Artist Birthdays- Roy Lichtenstein

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Los Angeles Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Oct 272026
 

Roy Lichtenstein, “Live Ammo (Blang)”, 1962 Oil and Magna on two canvas panels

Roy Lichtenstein was born today, October 27th, in 1923. His painting Live Ammo (Blang) is part of The Broad’s permanent collection.

From the museum:

Live Ammo (Blang) is an early example of Lichtenstein’s use of comic book imagery, part of an artistic strategy employing images and themes from popular culture that came to define his career. At the time it was painted, the United States was experiencing multiple wars: the spectral uncertainty of the Cold War and the nostalgia for valor from World War II coming into conflict with the twisted realities of the escalating war in Vietnam. Taking images directly from comics such as G.l. Combat, All American Men of War, and Our Fighting Forces, Lichtenstein willfully exaggerated wartime heroics to their breaking point, using caricature to test and render absurd the clean lines between hero and villain. The message was social but also insular to the world of painting, for Lichtenstein detected these macho postures in the American triumphalism of abstract expressionism. Additionally, Live Ammo (Blang) caricatures the spontaneity and “action” of this approach to art.

The Whitney museum’s current exhibition of his work, Roy Lichtenstein: Like New, is getting great reviews and is on view at the museum until 5/10/27.

Artist Birthdays- Robert Rauschenberg

 Art, Artists, Mixed Media, Painting / Painters, Printmaking
Oct 222026
 

Robert Rauschenberg, “Estate”, 1963, Oil and screenprinted inks on canvas

Happy Birthday to Robert Rauschenberg, who was born today, October 22nd, in 1925. Pictured above is his 1963 work, Estate, currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

From the museum about this work:

Robert Rauschenberg was among the first American artists to combine found images using the silkscreen process, a technique in which a design is imposed on a specially prepared fine-mesh screen (with the blank areas coated with an impermeable substance) and then transferred onto paper or canvas by pushing paint or ink through the screen. Beginning in the early 1960s, the artist applied newspaper photographs, art reproductions, and his own snapshots to canvas, thereby exploiting the wealth of mass media source material, from the banal and personal to the monumental and public. Estate presents complex combinations of such disparate images as the Statue of Liberty, Michelangelo’s painting Last Judgment, a 1962 rocket launch, and a glass of water. It draws its power from the tension between photography and painting. Seemingly spontaneous splashes of paint recall the vocabulary of Abstract Expressionism while unifying this incongruent inventory of images.

Artist Birthdays- Mark Rothko

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, California Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Palm Springs
Sep 252026
 

Mark Rothko “Untitled (Yellow on Orange) no. 579”, 1957, Oil on canvas

Mark Rothko was born today, September 25th, in 1903. One of several Rothko paintings using shades of orange and yellow, Untitled (Yellow on Orange) no. 579, was on view at the Palm Springs Art Museum in 2019 as part of the group exhibition, Shaping Vision: Impressionism to Abstract Expressionism.

From the Palm Springs Art Museum about the work:

Although Rothko is closely associated with Abstract Expressionism, his methods and intentions contrast strikingly with others in the group including Willem de Kooning and Jackson Pollock. Instead of the highly gestural styles of these artists, Rothko typically applied his colors in thin, glowing clouds of paint that eliminate all traces of the brush. In “Untitled (Yellow and Orange) no. 579”, a misty rectangle of yellow floats on a background of saturated reddish-orange. With minimal means, Rothko suggests a vast space that absorbs the viewer in its calm and sensuous hues. Highly literate and articulate, Rothko wrote that he sought in painting a contemplative experience that elevates awareness out of commonplace experience onto a more transcendental plane.

If the painting above makes you think of a bright, sunny day, you are not alone.  Finnish designer and creative director Joonas Virtanen recently created a fun app that matches the current weather in your city (or many other ones) with a Rothko painting.

Artist Birthdays- Jenny Holzer

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Conceptual Art, Design, Printmaking
Jul 292026
 

Jenny Holzer was born today, July 29th, in 1950. Pictured in this post are some of her famous Truisms, when they were on view at Akron Art Museum.

Her latest exhibition, Wrong Answers, is currently at the Serralves Museum in Portugal, closing November 1st.

 

Artist Birthdays- Edward Hopper

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Delaware, Painting / Painters, Wilmington
Jul 222026
 

American artist Edward Hopper was born today, July 22nd, in 1882. He created numerous portraits of people in New York City, including the one pictured above, Summertime, painted in 1943.  It is currently on view at the Delaware Art Museum.

Artist Birthdays- Frida Kahlo

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, British Art Shows, London Art Shows, New York Art Shows, Painting / Painters
Jul 062026
 

Mexican artist Frida Kahlo was born today, July 6th, in 1907. She painted many self-portraits, including the one pictured above, Me and My Parrots (Yo y mis pericos), from 1941. The painting was on view as part of the 2020 exhibition Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art, 1925–1945 at the Whitney Museum in New York.

Her work can currently be seen in the exhibitions Frida: The Making of an Icon at the Tate Modern in London and Frida and Diego: The Last Dream at the Museum of Modern Art in NYC.

 

Artist Birthdays- John Baldessari

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Cleveland, Collage, Conceptual Art, Mixed Media, Ohio Art Shows, Painting / Painters, Photographers / Photography, Printmaking
Jun 172026
 

John Baldessari, “One and Three Persons (with Two Contexts-One Chaotic)”, 1994-2012, 14-color screenprint

California artist John Baldessari was born today, June 17, in 1931.  The print above was part of The Cleveland Museum of Art‘s 2024 exhibition, New Narratives: Contemporary Works on Paper.

From the museum about this work:

John Baldessari often incorporated appropriated (or “found”) imagery into his artwork, such as the photographs of architecture and rubble appearing in this print. He juxtaposed these elements with outlined figures in a typically obtuse manner to suggest a narrative or simply a feeling with strange or even ominous undertones. The artist’s interest in the formal qualities of art, such as dimensionality, highlighted by his use of the irregularly shaped sheet of paper, white cut-outs, and silhouettes, adds to the sense of suggestion and uncertainty in the print.

Artist Birthdays- Mary Cassatt

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia
May 222026
 

Impressionist painter Mary Cassatt was born today, May 22nd, in 1844. The oil painting above, Woman with a Pearl Necklace in a Loge, 1879, can be seen at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of their permanent collection.

From the museum about the work:

Cassatt created a series of theater scenes in the late 1870s, displaying an interest in city nightlife shared by many of the Impressionists. This work, showing a woman (often said to be her sister Lydia) seated in front of a mirror with the balconies of the Paris Opéra House reflected behind her, demonstrates the influence of Cassatt’s friend Edgar Degas, particularly in the attention paid to the effects of artificial lighting on flesh tones. This painting was shown in Paris at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, where it was singled out for much praise.

Artist Birthdays- Salvador Dalí

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia
May 112026
 

Spanish surrealist Salvador Dalí was born today, May 11th, in 1904. The painting above, Soft Construction with Boiled Beans (Premonition of Civil War), from 1936, is part of the Philadelphia Museum of Art‘s permanent collection. It was also included in their recent exhibition, Dreamworld: Surrealism at 100.

From the museum’s website about the work-

Salvador Dalí painted this allegory of self-inflicted carnage while living in Paris in early 1936, on the eve of the devastating civil war in his Spanish homeland between Francisco Franco’s right-wing nationalist forces and the elected Republic. The painting flaunts its flair for gruesome detail. A grimacing colossus towers over a sunbaked Spanish landscape and deliriously rips itself apart. Limbs are switched around and turned upside down, and the body’s trunk is missing entirely. A limp phallic shape draped over the truncated hip is a striking example of Dalí’s soft forms, implicitly referring to putrefaction and death. The scattered beans of the title exemplify the bizarre incongruities of scale to conjure the workings of an unconscious mind. Dalí interpreted the Spanish conflict in psychoanalytic terms, and he included an homage to Sigmund Freud, the initiator of psychoanalysis whose work inspired him to embrace such nightmarish visions, by including a tiny portrait of Freud inspecting the gnarled hand at lower left.

 

Pennsylvania Art Shows- Cy Twombly’s “Fifty Days at Iliam” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art

 Art, Art Shows by Location, Artists, Books, Conceptual Art, Drawing, Painting / Painters, Pennsylvania Art Shows, Philadelphia, Writers
Apr 252026
 

Cy Twombly “Fifty Days at Iliam: Shield of Achilles”, 1978

Cy Twombly “Fifty Days at Iliam”, 1978, oil, oil crayon, and graphite on canvas

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Achaeans in Battle”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: The Fire that Consumes All before It”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Achilles, Patroclus and Hector”, 1978

“Fifty Days at Iliam: Shades of Eternal Night”, 1978

Cy Twombly was born today, April 25th, in 1928. One of his most famous works is Fifty Days at Iliam, his visual interpretation of Homer’s poem the Iliad. This “painting in ten parts” is currently on view at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and images of each of the individual works can be found on the museum’s website.

About Fifty Days at lliam from the museum-

The pinnacle of Twombly’s lifelong preoccupation with Greek and Roman mythology, Fifty Days at lliam is the artist’s rendition of the last fifty days of the Trojan War. The monumental series fuses elements of Homer’s epic poem The lliad, probably written before 700 BCE, and Alexander Pope’s translation of that poem from the 1700s.

The artist purposefully misspells the name of the besieged Trojan city as lliam, instead of the Latin llium or the Greek Ilion. The letter “a” stands as a symbol for the Greek warrior Achilles, whose rage sparked by the death of his friend Patroclus propels the end of the decade-long conflict.

Partaking in a long artistic tradition of depicting war, Twombly addresses themes of heroism and aggression, comradeship and revenge, jubilant victory and the mourning of the dead. The ten canvases can be encountered sequentially or experienced as an all-encompassing panorama that gives the sensation of witnessing the battle firsthand.

Twombly’s signature style combines the poignant gestures of abstraction with poetic allusions to classicism. Relocating from the United States to Italy in the 1950s proved decisive for Twombly’s art, which uses raw mark-making to allude to the myths of antiquity.

For a look at Twombly’s life and career, the 2018 documentary Cy Dear, is well worth a watch. The film begins with a discussion of Fifty Days at lliam, which was on view as part of a 2017 retrospective at Centre Pompidou in Paris. It also includes interviews with several of his friends and colleagues– including former assistants, his son Alessandro, art dealer Larry Gagosian, and photographer Sally Mann.

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