Download PDFToday, we celebrate World Art Day. The date was chosen as it is Leonardo Da Vinci’s date of birth and is celebrated across the world. As an art-oriented company, we do celebrate art every day through our brands and our network, whether it’s TFAC, our retailers or our consumers!
Here are some 2019 Art Anniversaries…
BAUHAUS TURNS 100!
Walter Gropius became the inaugural director of the Bauhaus, a German art school operational from 1919 to 1933 that combined crafts and the fine arts and was famous for the approach to design that it publicized and taught. Here is a picture of the Mil building of the Bauhaus School in Weimar:
GUSTAVE COURBET WOULD HAVE BEEN 200!
Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet (1819–1877) was a French painter who led the Realism movement in 19th-century French painting. Committed to painting only what he could see, he rejected academic convention and the Romanticism of the previous generation of visual artists. His independence set an example that was important to later artists, such as the Impressionists and the Cubists. Courbet occupies an important place in 19th-century French painting as an innovator and as an artist willing to make bold social statements through his work.
LEONARDO DA VINCI DIED 500 YEARS AGO!
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (1452 – 1519), more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath of the Renaissance whose areas of interest included invention, drawing, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, and cartography. He has been variously called the father of palaeontology, ichnology, and architecture, and he is widely considered one of the greatest painters of all time. Sometimes credited with the inventions of the parachute, helicopter, and tank, he epitomised the Renaissance humanist ideal.
THE PRADO MUSEUM (IN MADRID) IS 200 YEARS OLD
The Prado Museum is the main Spanish national art museum, located in central Madrid. It is widely considered to have one of the world’s finest collections of European art, dating from the 12th century to the early 20th century, based on the former Spanish Royal Collection, and the single best collection of Spanish art. Founded as a museum of paintings and sculpture in 1819, it also contains important collections of other types of works. El Prado is one of the most visited sites in the world, and it is considered one of the greatest art museums in the world. The numerous works by Francisco Goya, the single most extensively represented artist, as well as by Hieronymus Bosch, El Greco, Peter Paul Rubens, Titian, and Diego Velázquez, are some of the highlights of the collection.
REMBRANDT DIED 350 YEARS AGO
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 – 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter and printmaker. An innovative and prolific master in three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history. Unlike most Dutch masters of the 17th century, Rembrandt’s works depict a wide range of style and subject matter, from portraits and self-portraits to landscapes, genre scenes, allegorical and historical scenes, biblical and mythological themes as well as animal studies.
JOHN RUSKIN’S WOULD HAVE TURNED 200
John Ruskin (1819 – 1900) was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, a prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy. He also made detailed sketches and paintings of rocks, plants, birds, landscapes, and architectural structures and ornamentation.
PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER DIED 450 YEARS AGO
Pieter Bruegel (also Brueghel) the Elder (1525 – 1569) was the most significant artist of Dutch and Flemish Renaissance painting, a painter and printmaker from Brabant, known for his landscapes and peasant scenes (so called genre painting); he was a pioneer in making both types of subject the focus in large paintings.
PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR DIED 100 YEARS AGO
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, commonly known as Auguste Renoir (1841 – 1919), was a French artist who was a leading painter in the development of the Impressionist style. As a celebrator of beauty and especially feminine sensuality, it has been said that “Renoir is the final representative of a tradition which runs directly from Rubens to Watteau.” He was the father of actor Pierre Renoir (1885–1952), filmmaker Jean Renoir (1894–1979) and ceramic artist Claude Renoir (1901–1969). He was the grandfather of the filmmaker Claude Renoir (1913–1993).
