this time across the ocean
Gustave Courbet – “son of revolution”
The name Courbet means for the art of the XIX century no less than Rembrandt and Velázquez for the XVII century. After all, he openly proclaimed realism as his creative method, he was a member of the Paris Commune. The artist was always in the center of class battles, beginning with the revolution of 1848. Could he be out of it? Courbet did not lead the uprisings, but his works are inspired by those who participated in them – the people of labor. Continue reading
Anton Refrezhier – born in Moscow
Refrege was born in Moscow in the year of the first Russian revolution. This fact would seem irrelevant to the biography of an American artist: after all, his father took him to his homeland, to France, when he was still a teenager. In Paris, the boy’s artistic inclinations, inherited from his Russian ancestors, appeared: his maternal grandfather was a famous violinist, his grandmother was a ballerina of the Mariinsky Theater, and Anton himself became interested in the sculptor’s craft. Continue reading
