Still Life

SUBJECT: ART

Nazahat | Art | Year-8B

Contents
− Still life………………………………….page 2

− Pablo Picasso…………………………page 3

− Vincent van Gogh………………… page 4

− Henri Matisse………………………..page 5

− Giorgio Morandi……………………page 6

− Artworks and comparisons…...page 7-10

PAGE 1
Still Life

One of the principal genres (subject types) of Western art – essentially, the subject matter
of a still life painting or sculpture is anything that does not move or is dead. With origins
in the Middle Ages and Ancient Greco-Roman art, still-life painting emerged as a distinct
genre and professional specialization in Western painting by the late 16th century, and has
remained significant since then.

Still life includes all kinds of man-made or natural objects, cut flowers, fruit, vegetables,
fish, game, wine and so on. Still life can be a celebration of material pleasures such as food
and wine, or often a warning of the ephemerality of these pleasures and of the brevity of
human life.

In modern art simple still life arrangements have often been used as a relatively neutral
basis for formal experiment, for example by Paul Cézanne, the cubist painters and, later in
the twentieth century, by Patrick Caulfield.

Although we call him Pablo Picasso, Picasso's gargantuan full name, which honors a
variety of relatives and saints, is Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno
María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Martyr Patricio Clito Ruíz y
Picasso.

Pablo Picasso was born on October 25, 1881, in Málaga, Spain. Pablo Picasso died on April
8, 1973, at the age of 91, in Mougins,
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PAGE 2
Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso (October 25, 1881 to April 8, 1973) was the most dominant and influential
artist of the first half of the 20th century. He was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor,
printmaker, ceramicist and stage designer considered one of the greatest and most
influential artists of the 20th century and the co-creator of cubism, along with Georges
Braque. For nearly 80 of his 91 years, Picasso devoted himself to an artistic production that
he superstitiously believed would keep him alive, contributing significantly to — and
paralleling the entire development of — modern art in the 20th century.

Pablo Picasso remains renowned for endlessly reinventing himself, switching between
styles so radically different that his life's work seems to be the product of five or six great
artists rather than just one. His adult career was broken into distinct periods. As an artist,
he had many art periods, like the ‘blue period’, ‘rose period’, ‘cubism’, ‘classical period’, etc.
With many amazing artworks of different kinds, Pablo Picasso also made many still life
paintings in his time, such as Musical Instruments, Glass and Pitcher, or Still life on a
Table.

PAGE 3
Vincent van Gogh

The iconic tortured artist, Vincent Van Gogh strove to convey his emotional and spiritual
state in each of his artworks. Vincent van Gogh is considered the greatest Dutch painter
after Rembrandt, and even one of the greatest painters of his time, although he remained
poor and virtually unknown throughout his life, and only managed to sell one painting
during his lifetime. His canvases with densely laden, visible brushstrokes rendered in a
bright, opulent palette emphasize Van Gogh's personal expression brought to life in paint.
Each painting provides a direct sense of how the artist viewed each scene, interpreted
through his eyes, mind, and heart. This radically idiosyncratic, emotionally evocative style
has continued to affect artists and movements throughout the twentieth century and up
to the present day, guaranteeing Van Gogh's importance far into the future.

Vincent van Gogh completed more than 2,100 works, consisting of 860 oil paintings and
more than 1,300 watercolors, drawings and sketches. Several of his paintings now rank
among the most expensive in the world. Van Gogh also made many still lifes in his time,
with nearly all of them having a very similar colour scheme, which used a lot of yellow.
One of his most well-known artworks include a still life named ‘Sunflowers’.

In despair of ever being able to overcome his loneliness or be cured, van Gogh shot
himself. He did not die immediately. When found wounded in his bed, he allegedly said, “I
shot myself…I only hope I haven’t botched it.” That evening, when interrogated by the
police, van Gogh refused to answer questions, saying, “What I have done is nobody else’s
business. I am free to do what I like with my own body.” Van Gogh died two days after
that incident.

Largely on the basis of the works of the last three years of his life, van Gogh is generally
considered one of the greatest Dutch painters of all time. His work exerted a powerful
influence on the development of much modern painting, in particular on the works of
the Fauve painters, Chaim Soutine, and the German Expressionists. Yet of the more than
800 oil paintings and 700 drawings that constitute his life’s work, he sold only one in his
lifetime, and was always desperately poor, trying to survive.

PAGE 4
Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse was one of the great masters of still life in 20th century art. Matisse lived
through an age of unprecedented technological growth that totally reshaped the world in
the 20th century. He also witnessed some of humanity's darkest moments: two world
wars, the holocaust and the dropping of the atomic bomb to name but a few. Yet despite
his exposure to this era of uncertainty and change, there is nowhere in his work that can
you find any hint of protest, or an ideological stance, or even any reference to the
momentous events of his time. His art is oblivious to the problems of the world and he
retreats behind the walls of his artistic vision to a sheltered haven where only a sense of
comfort and joy exist. Matisse said that he wanted his art to have the same effect as a
comfortable armchair on a tired businessman and many of the paintings he left us seem to
be the view from that armchair.

This artist also worked on many still lifes such as ‘Les Fauves’, Fauvist still life’, or ‘The
goldfish’. His artworks are very simple and don’t require much to recreate, and they also
seem to have one dominating colour in the paintings, like how his artwork ‘Les fauves’
seemed to focus on the colour blue.

His artistic career was extremely short, lasting only the 10 years from 1880 to 1890. During
the first four years of this period, while acquiring technical proficiency, he confined
himself almost entirely to drawings and watercolours.

PAGE 5
Giorgio Morandi

Giorgio Morandi was an artist who painstakingly worked to unlock the puzzles of art, the
questions of modern painting, looking for the structure and order that underlies the
process of representation itself. Giorgio Morandi bridged the grand legacy of Italian art
and 20th-century modernism. With carefully crafted tonal relationships and a sense of
palpable light and space, his paintings extended a tradition of representational painting
while creating a minimalist aesthetic that remained relevant in the face of abstraction.
Ultimately, Morandi's poetic style did not escape the attention of his contemporaries and
established a legacy for generations of representational painters.

His major influence was the work of French Post-Impressionist painter Paul Cézanne,

whose emphasis on form and flat areas of colour Morandi emulated throughout his career.
Morandi first exhibited his work in 1914 in Bologna with the Futurist painters, and in 1918–
19 he was associated with the Metaphysical school, a group who painted in a style
developed by Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà.

Giorgio’s still lifes, like Van Gogh’s, had a very similar colour scheme in them. His
artworks had a much paler vibe using pale and bland colours, mostly white, black, or
brown.

Beginning in 1916, Morandi briefly worked in the style of the Metaphysical School and
participated in group exhibitions focused on this movement.

Focusing on formal rhythms and subtle palette modulations, Morandi modernized still life
painting with an attention to color, form, and composition that declared these traditional
components to be meaningful. The subtleties of his palette, light, and brushstroke are vital
to a fuller understanding of his lifelong project, and his influence on later artists, yet his
work suffers in reproduction and remains excruciatingly difficult to describe on the
written page; they are sensual experiences that resist concrete language.

Still, he remains a model for many generations of artists. His resistance to abstraction
provided an important model for later generations in various stylistic movements,
including representational painters of the Pop style and the 1980s. He was also influential
to the Minimalists, who admired his attention to simple physicality, medium-specificity
and sparse forms.

PAGE 6
 Artwork comparisons

Pablo Picasso

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 Vincent Van Gogh

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Giorgio Morandi

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 Henri Matisse

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