Jim Dine is a pop artist that seems to get stuck on a certain form and then make iterations of it until he tires of that object and moves on to the next. He was a big part of the pop culture movement and his work was included in a curated to be part of the show New Painting of Common Objects with artists such as Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein. One of my favorite stories about him is that his work was being shown in London in 1966 - in the Fraser Gallery - and the police raided the place, seized 20 pieces of his work in the name of the Obscene Publications Act of 1959, and then fined Frasers 20 guineas - because the work was just indecent, but not obscene. LOL! I couldn't find much of his work that showed the human form. The closest I saw were his bathrobe series. I guess that's a really interesting way to draw the figure- disembodied.
Kathe Kollwitz, although born in the 1800's was a very progressive German artist. She worked in many mediums including painting, printmaking, and sculpture. Her work is heartrending. She was creating work that was well before it's time. She began to study art at a young age because her father recognized her abilities. She wasn't able to go to the better art schools because girls weren't allowed in them at the time. She attended an art school for women in Berlin. She began working in the arts - more in the commercial aspects- when she was just 12 years old. She was engaged by the time she was 17. Her husband was a doctor and he helped care for the poor. I think because they lived so near his practice and saw so much of the deprivation and sickness, that that was a huge influence on her troubling and tragic artwork. She was a socialist and very much felt the disparate nature of the class system that was creating such extreme poverty. the violence and tragedy that surrou...
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