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The transportive work of Vincent van Gogh has transposed us through the limits of time and into an era where Impressionist paintings were a statement to be made. While the artist himself may be of post-impressionism, he manages to capture the open composition of the movement perfectly.

Through his swirling brush strokes, the artist would convey his feelings and his state of mind. His belief that there was a power behind nature made him try to capture it through his work. Therefore, he strove to become a painter of rural life and nature.

Van Gogh always aimed to stay within the “guise of reality” which gave his paintings an abstract form. However, he later wrote that at times he might have taken it too far, reality having been set as a background character and being heavily overshadowed by the protagonist: symbolism.

Each artistic development Van Gogh had gone through has been owed to his living across different places in Europe. He took to immersing himself in the local culture and activity, he judged and studied the lighting and implemented in his various paintings. His evolution had been slow, and he was acutely aware of his painterly limitations, yet he kept his individual outlook throughout each work.

He might have been pushed to move often as a coping mechanism when faced with the realities of his current situation, however, it also contributed to his development of his technical skill. Whenever he painted a portrait, he wanted them to endure through the passage of time and would use colors to capture the emotions of each person rather than aim for realism.

 

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Cubism is an artistic movement, created by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, which employs geometric shapes in depictions of human and other forms. Over time, the geometric touches grew so intense that they sometimes overtook the represented forms, creating a more pure level of visual abstraction. Though the movement’s most potent era was in the early 20th Century, the ideas and techniques of Cubism influenced many creative disciplines and continue to inform experimental work.

Picasso attended the School of Fine Arts in Barcelona, where his father taught, at 13 years of age. In 1897, Picasso began his studies at Madrid's Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, which was Spain's top art academy at the time. Picasso attended only briefly, preferring to roam the art exhibits at the Prado, studying paintings of Rembrandt, El Greco, Francisco Goya, and Diego Veláquez.

During this nascent period of Picasso's life, he painted portraits, such as his sister Lola's First Communion. As the 19th century drew to a close, elements of Symbolism and his own interpretation of Modernism began to be apparent in his stylized landscapes.

In 1900, Picasso first went to Paris, the center of the European art scene. He shared lodgings with Max Jacob, a poet and journalist who took the artist under his wing. The two lived in abject poverty, sometimes reduced to burning the artist's paintings to stay warm.

Before long, Picasso relocated to Madrid and lived there for the first part of 1901. He partnered with his friend Francisco Asis Soler on a literary magazine called "Young Art," illustrating articles and creating cartoons sympathetic to the poor. By the time the first issue came out, the developing artist had begun to sign his artworks "Picasso," rather than his customary "Pablo Ruiz y Picasso."

 

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Nearly 500 years after his death, Leonardo da Vinci still remains the most well-known Renaissance Man. A jack of all trades, his masterful combination of art with math and science gave birth to plenty of inventions. As an artist, his masterpieces such as the Last Supper, Mona Lisa, and the Vitruvian Man, remain religious and cultural icons to this day. Discover the life and works of The Master, fall in love with his brilliance, and decode his genius with our top picks.

Leonardo da Vinci is probably the best-known Renaissance artist, famous for his masterworks The Mona Lisa and The Last Supper. The classic “renaissance man,” da Vinci was not only an artist but also an inventor, scientist, architect, engineer, and more. His innovative techniques included layering of paints, precise attention to light, shadow, and human form, and a detailed eye for expression and gesture — the last of which has led to endless speculation over the impassive face of the Mona Lisa. His famous sketch known as The Vitruvian Man is shown to the right.

In 1472 Leonardo was accepted into the painters’ guild of Florence, but he remained in his teacher’s workshop for five more years, after which time he worked independently in Florence until 1481. There are a great many superb extant pen and pencil drawings from this period, including many technical sketches—for example, pumps, military weapons, mechanical apparatus—that offer evidence of Leonardo’s interest in and knowledge of technical matters even at the outset of his career.

 

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Frida Kahlo was a Mexican painter known for her many portraits, self-portraits, and works inspired by the nature and artifacts of Mexico. Inspired by the country's popular culture, she employed a naïve folk art style to explore questions of identity, postcolonialism, gender, class, and race in Mexican society. Her paintings often had strong autobiographical elements and mixed realism with fantasy. In addition to belonging to the post-revolutionary Mexicayotl movement, which sought to define a Mexican identity, Kahlo has been described as a surrealist or magical realist.

Born to a German father and a mestiza mother, Kahlo spent most of her childhood and adult life at La Casa Azul, her family home in Coyoacán—now publicly accessible as the Frida Kahlo Museum. Although she was disabled by polio as a child, Kahlo had been a promising student headed for medical school until she suffered a bus accident at the age of eighteen, which caused her lifelong pain and medical problems. During her recovery she returned to her childhood hobby of art with the idea of becoming an artist.

Kahlo's work has been celebrated internationally as emblematic of Mexican national and indigenous traditions and by feminists for what is seen as its uncompromising depiction of the female experience and form.

 

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How did you spend the COVID-19 lockdown? Making Dalgona coffee, attending Zoom calls endlessly, or simply doing nothing? Well British visual artist Sacha Jafri took a slightly different approach. Jafri spent 18 hours a day painting what is dubbed the world’s largest artwork on canvas, measuring close to 2,000 square metres.

Titled “The Journey of Humanity,” the work is roughly equivalent in size to four basketball courts or two soccer fields combined. It is being painted in the ballroom of the Atlantis The Palm hotel in Dubai, where Jafri has been based for over five months – amid strict COVID-19 restrictions.

Jafri is expected to complete the painting by the end of this month (November), after which it will be displayed on the world’s tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. The painting will then be cut into 60 square metres each, and will be auctioned off individually in Dubai this December.

The painting in Jafri’s abstract style also incorporates work by children from around the world on the themes of separation and isolation during the pandemic. As part of his “Humanity Inspired” project, Jafri hopes to raise 30 million USD through the painting to support health and education initiatives for children living in poverty worldwide.

 

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The first references of Kalaripayattu can be proved by the mention in Sangam literature era 300 BC. But, Kalari was first officially recognised as a martial art of Kerala in 1362 AD.

Sage Agastya is considered to be the creator of Kalaripayattu. Speculated to have lived sometime around 15,000 BCE, Agastya is one of the ancient saptarshis, a revered Vedic sage. He is considered to have fathered the ancient form of warfare which is speculated to be either a direct translation or parent form of Kalaripayattu. From this account, there seems to be no doubt that Kalaripayattu is the oldest art form of war. The word kalaripayattu is a combination of two words, namely, ‘kalari’ and ‘payattu’ which mean training ground and fight.

During its peak, kalaripayattu was used as a code of combat by Indian dynasties. Kalaripayattu reach its zenith during the years of war between the Cholas, Pandyas and Cheras. The constant fighting between the states helped fighters in refining the art into a martial art form.

Many movements and postures in Kalaripayattu are believed to be inspired by the raw strength of animals and are also named after them. There is a strong belief that this art was developed in the forests when hunters had observed the fighting techniques of different animals.

In 5th century, a Buddhist monk Bodhidharma took Kalaripayattu from India to China, Kalaripayattu is also the predecessor of Chinese martial arts. Once it was brought to China, practitioners of Kalaripayattu merged it with existing forms.

 

Credit : Quora

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