Rufino Tamayo - Tres Personajes

Tres Personajes is a painting by Rufino Tamayo that was stolen from the owners lock up as they moved house in 1987 and missing for almost 20 years before being found amongst the trash on the curb by Elizabeth Gibson. She lugged it home and put it on her wall, however, intregued by the painting she began to research it and eventually via antiques roadshow she found out its true worth. The painting was sold at a Sotheby's auction for 1.1 million dollars, of which Gibson recieved a percentage of.

Tres Personajes (1970)


more from the artist...

El Lissitzky - Proun

El Lissitzky developed a suprematist style of his own, a series of abstract, geometric paintings which he called Proun (pronounced "pro-oon"). The exact meaning of "Proun" was never fully revealed, with some suggesting that it is a contraction of proekt unovisa (designed by UNOVIS) or proekt utverzhdenya novogo (Design for the confirmation of the new). Later, El Lissitzky defined them ambiguously as "the station where one changes from painting to architecture."

Proun was essentially El Lissitzky's exploration of the visual language of suprematism with spatial elements, utilizing shifting axes and multiple perspectives; both uncommon ideas in suprematism. Suprematism at the time was conducted almost exclusively in flat, 2D forms and shapes, and El Lissitzky, with a taste for architecture and other 3D concepts, tried to expand suprematism beyond this. His Proun works (known as Prounen) spanned over a half a decade and evolved from straightforward paintings and lithographs into fully three-dimensional installations. They would also lay the foundation for his later experiments in architecture and exhibition design. While the paintings were artistic in their own right, their use as a staging ground for his early architectonic ideas was significant. In these works, the basic elements of architecture — volume, mass, color, space and rhythm — were subjected to a fresh formulation in relation to the new suprematist ideals. Through his Prouns, utopian models for a new and better world were developed. This approach, in which the artist creates art with socially defined purpose, could aptly be summarized with his edict "das zielbewußte Schaffen" — "task oriented creation."

From Wikipedia sort of.

A Story of Two Squares (1920)


Dlia golosa (1923)

Juan Gris

At first Gris painted in the analytic style of Cubism, but after 1913 he began his conversion to synthetic Cubism, of which he became a steadfast interpreter, with extensive use of papier collé. Unlike Picasso and Braque, whose Cubist works were monochromatic, Gris painted with bright harmonious colors in daring, novel combinations in the manner of his friend Matisse.

In 1924, he first designed ballet sets and costumes for Sergei Diaghilev and the famous Ballets Russes.

Gris articulated most of his aesthetic theories during 1924 and 1925. He delivered his definitive lecture, Des possibilités de la peinture, at the Sorbonne in 1924. Major Gris exhibitions took place at the Galerie Simon in Paris and the Galerie Flechtheim in Berlin in 1923, and at the Galerie Flechtheim in Düsseldorf in 1925.

He died in Boulogne-sur-Seine (Paris) in the spring of 1927 at the age of forty, leaving a wife, Josette, and a son, Georges.

His top auction price is $20.8 million which was set by his 1915 still life titled, Livre, pipe et verres.

from wikipedia

The Sunblind (1914, see at Tate Gallery)

The Painter's Window (1925)

Harlequin with Guitar (1919)

Jacques Villon

Jacques Villon (July 31, 1875 - June 9, 1963) was a French cubist painter and printmaker. Elder brother to Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Marcel Duchamp and Suzanne Duchamp-Crotti, he was born Gaston Emile Duchamp, the reason for his name change was to distinguish himself from his siblings, he adobted Villon as a homage to 15th century medieval french poet François Villon. In 1903 he helped organize the drawing section of the first Salon d'Automne in Paris. In 1904-1905 he studied art at the Académie Julian.

By 1906, Montmartre was a bustling community and Jacques Villon moved to Puteaux in the quiet outskirts of Paris. There, he began to devote more of his time to working in drypoint, an intaglio technique that creates dark, velvety lines that stand out against the white of the paper. During this time he worked closely to develop his technique with other important printmakers such as Manuel Robbe.

His isolation from the vibrant art community in Montmartre, together with his modest nature, ensured that he and his artwork remained obscure for a number of years.

Among Villon's greatest achievements as a printmaker was his creation of a purely graphic language for cubism — an accomplishment that no other printmaker, including his fellow cubists Pablo Picasso or Georges Braque, could claim.

Les Cartes


Le Potin


Portrait of Marcel Duchamp

Comedie de societe

Photograph of Duchamp brothers (l-r Marcel Duchamp, Jacques Villon, and Raymond Duchamp-Villon in the garden of Jacques Villon's studio in Pateaux, France, 1914)

Vanessa Bell - The Beach, Studland

Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.

Studland Beach is in a quiet bay in Dorset. The idea of the beach as a place for leisure activities was relatively new in 1912. It is a sign of their modernity that Vanessa Bell and her Bloomsbury Group friends holidayed there.This is one of several works by Bell from 1911–2 which show a debt to Matisse in their simplified design and bold colouring. Though an exercise in what her friends called ‘significant form’ (emphasising form rather than subject matter), the picture retains some of the feel of a sunny day spent on the sand and in the water.

The Beach, Studland

I found this painting in the Sotheby's June 1995 program, it is of an area of beach in Dorset called Studland bay. The style is indebted to Maurice Denis, like Denis, Vanessa composes her figures into rhythmic groups, the emphasis on silhouette showinga concern for the decorative unity of the picture surface. The figure lying down in a straw boater is said to be Virginia Woolf, who visited Studland around the same time. The standing figure is thought to represent Vanessa herself. (the lines are not meant to be there, it's a bad scan)

Here is a portrait she did of Virginia (Woolf)


And here is one of Aldous Huxley


Here's Baigneuses by Maurice Denis...


When i googled the title this came up which is also by Vanessa Bell and is slightly different, note how the standing figure which was meant to be herself is changed. I'm presuming this to be the finished version and the one from the Sotheby's catalogue to be an initial working of the painting.

Pablo Picasso - Three Dancers

The Three Dancers (French: Les Trois Danseuses) is a painting by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso, painted in June 1925

The painting shows three dancers, the one on the right being barely visible. A macabre dance takes place, with the dancer on the left having her head bent at a near-impossible angle. The dancer on the right is usually interpreted as being Ramon Pichot, a friend of Picasso who died during the painting of Three Dancers. (Some critics believe it could well be Picasso's wife Olga Khokhlova.[3]) The one on the left is claimed to be Pichot’s wife Germaine Gargallo with the one in the centre being Gargallo’s boyfriend Carlos Casagemas, also Picasso’s friend [4]. Casagemas shot himself after failing to shoot Gargallo, twenty-five years before Pichot’s death, and the loss of two of his best friends spurred Picasso to paint this chilling depiction of the love triangle.
from wikipedia

Franz Kline