The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (252 page)

 
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(1928–62).
French painter and experimental artist, one of the most influential figures in European avant-garde art in the post-war period. Both his parents were painters, but he had no formal artistic training, and for much of his short life he earned his living as a judo instructor (in 1952–3 he lived in Japan, where he obtained the high rank of black belt, fourth dan). In the mid-1950s he began exhibiting ‘mono-chromes’, non-objective paintings in which a canvas was uniformly painted a single colour, usually a distinctive blue that he called ‘International Klein Blue.’ He used this also for other works including sculptured figures, and reliefs of sponges on canvas. In a lecture given at the Sorbonne in 1959, Klein explained his theory of monochrome painting as an attempt to depersonalize colour by ridding it of subjective emotion and thus giving it a metaphysical quality. Klein also made pictures by a variety of unorthodox methods, including the action of rain on a prepared paper (these he called
Cosmogonies
), the use of a flame-thrower (
Peintures de Feu
), or imprints of the human body (
Anthropométries
). In 1958 he created a sensation (and almost a riot) at the Galerie Iris Clert in Paris by an ‘exhibition of emptiness’ — an empty gallery painted white. It was called
Le Vide
(The Void). In 1960 he gave his first public exhibition of the
Anthropométries
: girls smeared with blue pigment were dragged over canvas laid on the floor to the accompaniment of his
Symphonie monotone
—a single note sustained for ten minutes and alternating with ten minutes' silence. Critical reception was very mixed. He became a celebrity in Europe, but an exhibition at the Leo
Castelli
gallery in New York in 1961 was a dismal failure. Klein died young of a heart attack, but he produced a large amount of work and had wide influence, particularly on the development of
Minimal art
. A great showman, he represents the tendency in 20th-cent. art for the personality of the artist to be of more importance than the things he makes.

 
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(1862–1918).
Austrian painter and graphic artist. Early in his career he was highly successful as a painter of sumptuous decorative schemes in the grandiose tradition of
Makart
, whose staircase decoration in the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna Klimt completed after Makart's death in 1884. In spite of his official academic successes, Klimt was drawn to avant-garde art, and he came under the influence of
Impressionism
,
Symbolism
, and
Art Nouveau
. Discontent with the conservative attitudes of the Viennese Artists' Association led him and a group of friends to resign in 1897 and set up their own organization, the
Sezession
, of which he was elected President. His role as a leader of the avant-garde was confirmed when his allegorical mural paintings for Vienna University on the themes of
Jurisprudence, Medicine and Philosophy
aroused great hostility, being called nonsensical and pornographic. (Klimt abandoned the commission in 1905 and the paintings were destroyed by fire in 1945.) Although official commissions dried up after this he continued to be much in demand with private patrons, as a portraitist as well as a painter of mythological and allegorical themes. He was highly responsive to female beauty (he was a great womanizer) and in both his portraits and his subject pictures he stresses the allure and mystery of womanhood. Notable examples are the magnificent full-length portrait of Emilie Flöge (his sister-in-law and mistress) in the Historisches Museum der Stadt, Vienna (1902) and
Judith I
(Österreichische Galerie, Vienna, 1901), one of the archetypal images of the
femme fatale
. Characteristically, the figures in Klimt's paintings are treated more or less naturalistically but embellished—in the background or their clothing—with richly decorative patterns recalling butterfly or peacock wings, creating a highly distinctive style of extraordinarily lush sensuality. He had the opportunity to show his outstanding decorative gifts in a different vein in the major commission of his later years—the mosaic designs (executed 1909–11) for the dining-room of the Palais Stoclet in Brussels, a luxury home built at huge expense for the Belgian millionaire Adolphe Stoclet . Klimt's work was particularly influential on
Kokoschka
and
Schiele
.

 
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(1910–62).
American painter, generally considered one of the most individual of the
Abstract Expressionists
. He began as a representational painter, notably of urban landscapes, but turned to abstraction at the end of the 1940s. This change of direction reflected the influence of
de Kooning
and was also stimulated by his seeing some of his drawings enlarged by a projector, an experience that made him realize their potential as abstract compositions. Once he had embarked on this new path he very quickly developed an extremely original style, converting the brush-strokes of these drawings into large-scale abstract paintings, using bold black patterns on a white ground reminiscent of oriental calligraphy, but with a highly distinctive rough vigour (he used commercial paints and house-painter's brushes, sometimes up to eight inches wide). Towards the end of his life he sometimes incorporated vivid colours but for the most part remained constant in the black-and-white style perfected in the 1950s. He died of heart disease.

 
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(1857–1920).
German painter, sculptor, and graphic artist, born at Leipzig. He studied at Karlsruhe and Berlin, then after brief periods in Brussels, Berlin, and Munich, he spent the years 1883–6 in Paris, 1886–8 in Berlin, and 1888–93 in Rome. After his return to Germany in 1893 he settled in Leipzig, where he was a leading figure of the city's cultural life. His work reveals a powerful imagination and an often morbid interest in themes of love and death. As a sculptor he experimented with
polychromy
in the manner of Greek
chryselephantine
statues; the culmination was his statue of Beethoven (Mus. der Bildenden Künste, Leipzig, 1899–1902) in white and coloured marbles, bronze, alabaster, and ivory. As a painter he is best known for his enormous
Judgement of Paris
(Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna, 1885–7), in which the frame is part of the decorative scheme. It is as a graphic artist, however, that Klinger is now best known and most clearly showed his originality, especially in
Adventures of a Glove
(three series, begun 1881), a grotesque exploration of fetishism that antedated the publication of Freud's theories. These etchings concern a hapless young man and his involvement with an elusive lost glove that has clearly sexual connotations. Together with other works of Klinger, they have been claimed as forerunners of
Surrealism
, and his influence can be seen in the work of de
Chirico
(one of his greatest admirers),
Dalí
, and
Ernst
, amongst others.