Skip to main content

Giuseppe Arcimboldo Biography

Giuseppe Arcimboldo

(Milan, 1527-id., 1593) Italian painter.He was the first designer of cardboard for tapestries and stained glass window for the Cathedral of Milan.He lived in Prague, and in Vienna he worked for the Habsburg court.Arcimboldo was the creator of a type of portrait in which the face was made up of groups of animals, flowers, fruits and all kinds of objects.In them there is a mixture of satire and allegory, as in La Primavera and El verano .His works were seen in his time as an example of curious painting but lacking in artistic value.In recent times, the Surrealists placed great value on the visual interplay of their compositions and the grotesque nature of their allegories.

He began his career at the age of 22, as a designer of the stained glass windows of the Milanese cathedral, together with his father, Biaggio, who would be his first teacher.He combined his work with the study of Leonardo da Vinci's engravings, especially those with a caricatural vein, whose imprint would become evident in his later production.In 1562 he moved to Prague, where he was successively in the service of the emperors Ferdinand I, Maximilian II and Rodolfo II, becoming one of the favorite painters of the court, where he made various sets for the imperial theater.On the death of Rodolfo II he returned to Milan, where he died on July 11, 1593.

Vertumno (1590), by Giuseppe Arcimboldo

From the work of Giuseppe Arcimboldo the various allegorical paintings stand out in which, from vegetables, fruits, flowers, animals or various objects, he forms human figures or figurations of the seasons of the year, such as the Spring (1563, Louvre Museum, Paris) or the Portrait with vegetables (Pinacoteca de Cremona).Gifted with a singular imagination to create the most unlikely and original visual effects, Arcimboldo enjoyed deserved fame in his time from those grotesque portraits (particularly those in the series The Four Seasons ) in which the physiology of the face was made up of the most disparate elements.It is a capricious, illusionistic and meticulous art, representative of the mannerist taste for artificial metaphor, unusual curiosity and paradox.

The study and assessment of Arcimboldo's work were not rigorously addressed until the beginning of the 20th century, as a reflection of the interest turned towards her by surrealism.The surrealists appreciated a fascinating mixture of satire and allegory in these works, and they attached great value to the visual game that their compositions propose; in them they saw in anticipation of their visual games and incorporated their techniques into their own vocabulary, imitating them profusely.His influence reached painters of the stature of Salvador Dalí, as evidenced by the Paranoid Face made by the Spanish artist in 1935.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Jose Triadó Mayol Biography

José Triadó Mayol (Barcelona, ​​1870- id ., 1929) Spanish draftsman, former bookseller and painter.He collaborated with his drawings in the magazines El gato negro (1898), Album Salón (1898-1899) and Hispania (1899-1902).Outstanding author of ex libris, as a painter he made the triptych Las Cortes de Manresa for the Sant Jordi room of the Generalitat of Catalonia.

Heinrich maier Biography

Heinrich Maier (Heidenheim, 1867-Berlin, 1933) German philosopher.He produced a "critical realism", along the lines of H.Driesch.He is the author, among other works, of Aristotle's syllogistics (1896-1900) and of The philosophy of reality (1926-1935).

Jose Mauri Biography

José Mauri (Valencia, 1856-Havana, 1937) Spanish composer.Installed in Cuba for most of his life, he founded the conservatory that bears his name there (1914).His work includes numerous songs and the opera The Slave (1921).

Joseph Reinach Biography

Joseph Reinach (Paris, 1856-1921) French journalist.He started in the journalistic profession through the Parisian newspaper La République Française , where from 1877 he began to publish interesting political analyzes that placed him at the epicenter of French public life in the last quarter of the century XIX.He acquired such importance in such a short space of time that in 1881, following the proclamation in France of the Third Republic, President León Gambetta called him to his side to place all his trust in him and appoint him head of his secretariat. At only thirty years old (1886), he became editor-in-chief of La République Française .Once this position was released, he directed a noisy journalistic campaign from the pages of the newspaper against the nationalist and populist politics of Georges Boulanger (the " General Revanche ").With this and other similar matters of maximum national interest, Joseph Reinach continued to rise in French public life and, in 188...

Joseph Bramah Biography

Joseph Bramah (Stainborough, 1749-London, 1814) British inventor.A mechanic by profession, he carried out numerous practical inventions: a security lock, a hydraulic press, the water-closet or toilet system, a printer to number banknotes, etc.

Joseph H. Maclagan Wedderburn Biography

Joseph H.Maclagan Wedderburn (Forfar, 1882-Princeton, 1948) British mathematician.Professor at Princeton University, he was editor of the Proceedings of the Edinburgh mathematical society (1905-1909) and the Annals of mathematics (1912-1928).He stated a theorem ( Wedderburn's theorem ) according to which every finite field is commutative.

Josef Hoffmann Biography

Josef Hoffmann (Pirnitz, 1870-Vienna, 1956) Austrian architect, decorator and urban planner.He was a disciple of O.Wagner and participated, along with J.M.Olbrich and other architects, in the creation of the avant-garde movement of the Secession (1897).His work is characterized by the careful treatment of the surfaces achieved through geometric decorations; The Stoclet Palace in Brussels stands out for its calculated elegance of style (1905-1911).

Jose Maria Galvez Alonso Biography

José María Gálvez Alonso (Matanzas, 1834-Havana, 1906) Cuban lawyer and politician.After studying law at the University of Havana, he sympathized with the independence movement of Carlos Manuel de Céspedes that led to the Ten Years' War (1868-1878), and served their cause from New York, taking charge of the leadership of the newspaper The Revolution .Due to the complaints and appeals that he published on its pages, he was arrested and imprisoned by the Spanish authorities, and released with the amnesty that was granted once the war ended. José María Gálvez Alonso then founded the Partido Liberal Autonomista (1881), formation that during the following years competed for power with the Conservative Party.Gálvez, who advocated bringing Cuban society and institutions to a point of maturity and sufficient stability as a step prior to independence, also directed the Economic Society of Friends of the Country.He was president of the short-lived autonomous government of Cuba (1897-18...

Josef sudek Biography

Josef Sudek (Kolín, 1896-Prague, 1976) Czechoslovakian photographer.It began with landscapes and panoramas of Prague in which it followed the pictorial style.Later he concentrated on everyday objects, romantic interiors, still lifes and portraits.

Joseph I Bonaparte Biography

José I Bonaparte (Ajaccio, France, 1768-Florence, 1844) King of Spain (1808-1812).Napoleon Bonaparte's older brother, he studied law and devoted himself to business.His brother appointed him King of Naples and, later, in 1808, of Spain, to which he immediately moved. José I Bonaparte When he arrived in Madrid, Spain was in revolt due to the mutiny of May 2, and he barely had time to settle down, as he had to leave hurriedly before the French defeat in Bailén.After the intervention of Napoleon himself, with the bulk of the French army, he was able to establish his government in the capital of the kingdom, but his liberal and enlightened measures met with popular hostility, which made him the victim of ridicule regarding his supposed alcoholism (he received the nickname by Pepe Botella ). After the battle of the Arapiles, and before the advance of the Duke of Wellington, he left Madrid taking a large amount of wealth, according to his detractors, and moved to Vitoria, where...