#dailyartapp

We have featured this painting once already; but it is so mesmerizing that we had to do it again, now on the last day of our special month with a collection of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden. We hope you loved this feature as much as we did!  :)
Until 2020, this world-famous composition had shown a young woman reading in a tall room with a whitewashed, bare back wall. It turned out, however, that Vermeer had created a different painting between 1657 and 1659 with his Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window than the one that had become, as it were, iconic in its previous form. The white wall of the room bore a large overpainting that had been known for a long time and had always been attributed to Vermeer himself. Scientific research recently proved beyond doubt, however, that the light overpainting in the upper half of the picture did not come from the artist’s hand. The motif of the Cupid, which adorns the wall as a “picture within a picture,” must have been erased from the painting by another hand well after Vermeer’s death. Together with a commission of experts, it was decided to remove this overpainting as part of a spectacular restoration project, thus restoring the painting to its original appearance intended by the artist. Now the wall contains the depiction of a standing Cupid holding a bow with his right hand and his left arm raised. A clearer indication of the hidden amorous content of the letter in the young girl’s hand was hardly conceivable for the contemporary viewer.

Have a calm Sunday everyone!

(From #DailyArtApp)
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This small, lesser-known painting is a key touchstone in Van Gogh’s collective works up until 1888, when it was painted. It’s the first painting where the artist uses his famous extreme contrasts and bold colors that would soon become hallmarks of his work. This artwork shows him moving away from dark-toned realistic Realism and Impressionism he knew from Paris toward Expressionism, a movement to which he would contribute greatly in establishing. In the painting we present today, van Gogh for the first time emphasizes and exploits to the full the extreme contrasts of blue and orange, red and green, and white and black.

Have a great and calm Saturday everyone!

(From #DailyArtApp)
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Vittorio Zecchin was born in 1878 in Murano, Venice, famous for glass production; his father worked in a glass factory. Although he spent his childhood and youth in Murano surrounded by the glassworks, he had no interest in the art of glass and instead studied painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice. School disappointed him and he left it and art in general until 1908, when he became moved by a new artistic movement, the Viennese Secession. Their work was on display between 1908 and 1920 at the Museum of Modern Art in Ca‘ Pesaro in Venice. Fascinated by the mystical and symbolist painting of the time, as well as the Art Nouveau movement, he even travelled to Vienna around 1910 to get to know the artists and their work in situ. There he met Gustav Klimt, who was to have a lasting influence on his creative work.

His high point as a painter came in 1914, when he completed The Thousand and One Nights, a 30 meter-long painting, comprising 12 individual works depicting the procession of Aladdin and his entourage, as he goes to ask the Sultan for his daughter’s hand. The work was commissioned by the Hotel Terminus in Venice, which intended the painting for the dining room.

The version we present today, is a part of this series. The Museum in Ca’ Pesaro Palace in Venice today owns 6 of the 12 paintings, the rest remain in private hands.

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
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Katsushika Hokusai was the creator of The Great Wave, one of the most famous artworks in the world during his lifetime. He changed his name a couple of times. In 1820, he changed it to Iitsu, marking the start of a period in which he secured fame as an artist throughout Japan and created some of his most popular prints. During his Iitsu period, Hokusai often featured flowers and birds in the prints he produced for fans. This image depicts a family of chickens clustered together affectionately in a field of blooming spiderwort, or tsuyukusa. The brilliant palette displays Hokusai’s fondness for bright, intense colors.

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
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Today for the Western Christian world it is Holy Saturday. The day commemorates the Harrowing of Hell while Jesus Christ’s body lay in the tomb. On this occasion we feature one of the most stunning masterpieces of the Italian Renaissance, this breathtaking painting by Andrea Mantegna. 

The most convincing hypothesis, despite the uncertainties stemming from the existence of several variants of the same subject, identifies the painting in Brera with the “foreshortened Christ” found in Mantegna’s studio at the time of his death, sold by his son Ludovico to Cardinal Sigismondo Gonzaga and inventoried among the property of the lords of Mantua in 1627.

The iconography of the work, probably intended for the artist’s private devotion, refers to the compositional scheme of the Lamentation over the Dead Christ, in which mourners are gathered around the body prepared for burial, laid out on the stone of unction and already anointed with perfumes.

The composition produces a great emotional impact, accentuated by the extreme foreshortening: Christ’s body is very close to the viewpoint of the observer who, looking at it, is drawn into the center of the drama; moreover, every detail is enhanced by the incisiveness of the lines, which compels the gaze to linger over the most terrible details, over the members stiffened in rigor mortis as well as the wounds, ostentatiously presented in the foreground as called for by the tradition of this type of image.  It is an absolute peak in Mantegna’s production, a work whose expressive force, severe composure, and masterly handling of the illusion of perspective have made it one of the best-known symbols of the Italian Renaissance.

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
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Mykola Kornylovych Pymonenko was a Ukrainian realist painter who lived and worked in the Russian Empire.

Pymonenko was the outstanding Ukrainian genre painter, whose name is linked to the rise of Ukrainian fine art of the second half of the 19th century, although he was often billed simply as a Russian painter because he was painting in Kyiv within the Russian Empire then. He was associated with the Odesa-based Society of South Russian Artists in southern Ukraine and, with the Peredvizhniki (“Itinerants”), a Saint Petersburg-based society circulating exhibitions throughout the empire. He is best known for his urban and rural genre scenes of farmers, country folk, and working-class people. He contributed significantly to the creation of a national realistic art painting, creating a number of the leading paintings of daily life in a Ukrainian village.
 
We really hope Ukraine will look like a paradise again, like in this painting.

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
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Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita was a Dutch graphic artist active in the years before the Second World War. His pupils included graphic artist M. C. Escher. As a Sephardic Jew, in his old age he was sent to Auschwitz by the Nazis, where he was gassed along with his wife. After the war, de Mesquita was largely forgotten. Time to publish his works in DailyArt. 

De Mesquita principally devoted himself to art, experimenting with various techniques and mediums. Though known primarily for his wood engravings, he also produced etchings, lithographs, watercolors, and drawings; his applied art consisted mostly of material designs. They present birds, exotic animals, plants and flowers, and fantastical representations, both humorous and grim. Among de Mesquita’s most beautiful works are his portraits, particularly his self-portraits. His work is characterized by its serene simplicity and concentration on the main form. (Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CcHIfMRh0pXK3C_cqRTbhF3SpR5RevVmzRSPMk0/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

On this day in 1853 one of the most famous artists in the world, for sure the most legendary one, was born. Although his career was brief, lasting 10 years, Vincent van Gogh proved to be an exceptionally prolific and innovative artist. Like his predecessor and idol, Rembrandt van Rijn, Van Gogh loved self-portraiture. He painted no fewer than 36 self-portraits. The painting we present today is one of the very last self-portraits the artist painted.

Van Gogh painted during his voluntary internment at the asylum. In a letter to his brother Theo written in early September 1889, he wrote:
“They say—and I am very willing to believe it—that it is difficult to know yourself—but it isn’t easy to paint yourself either. So I am working on two portraits of myself at this moment—for want of another model—because it is more than time I did a little figure work. One I began the day I got up; I was thin and pale as a ghost. It is dark violet–blue and the head whitish with yellow hair, so it has a color effect. But since then I have begun another one, three-quarter length on a light background.”

Here Van Gogh portrayed himself at work, dressed in his artist’s smock with his palette and brushes in hand. The dynamic brushwork lends an uncommon immediacy and expressiveness to his portrayal. According to Van Gogh himself, this painting was the one that captured his “true character.”
(Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbtYlKrBMS5vQ-59RdPOwKEpuzFdmRRh4x-Oj80/?utm_medium=tumblr

We present today’s work thanks to the Finnish National Gallery, where until March 27th, 2022, you can visit The Modern Woman, an exhibition that discusses the role and position of Finnish women artists in the decades of 20th-century Modernism. Ellen Thesleff’s importance in Finnish Modernist art is undeniable. She is also one of the stars of the exhibition. Today you can enjoy her work in DailyArt.  :)

Ellen Thesleff was a cosmopolitan, self-confident innovator who mastered various techniques of painting and graphic art. Florence was her second home, but she spent summers at her studio villa, Casa Bianca, in Ruovesi, Finland. Thesleff was among the first Finnish artists to move from the dark, sparse palette of Symbolism to colorful Expressionism, which she adapted to her woodcuts. Late in her career, her expression approached abstraction and her color scale became dimmer. Besides color, light, and movement, the depiction of nature and natural experiences was a key theme in Thesleff’s oeuvre.

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbZ0ZdfhwVg7ij98tGplnvqJFShaACVwR9bExY0/?utm_medium=tumblr

Ukrainian artist Vsevolod Maksymovych is considered the most important devotee of Art Nouveau style in Ukraine.
At an early age, most of his paintings shared the period’s preoccupations with exoticism, mysticism, and sexuality. He was influenced by Aubrey Beardsley and Mikhail Vrubel and studied in Poltava and then in Moscow. From 1912 to 1914 he created his most outstanding works—giant decorative panels in which he used many iconographic sources, including Ancient Greek and Roman, Assyrian, and Poltava folk art. At the same time, he was close to Natalia Goncharova and Mikhail Larionov (with whom he was filmed in Drama in the Futurists’ Cabaret No. 13, which was probably the world’s first avant-garde film in history). In 1914 he committed suicide after a drug overdose. Most likely, the reason that pushed the artist to such a step was the failure of his solo exhibition in Moscow. 

Hundreds of thousands of people had to flee their homes due to the unbelievable and illegal aggression of Russia on a sovereign Ukraine. Thousands of civilians have already died in bombardments of homes, hospitals, and schools. Help Ukrainians by donating to UNHCR. (Source: #DailyArtApp)
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“A dark aubergine vase containing purple and white lilacs is shown placed on what seems to be a sill or work surface in a greenhouse, with the adjacent window held open by a prop. This most simple of subjects is presented with a line characteristic of Mary Cassatt’s best work, which is not surprising given her love of gardens and flowers. Pure still life is a great rarity in her oeuvre, usually concentrated on the human figure. On occasion, however, she placed landscape or floral elements within her compositions as colorful backdrops and accents.” (Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbToCfPBiL8tTrvhsa6W5RJkQTk84JA-kpPVyk0/?utm_medium=tumblr

On this day in 1872, Piet Mondrian, one of the greatest artists of the 20th century and one of the fathers of abstract art, was born. To celebrate the occasion, we present one of his works thanks to the Kröller-Müller Museum.  :)

Initially, Piet Mondrian painted in the naturalistic style of the Hague School. Curious about the latest developments in the art, such as the Cubism of Picasso and Braque, Mondrian left for Paris in 1911. Under the influence of the Cubists, he soon reduced his colors to mostly grey, ochre, and brown; the recognizable reality gradually disappeared from his paintings.

Tableau no. 1 clearly shows the influence of Analytical Cubism. In this, an object or figure is dissected, broken into fragments, and converted into a complex structure. The composition is built up from the middle and the shapes become blurred towards the edges. Tableau no. 1 has an underdrawing of a tree, but this motif is barely recognizable.
Mondrian dissected his subject into countless segments. This created a lively structure of horizontal and vertical, straight, and slightly curved lines, and grey and ochre surfaces. In this painting and in other works from the same year, Mondrian took his first steps towards “the unchanging pure reality behind the changeable forms of nature.”

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/CaymuZuvs8kByqTI8R-TM8ZrmeveCQ0MyVgAnE0/?utm_medium=tumblr

It is Sunday, so time to present a masterpiece from our partner, which is one of our favorite museums, the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam!  Enjoy!

This painting was long thought to be a self-portrait of Vincent; another view, however, is that it shows his brother Theo.  The brothers, naturally, bore a striking resemblance to one another. Unfortunately, there is no decisive evidence to determine who is actually portrayed, which is why the painting now has a double title.

The portrait is unusually small and painted in considerable detail. Van Gogh was probably trying to compete with portrait photos. He had written some time earlier, “it’s a cause worth fighting for to show people that there’s something else in human beings besides what the photographer is able to get out of them with his machine.”

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
https://www.instagram.com/p/Cadrsskhb0pEhWwGjKaN-3mHl4WtfuYmGRH8r80/?utm_medium=tumblr

It is Sunday, so time to present a masterpiece from our partner (which is one of our favorite museums), the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam! Enjoy!

We can tell that Van Gogh painted this view of the sea from the beach, as grains of sand have been found in the paint layers. It was done at the fishing village of Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer, during a trip he took from Arles in the south of France.

In addition to the blue and white that he brushed onto the canvas with bold strokes, he used green and yellow for the waves.

He applied these colors with a palette knife, neatly capturing the effect of the light through the waves. Van Gogh was enthusiastic about the colors of the Mediterranean Sea. He wrote that it “has a colour like mackerel, in other words, changing – you don’t always know if it’s green or purple – you don’t always know if it’s blue – because a second later, its changing reflection has taken on a pink or grey hue.” The bright red signature has been placed prominently in the foreground: it was intended as a “red note in the green.”

(Source: #DailyArtApp)
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