«Schwartz’s videoconstructions have been essentially of two types: objects, sculptural presences that incorporate video monitors and around which the viewer moves; and environments,which are akin to architectural interiors in that the viewer is surrounded by forms and colors, including closed-circuit video imagery.
Schwartz’s creative use of the electronic medium of video, and the complex and emphatic manner in which he integrates the viewer into his video work, are both related to central aspects of twentieth-century art. Thus Schwartz’s work is of interest not simply for itself, but for its place in modern art as well..»

Buky Schwartz ( June 16, 1932 – September 1, 2009) was an Israeli sculptor and video artist.Moshe (Buky) Schwartz was born in Jerusalem. From 1956 to 1958, he studied sculpture with Yitzhak Danziger (1916–1977) at the Avni Institute of Art and Design in Tel Aviv. In 1959, he moved to London to study at Saint Martin's School of Art. In 1966-1967, he taught at Saint Martin's..After returning to Israel in 1963, he became known for his painted steel sculptures that were predominately geometric in form. In 1971, he moved to New York City, and began making «video structures» in which he filled a room with shapes that came together as a unified whole when projected on a video screen. He also placed mirrors inside sculptures that reflected the sculpture as a whole or certain parts of it. Schwartz also created conceptual art based on an exploration of his own body.He showed his video installations at The Cultural Space on Canal Street in Manhattan.Schwartz lived and worked in Tel Aviv and New York City until his death in 2009.

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Jack Levine (January 3, 1915 – November 8, 2010) was an American Social Realist painter and printmaker best known for his satires on modern life, political corruption, and biblical narratives.
Born to Lithuanian Jewish parents, Levine grew up in the South End of Boston, where he observed a street life composed of European immigrants and a prevalence of poverty and societal ills, subjects which would inform his work. He first studied drawing with Harold K. Zimmerman from 1924-1931. At Harvard University from 1929 to 1933, Levine and classmate Hyman Bloom studied with Denman Ross. As an adolescent, Levine was already, by his own account, «a formidable draftsman». In 1932 Ross included Levine's drawings in an exhibition at the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard, and three years later bequeathed twenty drawings by Levine to the museum's collection.Levine's early work was most influenced by Bloom, Chaim Soutine, Georges Rouault, and Oskar Kokoschka.Along with Bloom and Karl Zerbe, he became associated with the style known as Boston Expressionism.

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Junya Watanabe(born in Fukushima, Japan in 1961) is a Japanese fashion designer, originally the protégé of Comme des Garçons designer Rei Kawakubo. Born in Fukushima, Japan in 1961, he went on to attend Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo, graduating in 1984.[2] At this time he began his apprenticeship at Comme des Garçons as a patternmaker. In 1987, he was promoted to chief designer of Tricot knitwear line and then moved on to design for the Comme Des Garçons Homme line. Starting in 1992, he has worked under his own name as part of Comme des Garçons. He started his own line under the Comme Des Garçons name called 'Junya Watanabe Comme Des Garçons' in 1993 and began showing in Paris that same year.
 “My idea of something being beautiful or aesthetically pleasing is completely different from what Rei Kawakubo’s vision of beauty is,” Watanabe allows. “To this day, seeing Rei Kawakubo’s work, I feel the same. I understand certain points and I can relate to certain areas… That doesn’t mean that I completely agree. As a person-to-person relationship, I feel that I have a different idea, and I’ll always have a different vision of what is beautiful. Another reason, perhaps, I didn’t end up working right alongside Kawakubo is perhaps she felt that I had a different vision of my own. Maybe that’s why we parted, in terms of creating something that was different.” -Junya Watanabe.Wikipedia

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Combining symbolic elements of the figurative and the abstract, French artist Christian Perez de Carvasal creates stunning canvases that reflect all the movement and energy intrinsic to city life. Inspired by a childhood in Paris, the artist paints sprawling scenes highlightingthe majesty of modern architecture and the dynamismof crowded sidewalks and streets. Yet interspersed amid his urban landscapes are peaceful humanlike creatures which serve in juxtaposition to the harried pace that commonly defines city life. He explains, “I am inspiredby urban life, people in motion, architecture and colors. My mission is to provoke emotional and political reflections and visual expressions.”One of the hallmarks of Carvasal’s work is his use of pure color accentuated with rich, complex textures. His powerful hues are set in edgy compositions that rely ona distinct use of line and geometric form. By combining a variety of techniques and forms, he is able to infuse his cityscapes with new meanings, bridging themythologies of urban life to explore the depth of experience within.

“I am an artist who combines symbolism with the figurative and the abstract on canvas. I use a variety of art forms/techniques and I mostly paint with knives to keep the colors as pure aspossible. My main source of inspiration is large cities with their dynamic and modern architecture. I have always been fascinated by them, being a product of urban life myself, having grown up in Paris, close to the Eiffel Tower, and seeing the different scenes ofParisian life clearly contributed to my artistic choices. In my work I try to show the peace and quiet you cannot create in busy city life by adding human-life creatures in different contexts. The idea is to provoke emotional and political reflections in my audience.”

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«Paul Soldner (April 24, 1921 in Summerfield, Illinois – January 3, 2011 in Claremont, California) was an American ceramic artist, noted for his experimentation with the 16th-century Japanese technique called raku introducing new methods of firing and post firing, which became known as American Raku.
He served as an army medic during World War II and began to pursue a career in art upon returning to the United States. He earned degrees in art education and art administration from Bluffton College and the University of Colorado, then turned his attention to ceramics. He focused first on functional pottery.
In 1954, Soldner became Peter Voulkos' first student in the nascent ceramics department at the Los Angeles County Art Institute (now the Otis College of Art and Design).[3] As Soldner helped his teacher establish the program, he made several changes to the studio pottery equipment, which led to him founding Soldner Pottery Equipment Corp. in 1955, to market his inventions. He eventually held seven patents related to pottery equipment.
After receiving his MFA in ceramics in 1956, Soldner began teaching at Scripps College.»

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«Miriam Schapiro (November 15, 1923 – June 20, 2015) was a Canadian-born artist based in America. She was a painter, sculptor, printmaker, and a pioneer of feminist art. She was also considered a leader of the Pattern and Decoration art movement. Schapiro's artwork blurs the line between fine art and craft. She incorporated craft elements into her paintings due to their association with women and femininity. She often used icons that are associated with women, such as hearts, floral decorations, geometric patterns, and the color pink. In the 1970s she made the hand fan, a typically small woman's object, heroic by painting it six feet by twelve fee

 Schapiro not only honored the craft tradition in women's art, but also paid homage to women artists of the past. In the early 1970s she made paintings and collages which included photo reproductions of Mary Cassatt's and Georgia O'keefe's paintings. In the mid 1980s she painted portraits of Frida Kahlo on top of her old self-portrait paintings. In the 1990s Schapiro began to include women of the Russian Avant Garde in her work. The Russian Avant Garde was an important moment in Modern Art history for Schapiro to reflect on because women were seen as equals. Early in her career, Schapiro started looking for maternal symbols to unify her own roles as a woman. Her series, Shrines was created in 1961-63 with this in mind. It is one of her earliest group of work that was also an autobiography. Each section of the work show an aspect of being a woman artist. They are also symbolic of her body and soul. Her painting, Big Ox No. 1, from 1968, references Shrines, however no longer compartmentalized. The center O takes on the symbol of the egg which exists as the window into the maternal structure with outstretched limbs.

In the 1970s, Schapiro and Brach moved to California so that both could teach in the art department at the University of California. Subsequently, she was able to establish the Feminist Art Program at the California Institute of the Arts, in Valencia with Judy Chicago. The program set out to address the problems in the arts from an institutional position. They wanted the creation of art to be less of a private, introspective adventure and more of a public process through consciousness raising sessions, personal confessions and technical training.She participated in the Womanhouse exhibition in 1972. Schapiro's smaller piece within Womanhouse, called „Dollhouse“, was constructed using various scrap pieces to create all the furniture and accessories in the house. Each room signified a particular role a woman plays in society and depicted the conflicts betweenthem.»

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Contemporary visual artist from Oslo

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«James Lawrence Isherwood (1917-1989) is widely regarded by his followers as one of the best impressionist painters this country has produced. Born and bred in Wigan, now part of Greater Manchester, England, he was a prolific painter and produced his best work from the early 1960s on. His work has always been considered truly original and is typified by strong brushwork and extravagant colours. His subjects ranged from rural and industrial landscapes to nudes and portraiture, and his work has found its way into art collections across the world. He is known for his Wigan Style and Wigan figure paintings. These together with his London scenes, Wigan street scenes, are his most sought after works. Isherwood was a personal friend of the artist L. S. Lowry, who purchased his Woman with Black Cat and displayed it at his home. Lowry paid £5 for the picture from Isherwood's Avante Guard exhibition in Manchester. Other known collectors include Prince Charles, who bought one of Isherwood's seascapes from a sale held at Cambridge University. The former Director General of the BBC Hugh Greene commissioned a portrait of Mary Whitehouse, his vociferous critic, from Isherwood; the artist depicted her with five breasts. Isherwood gave the painting a punning title — »Sanctity" — and Hugh Greene allegedly hung it in his office so that he could apparently throw things at it. Always short of money, Isherwood travelled the country in his old estate car, usually accompanied by his mother (whom he called 'Mother Lily'). He liked to pitch up at art colleges and give impromptu tutorials, and usually paid for his hotel room with a painting. He also offered magistrates a painting in lieu of a fine when prosecuted for driving with no tax or insurance. A BBC documentary, I am Isherwood was made in 1974 about the artist and his work. This was transmitted twice by the BBC once in 1974 and again in 1975. Isherwood died on the 9 June 1989 ." (www.amazon.com/James-Lawrence-Isherwood-1917-1989-Biography/dp/1861511515)

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Dear friends. I am professional artist with many years of experience. I would like to offer you unique opportunity of having a painting, made according to your individual wishes. Oils, watercolours, graphics, portraits or decorative motives, small or large- your involvement in creating of art will make your interiors very special. To ensure highest standard and unique nature of my art,
I use only traditional techniques and methods.

www.iobrazy.com.pl

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Joan-Josep Tharrats i Vidal (1918 in Girona – 2001 in Barcelona) was a Spanish painter, art theorist and publisher.
Born in an industralist family, his father was the businessman and poet Josep Tharrats i Vilà. From 1932 to 1935 he lived in Béziers, before relocating to Barcelona where he studied at the Escola Massana. The Spanish Civil War brought his studies to an end, and he wouldn't resume his art career until 1942. His initial style was akin to Impressionism but moved into abstraction as the influence of Piet Mondrian and Wassily Kandinsky became more important to him. From 1946 on he used collage techniques. In 1947 he was introduced to artists Arnau Puig Grau, Joan Ponç, Modest Cuixart, Antoni Tàpies, Joan Brossa and Josep Vicenç Foix at the Institut Français in Barcelona. With some of these artists he founded the group Dau al Set, which published the magazine of the same name, printed in his atelier.

He was one of the most visible artists in the local avantgarde art of the post-war years. His style evolved from lineal abstraction influenced by surrealism (during his Dau al Set years) towards Art Informel working with texture, color and graphism. His work also includes a variety of posters, books, murals, stained glass, mosaics, jewelry and opera scenography. També va fer cartells, il·lustrà llibres i va fer murals, vitralls, mosaics, joies i fins i tot escenografies d'òpera (Spleen de 1984).
He had an individual exhibition in 1949 at the El Jardín gallery in Barcelona and became one of the most important Catalan artists in the international scene. From 1954 onwards he became a fixture of the Sala Gaspar in Barcelona and from 1955 in Stockholm and New York City. In 1959 his work was exhibited at the 5th São Paulo Biennale and at the Venice Biennale of 1960 and 1964. In 1966 he founded the Associació d'Artistes Actuals.
In 2000, Tharrats himself collaborated with monumental and small oil paintings in his last exhibition which was organized by Galeria Taüll of Barcelona.
In 2009, an important traveling exhibition called «Les maculatures de Tharrats» was arranged by the Cultural Department of the Diputació de Barcelona.Wikipedia

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