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Alex Hanson asked:




Woven works of art have been around as early as the Hellenistic times. Over the centuries, these decorative wall hangings have gained immense fame and popularity. People from all walks of life have come to appreciate and enjoy them for their unique, one-of-a-kind designs. Most of the earlier tapestry works are displayed in museums, hotels, historic buildings and landmarks, while the newer or more contemporary ones can be bought in an art shop, a gallery or an online store.

There are many different kinds of woven artworks that abound these days, but one of the most popular types is tapestries by famous artists. These works of art are collectively known as “Art Tapestries”. Whether you are a patron of the arts or you just simply enjoy browsing through artworks, then you would definitely appreciate the collection under this category.

Strictly speaking, these woven art pieces are not really the actual works of the famous artists; instead, they are replicas or reproductions of the original masterpieces. These famous artists include the likes of Raphael, Michelangelo, Claude Monet, Francois Boucher, Leonardo da Vinci, Vincent Van Gogh, Pierre August Renoir, Jan Vermeer, as well as many others. Examples of this type of art that are available in the market these days are the following: Francois Boucher’s Triumph of Venus and Nude Lying on a Sofa, Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man and Female Head, Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring and Artist’s Studio, Van Gogh’s Irises, Michelangelo’s The Creation and Madonna, Renoir’s Dance at Bougival, and Raphael’s works on The Life of Saint Peter and The Life of Saint Paul based on the accounts of The Gospels and The Acts of the Apostles in the Bible, to name just a few.

An art tapestry is perfect for those who want to bring home the works of famous artists, such as those mentioned above. Most of the masterpieces of these artists are already on display in museums all over the world and the only way by which a normal person can have a copy of one is to buy these replicas. Although these are not the original works of these masters, they look very much like the original ones. Aside from this, they also have an inherent depth and texture within them (that results from the unique way by which they are woven) unlike any other form of art, which makes their subjects appear more real.

Kansieo.com

George Baxter asked:




One of the leading figures of the Abstract Expressionism movement in art, Clyfford Still was born on November 30, 1904 in Grandin, North Dakota. Still completed his education in art from Washington’s Spokane University. Following stints of teaching at the Spokane Art Centre during the Great Depression, and at Washington State University, he founded the Nespelem Art Colony along with Worth Griffin in 1937 to bring out portraits and landscapes depicting Native American life in the Colville Indian Reservation.

Following two exhibitions in San Francisco and New York in the 1940s, Clyfford Still’s first solo exhibition in 1943 did not showcase his characteristic style that would form another dimension of Abstract Expressionism – colour field painting. Still later became one of the foremost colour field painters, a style he developed after he met Abstract Expressionist Mark Rothko following his first solo exhibition. It was Rothko who introduced Still to Peggy Guggenheim in New York. Guggenheim gave him a second solo exhibition in 1946 at her Art of This Century gallery. It was this exhibition that truly introduced Still and his mature style to the world.

Still wasn’t alone in experimenting with colour, Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman also organized colours, but in relative simple patterns. Still’s style concerns with juxtaposing colours in different forms. Unlike Rothko and Newman, Still’s arrangements of colour are irregular, they look like flashes of colour that vary in shades giving the viewer the impression that one layer of colours has been torn off the canvas to reveal the layer beneath. For this purpose, Still used thick impasto to create subtle shades across the painting. This style can be seen in some of his most important paintings, named after the year they were painted; ‘1957-D No. 1′, ‘1953′ and ‘1964′. In the latter, the painting is chiefly consists of the colours black and yellow with patches of white and a little red. These have been the colours generally used in all of Still’s paintings.

Still took up a teaching job at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, in 1946 before heading to New York City in 1950. In 1959 he held an exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York. The exhibition met with a positive reception prompting him to donate 31 paintings to the Buffalo Fine Arts Academy. Still insisted that the paintings be never loaned out, clearly showing him to be particular in the way his works are shown.

In 1960 Still decided to cut himself off from the world of art when he moved away from New York City in to his farm near Westminster, Maryland. He went on to hold solo exhibitions in Philadelphia in 1963 and New York in 1969-70. A permanent installation of his works opened at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts in 1975, and in 1980 he was given an exhibition by New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Clyfford Still won the 1972 Award of Merit for Painting from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the 1975 he received The Skowhegan Medal for in recognition to his lifelong contribution to the art world. Still died in Baltimore in June 1980, it was the demise of one of the foremost and most unique forces of Abstract Expressionism.

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