Art History
Art has a beautiful and long history. If you've ever wondered why not all art looks the same, how people made art a hundred years ago, or how art is influenced by what happens in the world, this is the space to explore that! Here you will find videos, websites, and our past weekly artist highlights.
Videos and Websites
Past Weekly Artist Highlights
Frida Kahlo
Born: July 6, 1907, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Died: July 13, 1954, Coyoacán, Mexico City, Mexico
Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, usually known as Frida Kahlo, was a Mexican painter. She was known for her surreal and very personal works. She was married to Diego Rivera, also a well-known painter.
She was born in Coyoacán, Mexico. She had polio that left her disabled when she was 6 years old and some people think that she may have had spina bifida (a birth defect affecting the development of part of the spine) as well.
She studied medicine and was going to become a doctor.
Because of a traffic accident at age 18 which badly injured her, she had periods of severe pain for the rest of her life. After this accident, Kahlo no longer continued her medical studies but took up painting. She used ideas about things that had happened to her. Her paintings are often shocking in the way they show pain and the harsh lives of women, especially her feelings about not being able to have children.
Fifty-five of her 143 paintings are of herself. She was also influenced by native Mexican culture, shown in bright colors, with a mixture of realism and symbolism. Her paintings attracted the attention of the artist Diego Rivera, whom she later married. She was a communist. She died of a pulmonary embolism in Coyoacán.
Learn more at kids.kiddle.co
Pablo Picasso
Born: October 25, 1881 - Málaga, Spain
Died: April 8, 1973
Education: Royal Academy of San Fernando, La Llotja (Reial Acadèmia Catalana de Belles Arts de Sant Jordi), School of Fine Arts (Barcelona, Spain)
As a significant influence on 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso was an innovative artist who experimented and innovated during his 92-plus years on earth. He was not only a master painter but also a sculptor, print-maker, ceramics artist, etching artist and writer. His work matured from the naturalism of his childhood through Cubism, Surrealism and beyond, shaping the direction of modern and contemporary art through the decades. Picasso lived through two World Wars, sired four children, appeared in films and wrote poetry. He died in 1973.
As one of the greatest influences on the course of 20th-century art, Pablo Picasso often mixed various styles to create wholly new interpretations of what he saw. He was a driving force in the development of Cubism, and he elevated collage to the level of fine art.
Kerry James Marshall
Born: October 17, 1955
Education: Otis College of Art and Design (1978)
Awards: MacArthur Fellowship
Kerry James Marshall was born in 1955 in Birmingham, Alabama. The subject matter of his paintings, installations, and public projects is drawn from African American culture and rooted in the geography of his upbringing: in 1963 he moved with his family to the Nickerson Gardens public housing project in the Watts district of Los Angeles. Marshall was educated at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor’s degree in fine arts in 1978 and an honorary doctorate in 1999. As a student, he was greatly influenced by the African American social realist painter Charles White, a professor at Otis. After participating in a number of group shows, Marshall received a resident fellowship from the Studio Museum in Harlem in 1985. In 1987 he and his family settled in Chicago, and in 1991 he was awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts that allowed him to concentrate on his art full time. From 1993 to 2006 he taught at the School of Art and Design at the University of Illinois, Chicago. Marshall lives and works in Chicago.
Learn more at Nga.gov
Last Week's Highlight
Amy Sherald
Born: 1973
Education: Clark Atlanta University and Maryland Institute College of Art
Amy Sherald, a portrait artist, was the first African American woman to complete a presidential portrait for the Smithsonian Institution’s National Portrait Gallery. She is best known for painting the official portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama. Sherald was born on August 30, 1973 in Columbus, Georgia, Amos P. Sherald III, a dentist, and Geraldine W. Sherald. Although she had a late introduction to painting, her parents had hoped she would pursue a career in medicine.
Sherald earned her bachelor’s degree in painting at Clark-Atlanta University and then later received her graduate degree at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2004. In the same year, she suffered from a life-threatening heart condition, cardiomyopathy, but continued to manage. She cultivated her art skills in Norway and China and worked as an art museum curator and exhibit organizer in South America.
Learn more at Blackpast.com
Beatriz Milhazes
Born: 1960 - Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Education: Parque Lage Visual Art School
Beatriz Milhazes is an artist from Rio de Janeiro known for her vibrant and colorful collages, prints, paintings and installations. Her artworks are rooted in Latin American and European traditions, yet she mixes the elements of both cultures in a quite innovative way. Her precise, meticulous pieces feature sets of arabesque motifs inspired by Brazilian ceramics, carnival decoration, laceworks, and baroque architecture. Milhazes is seeking for interesting geometrical structures in the world around her, in her daily surroundings, and even the rhythms of Brazilian popular music influence the energy of her lines as well as her circular and floral forms.
Learn more at Widewalls.com
Kehinde Wiley
Born: 1977 - Los Angeles, California
Education: San Francisco Art Institute and
Kehinde Wiley is a contemporary African-American painter known for his distinctive portraits. His subjects are often young black men and women, rendered in a Photo Realist style against densely pattered backgrounds. --Today, Wiley’s works are held in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Denver Art Museum, the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, among others.
Learn more at artnet.com
Mildred Thompson
Born: March 12, 1936 in Jacksonville, Florida
Education: Howard University, HFBK University of Fine Arts Hamburg
American abstract artist Mildred Thompson spent much of her early career in Germany and France in response to the racial and gender discrimination she faced in the United States. In 1986 she accepted an invitation to be an artist-in-residence at Spelman College. She lived in Atlanta for the remainder of her life where her practice of abstraction flourished. This period marks a particularly prolific time in the artist’s career during which she was a professor at several area colleges, associate editor of Art Papers magazine, and a practicing visual artist, writer, and musician.
Learn more at Spelman.edu
