Hovsep Pushman | Orientalist painter

Hovsep Pushman [Armenian: Յովսէփ Փուշման] (1877-1966) was an American artist of Armenian background. He was known for his contemplative still lifes and sensitive portraits of women, often in exotic dress.

He was most closely associated during his lifetime with the Grand Central Art Galleries, which represented him from its opening in 1922 until his death in 1966.

Life

Hovsep Pushman was born and grew up in the town of Dikranagerd in the Ottoman Empire, where his family, originally "Pushmanian", was in the carpet business. Pushman showed artistic ability early, and at age 11 was the youngest student ever admitted to Istanbul's Imperial School of Fine Arts.

In 1896, Pushman's family emigrated to Chicago, where he studied Chinese culture, immersing himself in Asian art, and began to teach at the age of 17. He then moved to Paris and studied at the Académie Julian under Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Tony Robert-Fleury and Adolphe Déchenaud.

Wassily Kandinsky | VIII - Art and Artists

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

Part II: About painting

In an obscure and puzzling way, the artist develops a work of art. As it gains a life of its own, it becomes an entity, an independent spiritual life, which as a being, leads the life of material realism.

It is, therefore, not simply a phenomenon created casually and Inconsequentially indifferent to spiritual life.

Instead as a living being, it possesses creative active forces. It lives, has power, and actively forms the above-mentioned spiritual atmosphere.

From an innermost point of view, the question finally should be answered as to whether creation is strong or weak. If too weak in its form, it is impotent to cause any kind of spiritual vibration.

Wassily Kandinsky | Succession, 1935

André Lhote | Pittore Cubista

André Lhote (1885-1962) was a French Cubist painter of figure subjects, portraits, landscapes and still life. He was also very active and influential as a teacher and writer on art.

Early life and education

Lhote was born 5 July 1885 in Bordeaux, France and learned wood carving and sculpture from the age of 12, when his father apprenticed him to a local furniture maker to be trained as a sculptor in wood.

He enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Bordeaux in 1898 and studied decorative sculpture until 1904.

Whilst there, he began to paint in his spare time and he left home in 1905, moving into his own studio to devote himself to painting.

He was influenced by Gauguin and Cézanne and held his first one-man exhibition at the Galerie Druet in 1910, four years after he had moved to Paris.

Paul Verlaine | Poichè l'alba si accende.. / Puisque l'aube grandit..

Poiché l'alba si accende, ed ecco l'aurora,

poiché, dopo avermi a lungo fuggito, la speranza consente

a ritornare a me che la chiamo e l'imploro,

poiché questa felicità consente ad esser mia,

facciamola finita coi pensieri funesti,

basta con i cattivi sogni, ah! Soprattutto

basta con l'ironia e le labbra strette

e parole in cui uno spirito senz'anima trionfava.

Lionel Noel Royer (French painter, 1852-1926) | Jeune Femme en Bord de Mer, 1928

Salvatore Quasimodo | Anno Domini MCMXLVII

Avete finito di battere i tamburi

a cadenza di morte su tutti gli orizzonti

dietro le bare strette alle bandiere,

di rendere piaghe e lacrime a pietà

nelle città distrutte, rovina su rovina.

Mikhail Y. Kugach / Михаил Юрьевич Кугач (Russian painter, 1939) | The Return