Skip to main content

Claude monet Biography

Claude Monet

(Claude Oscar Monet; Paris, 1840-Giverny, 1926) French painter, key figure of the Impressionist movement.His artistic inclinations were born from contact with Eugène Boudin in Le Havre, and excursions to the countryside and the beach during his adolescence guided the later development of his painting.

Claude Monet

After military service in Algeria, he returned to Paris, where in Gleyre's studio he met young artists such as Renoir, Sisley and Bazille, and in the popular café Guerbois contacted a group of intellectuals, literati and painters such as Émile Zola, Nadar, Cézanne and Degas, who together with Manet were beginning to oppose established art.

Fast painting such as pochades or études was, at that time, to the liking of society as long as it was limited to the theme of landscape in small format.Monet's early work, The Sainte-Adresse Coast (1864, Institute of Arts, Minneapolis), is reminiscent of its initiator, Boudin, but takes on greater scope by applying direct painting to themes and formats of greater complexity and size.

From 1890 on, Monet's painting became more complex and the initial immediacy and euphoria were transformed into dissatisfaction and melancholy, in a difficult attempt to reconcile the fresh and expressive technique of his early years with searches deeper and more ambitious that could last for several days, months and even years, with the intention of creating works that contained greater complexity: variations that in their thematic reiteration allowed to emphasize the investigation of formal resolutions. Snow effect (1891, National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh), Haystacks (1891, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) and Haystacks, sunset (1890-1891, The Art Institute, Chicago) are works that are part of some of his early series.

However, the best known is the one he dedicated in 1892-1893 to the Cathedral of Rouen, in which it is evident, in a poetic and didactic way, how variations in light alter the perception of the medium that modulates that energy, how light and color are inseparable phenomena of human perception.Monet painted fifty pictures of the cathedral, eighteen of them of the portico, and stated: "He could have made fifty, a hundred, a thousand, as many as there were seconds in his life..."

During the last thirty years From its existence, the artist worked around his Giverny water garden.In an empty meadow through which a small stream passed, he built a lush garden in which a large pond, full of water lilies of all colors and surrounded by willows and exotic trees, was crossed by a small oval-shaped bridge that would appear in numerous paintings of the time, such as The Water Lily Pond (1900, Musée d'Orsay, Paris) or the lyrical composition entitled The Japanese Bridge (1918-1924, Orsay Museum, Paris).

The Japanese bridge

All the time and money that Monet invested in the construction of this garden was compensated for the paintings that emerged from him; the water was again a mirror whose appearance was modified by the ephemeral and unpredictable changes of the sky that were reflected in it.

The well-known series of Ninfeas or water lilies were also born there, which, later, were associated with the contributions of Vasili Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, as symbols of the birth of abstraction in painting Western, after long centuries of predominance of figurative representation. Las Ninfeas: aquatic landscape (1903, Bridgestone Museum of Art, Tokyo), Water lilies at sunset (1916-1922, Kunsthaus, Zurich) or Nymphaeas (1919-1920, Marmottan Museum, Paris) are large-format works that, in a way, can be viewed by the contemporary viewer as abstract paintings.

Menusfares (The clouds) , 1903

Cézanne alluded to the artist's ability to objectively and immediately capture reality.However, his creative process went beyond the direct observation of nature, and used visual memory as an essential resource for the finishing of his compositions.The images that form in memory are perceptions, just like those determined by the visualization of things, and between the two can arise, as happened in Monet's painting, a new conception of the pictorial image of reality.In his later compositions of water lilies, the form is practically dissolved in spots of color, which, in a way, is an anticipation of what abstract art would later be.

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The legacy of Johannes Gutenberg

In the German city of Mainz , on the west bank of the Rhine River, an unknown character was found dead in February 1468.For a few years this indigent old man and half blind he received an assignment of clothes, grains and wine from the local governor, the same who had his headquarters on the other side of the river Rhin, in Wiesbaden .Very few people remembered who he was or what he had achieved His name was Johannes Gutenberg and he was the father of modern printing. inkart Johannes Gutenberg was born in the within a patrician family of Mainz, transforming himself into a goldsmith and a worker in metal.Later he became a member of the goldsmith's guild of Strasbourg , which was then a German city, where he began working in a No very expensive dream that haunted him: finding a method to print medieval manuscripts that were carefully handcrafted, without sacrificing their elaborate ornamental design. It was only in 1455 when Gutenberg produced his first printed book, ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Bruno Maderna Biography

Bruno Maderna (Venice, 1920-Darmstadt, 1973) Italian conductor and composer.He was a student of G.F.Malipiero and H.Scherchen.He developed an intense activity as a director, both of old music (new editions and transcriptions of Monteverdi or Rameau) and contemporary (premieres of L.Nono, L.de Pablo, G.Amy or S.Bussotti).He taught at the conservatories of Venice, Milan, and Rotterdam, at the Darmstadt summer courses, at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, and at the Juilliard School in New York.In 1955 he founded, with L.Berio, the RAI Phonology Study in Milan.Its production, influenced by the post-Webernian school, played a fundamental role in the development of the Italian musical avant-garde.Some of his most representative works are the electronic work Nocturno (1955), the radio opera Don Perlimplín (1962), the theatrical action Hiperión ( 1964), the Quadrivium for orchestra and the radio drama Portrait of Erasmus (1970).
Post a Comment
Read more

Catherine of Lancaster Biography

Catalina de Lancaster (Bayona, 1373-Valladolid, 1418) Queen consort of Castile (1390-1406).She married King Enrique III of Trastamara (1388), by virtue of the Treaty of Bayona, which put an end to the struggles between the Trastamaras and the descendants of Pedro I the Cruel.On the death of her husband, she was co-regent of the kingdom (1407-1416) with Fernando de Antequera and, after his death, the sole regent.
Post a Comment
Read more

John Lennon Biography

John Lennon (Liverpool, 1940-New York, 1980) British singer and musician, founder and leader of The Beatles, the legendary Liverpool quartet that dominated the music scene in the 1960s.During his time with The Beatles, John Lennon brought his creative concerns and radical nonconformity to the band, in front of the more commercial and frivolous vein of Paul McCartney, with whom he shared the limelight in the composition of the songs.After the dissolution of the group in 1970, he embarked on a new musical stage with such memorable results as the album Imagine (1971).After a five-year retirement, in 1980 he was assassinated by a deranged shortly after presenting his latest work, Double Fantasy . John Lennon John Winston Lennon was born in Liverpool on October 9, 1940, while Nazi planes were bombing the city.His father, named Alfred, was a sailor who visited the home little, until he completely disappeared.Then it was his mother, Julia Stanley, who disappeared, leaving the child ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Space, change and permanence ... elements to understand history

In some of our latest articles we have analyzed different aspects of knowledge construction historical .In the latter post we have to reflect on the historical categories of " space ", " change " and " permanence " and its importance to sharpen our understanding of the history . Old Map of Colonia del Sacramento , disputed by Portuguese and Spanish for its strategic location in the Rio de la Plata As we know the History studies human societies in the past .Y of course, these societies lived in a territory ( space ) in particular, so whenever we start studying a society of the past we must place it in space and time. The space is a very important aspect e to study the History. Each territory has its own characteristics that can be decisive for understanding many aspects of a society .For example: what economic production does it do, trade routes, the distribution of the population, the strategies in wars, etc.In addition, soc...
Post a Comment
Read more

Edmund taylor whittaker Biography

Edmund Taylor Whittaker (Birkdale, 1873-?, 1956) British mathematician.Professor at the University of Edinburgh, his research dealt primarily with mathematical physics, differential equations and transcendent functions.Author of Modern Analysis Course (1902).
Post a Comment
Read more

Francesc Cambó Biography

Francesc Cambó (Francesc Cambó i Batlle, also called Francisco Cambó; Verges, Gerona, 1876-Buenos Aires, 1947) Spanish politician.Militant since his youth of Catalan nationalism, he adhered to its more conservative tendency.In 1901 he participated in the founding of the Regionalist League of Catalonia, starting his political career as a councilor for the Barcelona City Council.He promoted the Catalan Solidarity coalition, with which he reached the Congress of Deputies in 1907. Francesc Cambó With his election, the idea that the Catalanists should be present in the central institutions of the State (from which he assumed the defense of Catalan industrial interests), but from now on he would move in the tension between two irreconcilable objectives: to obtain a decisive power in the Spanish political system and to increase the levels of self-government of Catalonia. Politically, Francesc Cambó defended the need to reform the Restoration system by eliminating caciquismo and elect...
Post a Comment
Read more

Albert finney Biography

Albert Finney (Saldford, 1936-London, 2019) British actor.He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his theater debut in 1956.In the late 1950s he played almost exclusively Shakespearean roles, but in the 1960s he took a step forward with his portrayal of rebellious youth in Billy Liar , on the London stage, and with his work in the film Saturday night, Sunday morning (1960), by Karel Reisz. Albert Finney His popularity increased thanks to films written by John Osborne and directed by Tony Richardson.His excellent work in Tom Jones (1963), a film based on the novel by Henry Fielding, catapulted him to fame, and he has since been hailed as the "second Olivier"; Lawrence Olivier himself endorsed him as "the best actor of his generation." Albert Finney was indeed recognized as one of the chameleon actors par excellence, for his drastic changes in performances.In his own words, "to be an actor is to have the possibility of inhabiting a ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The great conquerors of history

What do you think has been the greatest conqueror in the world? In today's article we will talk about the great world conquerors and what has been the evolution until today. From the beginning of the world to the current moment, as we know it, there have been multiple conquests, battles and wars that have led to the creation of different kingdoms that have remained for a short time or thousands of years. In today's article we will talk about the great conquerors of antiquity: Alexander the Great Attila Genghis Khan Napoleon Bonaparte Adolf Hitler Article index Alexander the Great Alexander the Great is considered the greatest conqueror in history, hence he was called El Grande. The great conquest that you celebrated was that of Persia, territory after territory ended up being part of its empire : Asia Minor, the Mediterranean Levant, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Central Asia and even invaded India. Attila Attila is another of the ...
Post a Comment
Read more