Who are your favorite artists?

Butch

When people think of artists they most frequently think of painters. I like painters of course, but more often I tend to think of sculptors. The kind of sculpture I like best is cubist. Here are some of my favorites; Alexander Archipenko, Sophia Vari, and Jacques Lipschitz.

I’m not sure that you can call Sophia Vari’s sculpture cubist exactly because she is still making sculpture today. But the type of sculptures she produces look very cubist to me. Lipschitz had a couple of different periods in his work. I prefer the more geometric works over the organic ones. I had the good luck to see an exhibition of Archipenko’s work at the Des Moines Art Museum.

Karen

Vermeer

Our favorite art trip was the one we took to The Netherlands and Belgium. I loved visiting the museums of Paris but the art in The Netherlands was the most inspiring. I had long admired Vermeer’s paintings before but seeing them in person was thrilling. Most of my favorites were housed in the beautiful Mauritshuis Museum in The Hague. The Girl With A Pearl Earring is a very famous painting and very beautiful to see. It is quite small but captures the light and the beauty of the subject. The Vermeer that most affected me was the View of Delft. It is a very large painting of the harbor with a stormy sky. The museum offers the viewer to see the painting at both close range and at a distance. I was completely mesmerized with the beauty of the scene and with the artist’s unique talent.

Rembrandt

The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam had recently reopened after an extensive remodeling project at the time of our visit. It is a stunning setting for the beautiful art. The Night Watch is a spectacular painting by Rembrandt that is one of the museum’s prize exhibits. It is of epic proportions and the scene is loaded with many figures and symbols from the time. One of the figures is a self portrait of the artist.

I also loved seeing Rembrandt’s etchings in the gallery above the museum of his house in Amsterdam. We had climbed the stairs of the house into a rather unassuming room filled with small etchings displayed on the walls. Viewers could peer closely at each piece with little supervision. I asked the lone attendant where the prints actually made by his hand were kept. She replied that every piece on display was printed by the artist. None were copies! They were all exquisitely detailed and finely made and I was impressed to be actually seeing work touched by such a remarkable artist so long ago.

Monet

My favorite Impressionist artist is Claude Monet. When we visited Paris, my favorite museum was Musee d’ Orsay. It included all of the Impressionist artists and some of their greatest work. The Giverny garden paintings are stunning examples of the movement. I loved the colors and the textures that created such beautiful visions and feelings for the viewer.

Van Gogh

The tragic life of this artist contributes to the feelings his paintings create. There is a spectacular museum in Amsterdam devoted to a grand collection of his paintings. The museum shows and explains his emotional struggles through the display of his paintings. I particularly love the brightly colored works with sunshine and scenes of flowers and nature. His thickly applied paint and bold brush stokes make his style immediately identifiable.

This post is part of the StoryWorth project that I am participating in.
At the ButchieBoy main page click the “StoryWorth” category to see the rest of the entries.