they had already paid the price for it. Revolted and passionate, they were looking for a new ideal, something as far detached as possible from the current political and philosophical programmes. They found solace in the Dadaist movement, which originated in Switzerland.
Paul Éluard & Pablo Picasso
In November 1921, Paul Éluard and his wife visited Max Ernst at his home in Cologne. Paul had an immediate and an absolute sympathy for Max. Underneath the charm, Max, like Paul, was a man deeply revolted, in total rupture with society. Unlike Paul, however, he remained indifferent to propagating this revolt which he considered to be an intimate elegance.
Paul and Gala moved to a house just outside Paris and were joined by Max Ernst, who entered France illegally, using Éluard's passport. Jean Paulhan once more helped Paul by providing Max Ernst with fake identity papers. Paul, Max and Gala entered into a ménage à trois in 1922. Paul was torn between his love for Gala and his friendship for Max. He refused to challenge Gala, and spent his nights in clubs: the Zelli, the Cyrano, the Parrot, and Mitchell. Gala's well-being was still what mattered to him above all and he tried to forget his anxiety by drinking.
Éluard, depressed, wrote Dying of not Dying. On 24 March 1924, Éluard disappeared. No one knew where he was. The night before he had had a worrisome meeting with Louis Aragon during which he confessed that he wanted to put an end to a present that tortured him. For his friends, Paul was gone forever. But Paul wrote to Gala and four months later she bought a ticket to go and find him and bring him back, locating him in Saigon.
Éluard supported the Moroccan Revolution, as early as 1925, and in January 1927 he joined the French Communist Party together with Louis Aragon, Breton, Benjamin Péret and Pierre Unik. All explained their decision in a collective document entitled Au grand jour. It was during these years that Éluard published two of his main works: Capitale de la Douleur (1926) and L'Amour la Poesie (1929).
In 1928 he had another bout of tuberculosis and went back to the Clavadel sanatorium with Gala. It was their last winter together. Gala met Salvador Dalí soon after and remained with him for the rest of her life.
In 1934, Éluard married Nusch (Maria Benz), a music-hall artist, whom he had met through his friends Man Ray and Pablo Picasso.
The period from 1931 to 1935 were among his happiest years. He was excluded from the French Communist Party. He traveled through Europe as an ambassador of the Surrealist movement.
Portrait of Paul Éluard by Salvador Dalí
In 1936, in Spain, he learned of the Franquist counter-revolution, against which he protested violently. The following year, the bombing of Gernika inspired him to write the poem Victory of Gernika. During these two terrible years for Spain, Éluard and Pablo Picasso were inseparable. The poet told the painter you hold the flame between your fingers and paint like a fire. Mobilized in September 1939, he moved to Paris with Nusch after the Armistice of 22 June 1940. In January 1942, he sent her to the home of some of his friends, Christian and Yvonne Zervos, near Vézelay, near the maquis. Éluard asked to rejoin the French Communist Party, which was illegal in occupied France. Thousands of copies of the twenty-one stanzas of his poem Liberté, first published in the Choix revue, were parachuted from English aircraft over occupied France. During the war he also wrote Les sept poèmes d'amour en guerre (1944) and Avril 1944: Paris respirait encore!.
In 1943, together with Pierre Seghers, François Lachenal and Jean Lescure, he assembled the texts of several poets of the Resistance in a controversial book called The Honor of Poets. Faced with oppression, the poets eulogised in it hope and freedom.
In November 1943, Éluard found refuge in the mental asylum of Saint-Alban, headed by doctor Lucien Bonnafé, in which many resistants and Jews were hiding. At Libération, Éluard and Aragon were hailed as the great poets of the Resistance.
On 28 November 1946, during a stay in Switzerland, he learned of Nusch's sudden passing. Distraught, he became extremely depressed. Two friends, Alain and Jacqueline Trutat, for whom he wrote Corps Memorable, gave him back the will to live.
Paul Éluard & Maria Benz 'Nusch'
His grief at the premature death of his wife Nusch in 1946 inspired the work Le temps déborde in 1947 as well as De l'horizon à l'horizon de tous,which traced the path that led Éluard from suffering to hope.
The principles of peace, self-government, and liberty became his new passion. He was a member of the Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław in April 1948, which persuaded Pablo Picasso to also join. The following year, in April, he was a delegate to the Council for World Peace, at the conference held at the Salle Pleyel in Paris.
In June, he spent a few days with Greek partisans entrenched on the Gramos hills to fight against Greek government soldiers. He then went to Budapest to attend the commemorative celebrations of the centenary of the death of the poet Sándor Petőfi. There he met Pablo Neruda.
In September he was in Mexico for a new peace conference. There he met Dominique Lemort, with whom he returned to France. They married in 1951. The same year Éluard published The Phoenix, a collection of poems dedicated to his reborn happiness.
He later eulogised Joseph Stalin in his political writings. Milan Kundera recalled that he was shocked to hear of Éluard's public approval of the hanging of Éluard's friend, the Prague writer Záviš Kalandra in 1950.
Paul Éluard died from a heart attack on 18 November 1952 at his home, 52 avenue de Gravelle in Charenton-le-Pont. His funeral was held in the Père Lachaise Cemetery, and organized by the French Communist Party, the French government having refused to organise a national funeral for political reasons. A crowd of thousands spontaneously gathered in the streets of Paris to accompany Éluard's casket to the cemetery. That day Robert Sabatier wrote: the whole world was mourning.
The Grandma, Joseph & Claire in Horta de Sant Joan
Today, John de Ca'th Lon and The Grandma are visiting Horta de Sant Joan in Tarragona.
Claire Fontaine is going to join them in this special visit to one of the most important places in the life of one of the great masters of the 20th century, Pablo Picasso.
During the travel from Roquetes to Horta de Sant Joan, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her First Certificate Language Practice manual (Vocabulary 8).
Horta de Sant Joan is a village in the Terra Alta, Tarragona, Catalonia. The village of Horta de Sant Joan, sometimes called Orta, is located in a picturesque spot on a hill with a view of the landscape of the northwestern foothills of the mountain range called the Ports of Beseit. The Sant Salvador d'Horta monastery, also known as Convent of Angels, is located at the foot of Santa Barbara Mountain, a rocky hill of striking appearance. The town has got a Templar past as a special place for the Order of Saint John, also known as the Order of Hospitallers of Jerusalem.
The spectacular rock formations called Benet's Rocks are located within Horta de Sant Joan's municipal area. Benet's Rocks form the most characteristic overall landscape in the northern section of the mountain range. Of the three large rock forms, the left-most one is referred to as the Dog's Head because when viewed from the side it strongly resembles that form.
The Grandma & Claire contemplate the City Hall
Much of Horta de Sant Joan is within the Natural Park of the Ports of Beseit. The area outside the park boundaries is mostly agricultural, with large tracts of olive, almond, and fruit trees, as well as vineyards. The main economic activity of the area is agriculture, including livestock, mostly sheep and goats, and there is also a lot of tourism and construction.
There are three major rivers crossing the area around Horta. First is the Algars which forms the boundary between the Terra Alta in Catalonia and the Matarranya in Teruel, Aragon. The next river is the Estrets, which cuts through a rocky canyon, forming pools and drops in a stunning landscape before joining the Algars River just above the town of Lledo, at Rose's springs. The third river is the Canaletes, in the east, which later joins the Ebre.
Horta de Sant Joan enjoys an Interior Mediterranean climate, with very cold winters and extremely hot summers. The area benefits from the Ports Mountain range, which traps cooler sea air from the coast and brings a natural form of air conditioning in the evenings in the summer called the Garbi for the winds from the east by that name.
The Grandma admires Picasso, Horta de Sant Joan
Because of its location on a small hill with a natural spring near the top, Horta has been inhabited for centuries. It was a great advantage during medieval sieges, to not be forced to get water from the rivers outside of town.
The earliest inhabitants were Iberians, who lived in the area until the arrival of the Romans. In the 8th century Horta was under Muslim rule, then reconquered by Christians in the 12th Century. There are still olive trees, like the 1,000-year-old Parot, that were planted by the Muslims during their 400-year rule.
Horta de Sant Joan is the birthplace of Manuel Pallarès, friend and companion of Pablo Picasso. Picasso spent some time in Horta during his youth (1897–98) with his friend Manuel. He is quoted as having said, Everything I know I learned in Horta.
Picasso later returned to develop his Proto-Cubism style of painting (1909). During both visits he made a lot of paintings and drawings. There is currently a Centro Picasso (Picasso Center) that organizes expositions, symposiums and publications. Also there is an Eco-Museum of the Natural Park of the Ports, and a visitor's center with maps and hotel information.
Tina Picotes is in Paris visiting the OrsayMuseum.Tina wants to talk about one of the most important painter of the post-Impressionist, Paul Gauguin, who was born on a day like today in 1848.
Eugène Henri Paul Gauguin (7 June 1848-8 May 1903) was a French post-Impressionist artist. Underappreciated until after his death, Gauguin is now recognized for his experimental use of color and Synthetist style that were distinctly different from Impressionism. His work was influential to the French avant-garde and many modern artists, such as Pablo Picasso and HenriMatisse. Gauguin's art became popular after his death, partially from the efforts of art dealer Ambroise Vollard, who organized exhibitions of his work late in his career, as well as assisting in organizing two important posthumous exhibitions in Paris. Many of his paintings were in the possession of Russian collector Sergei Shchukin and other important collections.
He was an important figure in the Symbolist movement as a painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramist, and writer. His bold experimentation with color led directly to the Synthetist style of modern art, while his expression of the inherent meaning of the subjects in his paintings, under the influence of the cloisonnist style, paved the way to Primitivism and the return to the pastoral. He was also an influential proponent of wood engraving and woodcuts as art forms.
Vision after the Sermon, 1888
Gauguin's initial artistic guidance was from Pissarro, but the relationship left more of a mark personally than stylistically. Gauguin's masters were Giotto, Raphael, Ingres, Delacroix, Manet, Degas and Cézanne. His own beliefs, and in some cases the psychology behind his work, were also influenced by philosopher Schopenhauer and poet Mallarmé.
Gauguin, like some of his contemporaries such as Degas and Toulouse-Lautrec,employed a technique for painting on canvas known as peinture à l'essence. For this, the oil is drained from the paint and the remaining sludge of pigment is mixed with turpentine. He may have used a similar technique in preparing his monotypes, using paper instead of metal, as it would absorb oil giving the final images a matte appearance he desired.
He also proofed some of his existing drawings with the aid of glass, copying an underneath image onto the glass surface with watercolour or gouache for printing. Gauguin's woodcuts were no less innovative, even to the avant-garde artists responsible for the woodcut revival happening at that time. Instead of incising his blocks with the intent of making a detailed illustration, Gauguin initially chiseled his blocks in a manner similar to wood sculpture, followed by finer tools to create detail and tonality within his bold contours. Many of his tools and techniques were considered experimental. This methodology and use of space ran parallel to his painting of flat, decorative reliefs.
The Grandma is in Belgrade. She arrived on The Orient Express and she's going to stay until tomorrow. Belgrade was the capital of Yugoslavia, a republic built with the union of different old nations. It's impossible to forget the BalkanWars at the end of the last century. Thousands and thousands of people died as a consequence of them and The Grandma remembers the city of Srebrenica in Bosnia clearly and dramatically.
Today is the anniversary of Pablo Picasso. Picasso painted one of the most beautiful pictures, Gernika. Gernika is a Basque townwhich was bombed by the Italian and German aviation during the Spanish Civil War.
Gernika remembers Srebrenica as clearly as remembers Aleppo or Mossul nowadays. The question is how much time we need to take conscience about war only creates destruction, pain and horrible consecuences to the future generations.
Pablo Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France. Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and Gernika (1937).
Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.
The bombing of Gernika, 26 April 1937, was an aerial bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. It was carried out at the behest of the Spanish nationalist government by its allies, the Nazi German Luftwaffe's Condor Legion and the Fascist Italian Aviazione Legionaria, under the code name Operation Rügen.
The attack gained infamy because it involved the deliberate targeting of civilians by a military air force. The number of victims is still disputed; the Basque government reported 1,654 people killed at the time, while Spanish figures claim around 126. An English source used by the Air War College claims 400 civilians died. Russian archives reveal 800 deaths on 1 May 1937, but this number may not include victims who later died of their injuries in hospitals or whose bodies were discovered buried in the rubble.
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