Breathing Curiosity
Kurt Schwitters, born June 20, 1887, in Hannover, Germany, is the Dada artist and poet, best known for his collages and relief constructions.Soon after World War I Schwitters was attracted by the emerging Dada school, a nihilistic literary and artistic movement dedicated to the destruction of existing aesthetic values. Denied membership in the Berlin circle… Continue reading Das Leben, das Du gibst / The Life You Give: Kurt Schwitters *1887
Albrecht Dürer, born May 21, 1471, in the Imperial Free City of Nürnberg, Germany, is the painter and printmaker generally regarded as the greatest German Renaissance artist. His vast body of work includes altarpieces and religious works, numerous portraits and self-portraits, and copper engravings. His woodcuts, such as the Apocalypse series (1498), retain a more… Continue reading The Life You Give: Albrecht Dürer *1471
Joseph Beuys was born in Krefeld, a small city in northwest Germany. He was an only child, to the merchant Josef Jakob Beuys and his wife Johanna Maria Margarete Hulsermann. The two were a devout Catholic couple of the northern Rhine-Westphalian middle-class. Just months after Beuys's birth, the family moved south to the industrial town… Continue reading The Life You Give: Joseph Beuys *1921
Sculpture from Fernando Botero / Columbus Circle
Max Ernst, born Maximilian Ethelbert Ernst, on April 2 1891, in Brühl, Germany, was painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A key member of first Dada and then Surrealism in Europe in the 1910s and 1920s, Max Ernst used a variety of mediums—painting, collage, printmaking, sculpture, and various unconventional drawing methods—to give visual form to… Continue reading The Life You Give: Max Ernst *1891
Agnes Martin, born March 22 1912, in Macklin, Sask., Canada, was a painter. She moved to the U.S. in 1931 and became a U.S. citizen in 1950. She studied at Columbia University and taught at the University of New Mexico. In 1958 she had her first solo exhibition. Martin was a prominent exponent of geometric… Continue reading The Life You Give: Agnes Martin *1912
At Madison Square Park, Manhattan, NY
I am a simple man but for decades have understood my many privileges. Amongst many others, I have had the privilege of undergoing a second formative period, one with a level of intensity which has consistently allowed me to live life on a different plane than that of an average animal. Formative because well over… Continue reading The Live You Give: Gerhard Richter *February 9 1932
Eva Hesse created innovative sculptural forms using unconventional materials such as latex and fiberglass and gave minimal art organic, emotional, and kinetic features. She scorned good taste and the decorative, creating sculptures out of repeated units which embodied opposite extremes. These extremes were born from the extremes of her own life.Hesse is recognized as one… Continue reading The Life You Give: Eva Hesse *1936
Louise Bourgeois, born December 25, 1911, in Paris, France, was a sculptor known for her monumental abstract and often biomorphic works that deal with the relationships of men and women.Born to a family of tapestry weavers, Bourgeois made her first drawings to assist her parents in their restoration of ancient tapestries. She attended the Sorbonne,… Continue reading The Life You Give: Louise Bourgeois *1911
Edvard Munch was a prolific yet perpetually troubled artist preoccupied with matters of human mortality such as chronic illness, sexual liberation, and religious aspiration. He expressed these obsessions through works of intense color, semi-abstraction, and mysterious subject matter. Following the great triumph of French Impressionism, Munch took up the more graphic, symbolist sensibility of the… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Edvard Munch! *1863
Marina Abramović, born November 30, 1946, in Belgrade, Yugoslavia [now in Serbia]), is a performance artist known for works that dramatically tested the endurance and limitations of her own body and mind. Abramović was raised in Yugoslavia by parents who fought as Partisans in World War II and were later employed in the communist government… Continue reading The Life You Give: Marina Abramović *1946
During his brief artistic career, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec captured the lively and often sordid atmosphere of Montmartre’s late 19th-century dance halls, cabarets, and theaters. Recording the performances he viewed and the establishments he visited on a nightly basis, he functioned as artist and narrator: his paintings, drawings, prints, and posters expose the complexities of the… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec! 1864
Science looks to explain life by framing it;Art looks to explain life by freeing it.
Celebrate with us the life of who remains a popular and impressive figure, appreciated for her presence, as woman, as artist, even today — seven decades after her death. The painter Frida Kahlo was born Magdalena Carmen Frida Kahlo y Calderón, on July 6 1907, in Coyoacán, Mexico. Join us in celebration of her wonderful… Continue reading Happy Birthday, Frida Kahlo!
Sila Blume 