Who is your all time favorite artist?

[Nufocus]

Who is your favorite artist of all time??
Ladies and gents, please try to name one artist only. And if you find the time to give a reason or two or three for your choice, it’d be wonderful methinks.

 

[snoball]

Albert Bierstadt, simply because I adore his paintings and his technique.

 

[Nufocus]

Well Sno, after seeing at some of your wonderful work, I think I know why!......

 

[Nufocus]

Cezanne

 

[Nufocus]

Cezanne was the initiator of the concept that is the foundation of modern art: I will NOT copy nature, I will RECREATE it on my canvas or paper. And he did it amazingly well!

 

[snoball]

Well Sno, after seeing at some of your wonderful work, I think I know why!......

No, no, I can only hope to get a fraction as good as he.

 

[Artyczar]

I have to say Paul Klee. He is not the only one, but if I have to name just one, it is he. He had a playful mind and was all about the line. Something about the "line going for a walk." I'll have to find the quote.

 

[Artyczar]

"A drawing is simply a line going for a walk."
also...
"One eye sees, the other eye feels."

 

[Claude J Greengrass]

Joseph Mallord William Turner RA: possible the greatest, early abstract artists and very probably the greatest watercolour artist of all time.

 

[Nufocus]

 

[Nufocus]

This is how you recreate nature on your canvas: making gestural marks that work together wonderfully well. There’s almost abstraction here, particularly in the middle portion of the painting.
Btw, Picasso, who always regarded Cezanne as his idol, called a friend a few years before his death and said “I bought Cezanne!”. The friend asked “Which one, a portrait or a landscape?”. Picasso replied “No, I bought the real Cezanne!”. What Picasso was referring to was his purchase of the Chateau de Vauvenargues, which is in the village of Vauvenargues. A beautiful village at the foot of Mont Ste. Victoire, a mountain not far from Aix en Provence, which Cezanne depicted several times. Picasso is buried in the grounds of that chateau.

 

[john]

That's a tough one. But if I had to choose one I guess it would have to be Van Gogh. Every one of his paintings is interesting to me, even his portraits. Dynamic and abstracted. Edgy. And I like yellow and blue I guess.

But then again...........those others listed above are very nice......and.......ask me tomorrow.....

 

[snoball]

Cezanne was the initiator of the concept that is the foundation of modern art: I will NOT copy nature, I will RECREATE it on my canvas or paper. And he did it amazingly well!

A lady once asked me to paint a Cezanne for her but make it more realistic. This is my "Cezanne". She was happy.

 

[OliveOyl]

PHILIP GUSTON is MY guy.

I think because he was a restless, angry, and impatient “searcher.” In the 1930’s, when he was young, he stood up for his political beliefs (leftist/Marxist) and he wasn’t afraid to depict work that criticized the forces of oppression. And then in the 1970’s when he was old, he stood up to art world bullies who said art should not be vulgar, or about insignificant little things. In the “in-between” times, and on the canvas surface, he showed all of his internal battles and artistic failures. His ability to take these kinds of creative risks, shows me what artistic integrity and bravery look like in the form of a painter.

Even RIGHT NOW there’s controversy surrounding his work. And btw, wow....I’ve never seen this picture of a young and wild scruffy-looking Guston. I only “know” him as a portly, balding, professorial type...always smoking and always questioning.

 

[Maybenartist]

Gustav Klimt.
Perfect line, human form, portraiture, abstract, mixing different cultural art, different styles, everything in one painting. For me, it doesnt get more accomplished than that. Plus, I'm a soppy romantic

 

[stlukesguild]

Peter Paul Rubens

He was a stunning and sensitive portraitist:

He was arguably the first great landscape painter... painter of landscape without any narrative to justify their creation. His example would point the way for the Dutch and English... and even French landscape traditions.

And he was an unsurpassed narrative painter... painting moving Biblical narratives...

A master of Greco-Roman narratives...

And allegories:

continued...

 

[stlukesguild]

His hunting and battle scenes pave the way for Delacroix:

Rubens married the North (Netherlands) and the South (Italy) bringing the brilliant colors and technique of glazing to bear on Italian classicism, anatomy, and perspective. At the same time, he merged the linearity and muscularity of the art of Florence and Rome (Michelangelo and Raphael) with the color of the Venetians (Titian and Veronese).

There are few artists who loved the human body as much... or painted flesh as well...

One of his final paintings can almost be credited with inventing the Rococo...

And the drawings!

Seen in person, his handling of paint is brilliant. The colors still glow. The surfaces are alive with a great variety of paint handling from the mere wisp to glowing glazes and rich impastos.

Is that enough?

 

[stlukesguild]

Albert Bierstadt...

Bierstadt was the first real artist whose work I saw in person in my first visit to an museum. On my first visit to the Cleveland Museum of Art they had Bierstadt's Among the Sierra Nevada Mountains, California. The painting blew my mind; it was huge... or so I thought at the time... and the experience was akin to the theatrical.

 

[Hermes2020]

Oh dear, there are so many that evoke a visceral reaction in me. To name one that has always moved me deeply: Antoni Tapies.

 

[Nufocus]

Tapies?!... An interesting choice! Viva Catalunya!!