Ross Bleckner
Ross Bleckner is a contemporary artist from, born in Brooklyn, who is widely recognised for his works that explore the theme of memory, change and loss. He studied Fine Art at New York University, after he graduated in 1971, he went on to hold his first one-man show at the Cunningham Ward Gallery. Bleckners works are influenced by the conceptualism and minimalism concepts that were popular in the 1970’s when he began his career as an artist. He seems to focus on the design of his paintings more than the colour or effect present, using a minimal palette. In his paintings he also explores light-play and what seems to be light sources from a number of different angles.
Ross was greatly effect by the 1980’s AID’s crisis and even produced a series of paintings to address this, with many of them having a biological feel of patterns and cells. As an artist, rather than using direct representation, he uses symbolic imagery with elusive forms that change perspective and focus as you take the paintings in. His paintings hold a sort geometric feel while being lucid and free flowing.
In 1995 Ross Bleckner received a midcareer retrospective at The Guggenheim Museum in New York and was the youngest artist to revived this award at the time at the age of 45. His paintings can be found in a number of famous museums such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Museum of Modern Art.
Paula Rego
Paula Rego is a Portuguese painter and print maker who is well known for the numerous commissions and exhibitions she has held over the years. Her career began in 1954, while she was still a student. Her father had asked for several large scale commission pieces for the canteen at his electrical factory.
Her first exhibition was in 1962 with The London Group, which was a well established organisation that had many famous artists among its members. In 1965, Rego was invited to participate in a show called ‘Six Artist’ and in that same year she held her first solo show in Lisbon. This led on to her having numerous exhibitions throughout Portugal and Britain from 1971 to 1987. From then, she grew even more in popularity and held exhibitions further from home in places like Monterrey in Mexico and Washington D.C and in 2004, was commissioned by Royal Mail to create a set of Jane Eyre stamps.For most of her career, Paula Rego has been a voice for women’s rights and abortion rights, using the theme of abortion as a focal point in her art and in 1998 she produced a series of paintings that documented illegal abortions in response to the referendum on abortion in Portugal that same year.
In Rego’s earlier years, her artwork had a surrealism feel with some almost being abstract but as she developed as an artist her direction moved, in contrast, to images of folktales and clearly drawn, strong forms.
Rebbecca Horn
Rebbecca Horn is a visual artist who was born in Germany and is well known for her installation art. She was first taught to draw by her governess and was living in post world war 2 Germany which she said ‘we couldn’t not speak German. Germans where hated. We had to speak English or French. We were always travelling, always speaking something else.’ It was this fact that had fuelled her love for drawing because it was not confining or labelling as oral language, drawing could be universally understood.
In 1963 she attended the Hamburg Academy of Fine Arts but had to pull out a year later because she had contracted severe lung poisoning. This was due to the fact she had been working with fibre glass without a mask. Horn produced her first body sculptures in 1968, where she attached objects to the human body. Her most popular performance piece was named Unicorn (Einhorn) which consisted of a long horn worn on her head, describing the title as being a pun on her surname. In the 1970s and 1980’s Horn continue to explore the imagery of feathers In her works and created pieces that covered or imprisoned the body.
In 1988, Rebbecca Horn won the Carnegie Prize and in 1992 she became the first woman to win the highly prestigious Kaiserring Golsar and was also awarded the Medienkunstpries Marlsruhe for her achievements in art and technology. Since then she has received awards for sculpture and in 2011 she was awarded the Austrian Decoration for Science and Art.
