Alexander Calder

I didn't realize that someone was credited with creating the mobile, so I was interested finding this was true for Calder. I am most draw to his wire frame face sculptures and his drawings and paintings. He was friends with many of the avant garde artists like Marcel DuChamp, Joan Miro, and Jean Arp. I can see similarities with his work and Miro's work with the movement and melodious forms.

He was born in Pennsylvania in 1898. His entire family was immersed in the art world, his father a sculptor, mother an artist, and sister instrumental in the UC Berkeley Art Museum.

He was discouraged from becoming an artist and studied engineering. He became fascinated with circuses after doing sketches for a newspaper of the Ringling Brothers.

In 1926, he moved to Paris. His Cirque Calder was popular among the French avant-garde. He moved back to the US a year later and stayed very active building sculptures on various different scales throughout his life (including large sculptures in major cities around the US).

Gustave Caillebotte

Caillebotte is another artist who in my art history ignorance I have never heard of. I am pretty taken with his work. I love his color palette and the moments he captures are so perfectedly "in the moment" that I almost feel like the are moving. I also like his lights and darks.

Apparently he was friends with the great Impressionists. He came from a wealthy family and was a partron to artists like Monet, Renoir, Pissarro. His work was considered more of a Realist than an Impressionist, but he was surrounded with, influenced by, and supported Impressionists.

His colors are great, and I love the perspective in his paintings. His nudes are interesting, too. Their banality makes them beautiful and unexpected.

Love these paintings. Always fun to find something new!

Michaelangelo

I've had a special warm spot for Michaelangelo ever since reading the historical novel about him that my mom gave me. And then it was pretty amazing seeing his masterpieces in person.

Some ideas I remember really loving about him were that he sculpted because he wanted to feel closer to God. I'm not especially religious, but I think that's a really special idea. His sculptures were amazing, but he was also pressured and ordered to do his paintings when he would have much rather been sculpting. Everyone knows him for the Sistine Chapel, but his real love was painting. Interesting.

I think every artist should strive to have this kind of passion for the possibilities in life. I know I'll never be at this level, but it's nice to try and become inspired by his passion within my own capabilities.

Pieter Bruegel the Elder

Pieter the Elder is a Dutch Renaissance painter of the 1500s. He was known as Peasant Bruegel due to the common people subject matter in which of many of his paintings contained.

He was apparently influenced by Hieronymus Bosche. I can definitely see that in some of his paintings with color scheme and with the arrangement and scale of figures within the painting (To me there is a melodic, evenly spaced, pattern like quality in the placement). He is one of the first Northern Europe painters to paint landscapes without a historical preservation necessity and but simply painted them for their own sake.

Constantin Bruncusi

For some reason or another, I've never been too drawn to sculpture. I'm not sure why. Maybe with a painting or drawing, I like the transformation that happens in flattening a 3D view into 2. But I actually like Brancusi's. There is something very delicate and surprising in his subject matter. There is a serene thoughtfulness in the work.

It is interesting to see what information can be communicated in his forms. In the Kiss you have essentially a cube structure with the absolute perfect form, amount, and placement of detracted mass, and it forms a beautiful emotional embrace that any viewer can instantly connect with.

There is a similar quality in the scuplture of a face. It is carefully resting on a flat surface, almost like a pillow as though it is sleeping, but with no body connected. Interesting stuff.

There is also an egg like sculpture that really reminds me of the egg in the courtyard of the design school.

Brancusi was born in Romania and studied under Robin. He was also a part of the famous Dadaist Amory show of 1913.

Sandro Botticelli

I think the Venus painting Botticello did was his most famous one. It's interesting because in my ISMs book, they talk about Botticello in the secularism book, hence the Venus painting (pagan and mythological), but about.com is talking about his somewhat drastically religious at one point and destroyed some of his paintings (I'm guessing the more secular ones).

He's from the Florentine school of early Italian Rennaissance and is considered to be somewhat overshadowed by some the the more influencial artists from that time.

I read that his work is sort of old fashioned compared to some of the artists of his time. He has some paintings in the Sistine Chapel and was a patronized by members of the Medici family.

Gutenberg

The graphic designer in me has wanted to do a brain painting that is somewhat large and is black on white with nothing but an image of the word brain.

I thought it might be appropriate to read up on my favorite typographer, or a typographer of some significance, and I think that I might go with Gutenberg.

His story is quite interesting. I'll need to read up on it, but I think his impact on the world goes without saying. I think he would be the best choice of a story to tell. I'm a little disappointed that that painting won't say brain in English, but it really makes the most sense to paint brain in German: Gehirn. I think I'll compose the word from letters in the bible in order to use the same typeface that he had used.