Artists
Nationality
Utagawa Hiroshige, born Andō Tokutarō, was the master of woodblock design, known for his landscapes and ukiyo-e (pictures of the floating world) prints. He grew up in Edo, now known as Tokyo, his family was samurai heritage, but both of his parents died before he was twelve. He became an…
A painter, mixed media sculptor, performance artist, writer, teacher, and lecturer, Faith Ringgold worked across a wide range of media but is best known for her story quilts. She created the first of these in 1980 in collaboration with her mother, Madame Willi Posey and began incorporating text in them…
Berenice Abbott was an American photographer best known for her portraits of 20th century New York City cultural figures, architecture and urban design, in particular through the WPA Federal Art Project. Early on in her career, she also worked in Paris, assisting in the studio of Man Ray. The Museum…
Patrick William Adam was a Scottish painter, best known for his genre and interior paintings. He was born in Edinburgh to a well-known lawyer on October 12, 1854, and would study art from a young age. He attended the Royal Scottish Academy (RSA) and worked under artists such as William…
Ansel Adams is perhaps America’s best-known photographer and environmentalist. His black & white images are seared into our minds, but his photos were a powerful force in his advocacy. Whether demanding protection for our national parks and monuments, or his outrage at the injustice of the Japanese American internment camps…
John Ottis Adams was born on July 8, 1851, in Johnson County, Indiana. His visit to the 1869 Indiana State Fair in Indianapolis inspired him to become an artist. In the same year, he enrolled at Wabash College in Crawfordsville for an art degree. Then in 1872, John Ottis Adams…
David Octavius Hill was born on May 20th, 1802, in Perth, Scotland. David and his brother got their education from the Perth Academy. Then his brother moved to Edinburgh for work, and David Hill studied at the School of Design. He exhibited his early landscape paintings at the Institution for…
Known for: Paintings of city buildings and landscape views
Swedish artist Hilma af Klint created large abstract paintings starting in 1906, well before such artists as Wassily Kandinsky explored non-representational imagery. She felt that people were not ready for her paintings since they were so radical, she seldom exhibited them during her life. When her sister died in 1880,…
The German artist Anni Fleischman Albers is known for her work in color theory, and in textiles, where she challenged the separate notions of art and craft. Her work was abstract and focused on color theory, which greatly influenced Modernism. Albers studied at the Bauhaus where she met her future…
Born in Bottrop, Germany, in 1888, Josef Albers was an influential figure in the abstract art world and taught many individuals about art throughout his lifetime. As a young adult, Albers became an elementary school teacher and enrolled in Bauhaus, a very important design school in Germany. After getting his…