Finesse
  • Home
  • Team
    • Faculty Advisors
    • Student Team
  • Contact Us

Leonardo Da Vinci - The Guru

9/21/2014

0 Comments

 
Picture
Today, we are going to introduce you to a renowned inventor, mathematician and artist, Leonardo di ser Pierro da Vinci. His work, the Mona Lisa is a familiar name to most people in the world. But his story is one unknown to many. 

Born on 15th April 1452 in Vinci, a region in Florence, Leonardo was mentored by a notable artist Verrocchio. Other famous protégées of Verrocchio include Botticelli and Perugino. It is said that Leonardo aided Verrocchio with his painting of The Baptism of Christ, and painted an angel holding Jesus’s robe in a manner so superior to his master’s, that Verrocchio never painted again. It is rumoured that Leonardo even modeled for Verrocchio’s statue of David.

From here onwards, records of his life disappear to resurface around the time when he went to Milan in 1482. Here, he was commissioned to make The Virgin of the Rocks and The Last Supper for a monastery. During this time, he was also involved in making a model for a large equestrian monument for Francesco Sforza, an elaborate deal for which seventy tons of bronze was required. As with most of Leonardo’s work however, the monument remained unfinished for a long time. In November 1494, just when Leonardo had started making plans for casting, the bronze kept aside had to be used to make cannons to defend the city from an attack led by Charles VIII.

Following this, Leonardo fled Milan. In 1500, he returned to Florence, where he was provided with a workshop by the Servite monks of a monastery. Here Leonardo created a cartoon of The Virgin and The Child, winning great admiration among the common people. After this, Leonardo spent two years creating a mural depicting the Battle of Anghiari for the Signoria. He employed various techniques ranging from painting on a dry stone wall to using wet plaster for his art. Typically however, he used oil paint made by hand from ground pigments.

In 1506, he returned to Milan. From here, he went back to Florence in 1507 due to his father’s death, but chose to came back to Milan a year later and settle in Porta Orientale. From 1513 to 1516, Leonardo lived in the Vatican. Upon the recapture of Milan by France in 1515, Leonardo was commissioned to make a mechanical lion that could walk and open to reveal a chest full of lilies. Leonardo died on 2 May 1519 and was buried in the Chapel of Saint-Hubert. But even centuries after the end of his tumultuous life, his name lives on as that of a legend, the most celebrated artist of all times.


Author - Nikita Singal (PGP1 Finesse Club Member)
0 Comments

European Architecture: A melting pot of artistic expressions

11/30/2013

0 Comments

 
- By Darshan Sumant Chintamani
‘A building is not just a place to be but a way to be. The mother art is architecture. 
Without an architecture of our own, we have no soul of our own civilization.’
                                                                                                                                                            – Frank Lloyd Wright
Wright, perhaps one of the best architects of his time, aptly defined the true essence of architecture. Architecture is an integral part of every civilization, an eternal mark on the earth’s face, of its people and their artistic genius. One can experience this for himself only while travelling through the different parts of Europe. For over the last two millennia, each civilization – small or big – has imprinted itself in stone and brick. The buildings in each city stand testimony to the continuous evolution of society’s artistic expression. It is therefore imminent to understand the main architectural styles, their history and the symbolism, to better understand the rich heritage of an entire continent.

Classical

Classical architecture is derived from the architecture of ancient Greece and ancient Rome. With the collapse of the western part of the Roman Empire, the architectural traditions of the Roman empire ceased to be practiced in large parts of western Europe. In the Byzantine Empire, the ancient ways of building lived on but relatively soon developed into a distinct Byzantine style.  It places emphasis on symmetry, proportion, geometry and the regularity of parts as they are demonstrated in the architecture of Classical antiquity and in particular, the architecture of Ancient Rome. Greek amphitheaters, the Colosseum, the Pantheon, and the Roman Baths are just a small set of examples.

Picture
The Pantheon in Rome, Italy
Picture
Plans of Ancient Greek Temples

Read More
0 Comments

Jack the Dripper - Jackson Pollock

10/24/2013

0 Comments

 
The artist Alfonso Ossorio, described Pollock's artistic journey this way:

                                     "Here I saw a man who had both broken all the traditions of the past and unified them, 
                                     who had gone beyond cubism, beyond Picasso and surrealism, beyond everything that
                                      had happened in art....his work expressed both action and contemplation."

Pollock reveals the artistic process as the essence of creation, not the product, or finished painting. Process is action, and product is passive. Process is alive, and product the dead. Looking at his painting what you see is the action, the process, the moment still alive with texture, color and pattern.

Jackson Pollock was an abstract American artist who believed in expressing himself through his art, creating composition which may be far from reality, non-figurative. Widely known for his spectacular, wall-sized paintings, which typically feature a combination of swirling drips, bright splotches, and bold, rhythmic streaks; he is an artist who lived his art. He emerged as the most original painter in America, for his unprecedented physical involvement with the act of painting.
Threads of flowing color
After a period of struggle with traditional style, Pollock broke ingeniously. He threw the vertical style of painting, lay his painting on the ground and wrestled with flat ground. Focused, Pollock made familiar tools foreign, canvas and paint, body and brush, rivers of color, entering his work, embodying the process. Paint flew. Pollock was the painting, the painting Pollock.

With his innovative style, he approached the canvas from every possible angle. It was his dance floor. Some of his works have an impression of foot. By creating these action paintings, he felt he was actually a part of the painting.
Picture
Jackson Pollock

Read More
0 Comments

The Renaissance Man - Satyajit Ray

10/7/2013

1 Comment

 
                                                                                                                                                                                                            -By Sourav Sengupta
The glamour of film-maker Satyajit Ray, the man who revolutionized Indian cinema often shrouds the character of artist Satyajit Ray. A creative genius, Ray had an exceptional hand in sketching and made priceless contributions to contemporary commercial art. 
Picture
Satyajit Ray
Born in a house of talents, Ray was no exception himself and took interest in western music and cinema at a very early age. At the age of eighteen after graduation, he was lured by Rabindranath Tagore and persuaded by his mother to join art classes at Kala Bhavan, Shantiniketan. Here for the first time he came to study oriental art-form under the supervision of great masters like Nandalal Bose and Benod Behari Mukherjee whose profound influence would reflect in Ray’s works throughout his life. Ray would study Chinese murals, Japanese wood-carvings; he would make trips to parts of the country to learn the intricacies of Indian art. Ray would deploy various calligraphic elements later in his illustrations and designs. In 1943 he left his studies at Shantiniketan unfinished to join the British advertising agency D.J.Keymer. 

Read More
1 Comment

Surrealism and Salvador Dali

9/21/2013

0 Comments

 
This is the second article in the Artist series.

Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon has brought Renaissance art closer to all of us through The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons and most recently, Inferno by bringing alive the work of notable painters like Leonardo Da Vinci, Raphael, Giorgio Vasari, Sandro Botticelli and Michelangelo, among others.
Picture
Salvador Dali
In this series, we continue Dan’s work; and today we talk about: Surrealism and Salvador Dali (shown alongside). A name that commands respect in the world of art and painting. Dali was the pioneer of the surrealist movement – infamous for his eccentricities, and world renowned for his bizarre imagery in paintings that are admired even today. In fact, most people would argue that Dali’s name should be mentioned amongst the ‘greats’ of art.

Surrealism

 Surrealism was an artistic and literary movement that began in the early 1920’s, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. The aim of Surrealism was to reveal the unconscious and reconcile it with rational life. There was no single style of Surrealist art but two broad types can be seen. These are the early dream-like work of Salvador Dali, and Rene Magritte, and the later free form or automatist work by artist such as Max Ernst and Joan Miro. Surrealist artists used unexpected juxtapositions and illogical scenes which they painted with photographic precision to express their subconscious imagination.


Read More
0 Comments

Pietra Dura

9/10/2013

3 Comments

 
Picture
Pietra Dura Work in White Marble
                                                        - By Tushar Ovhal

Pietra Dura is an art form which is used to make decorative vases, table-top, furniture and many other artistic displays. It is a technique in which highly intricate exhibits are made out of small hard stones. We can find its traces in ancient Italian art where the phrase Pietra Dura means “hard stones” and uses highly delicate technique to integrate small shaped coloured stones to form intricate sculptures. The stones used are usually silicates, including agates, alabaster, amethyst, jade, jasper, lapis lazuli, malachite, onyx, and topaz. It has developed as antiquity. The technique originally consisted of shaping the coloured stones with small saws, wires and then adding them to decorative objects and sculptures. The art was revived during the Renaissance by Italian craftsmen and the first hard-stone workshop was established by the Medici family in Florence in 1588. 
The art was also practiced at the courts of Naples, Madrid, Prague, Paris and elsewhere. From the late 16th century, the colorful stones were arranged on furniture as landscapes and flower scenes.

Read More
3 Comments

Black & White - Artist Laurie Lipton

8/8/2013

0 Comments

 
Picture
Picture
                                                                                                   - By Manoj Nibhoria

I still remember the time when I first held a crayon in my hand.  I had no clue about what I was supposed to do with this strange colorful stick. We were asked to fill up the little boxes in our drawing books. Considering it as any other homework, I started filling them up hastily, missing most of the edges and corners. After I had filled up half of the boxes, my dad happened to have a look at my work. He then had a chat with me about the importance of edges and corners. That was probably the first and most cherished art lesson of my life.

As I grew up, the crayons were replaced first by sketch pens and eventually by watercolors. After 4 years of my on and off relationship with various colors, I discovered the two true and everlasting colors of the universe: Black & White. Encompassing everything within and beyond imagination, these are the only two shades which have demanded and succeeded to be perceived over the ages. While others often shy away in darkness, these two have always managed to prevent the catastrophe of a colorless world. Their bold and omnipresent character paved the way for my love towards sketching.

While sketching in my undergrad college, I was greatly influenced by the work of Laurie Lipton.

Read More
0 Comments

    Archives

    September 2014
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013

    Categories

    All
    Art Forms
    Artists
    Illustrations

    RSS Feed

Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
    • Art Mela >
      • 2012
      • 2013
  • Art Mela
    • Abhivyakti
    • Face Painting
    • Haute Couture
    • Workshops
  • Tutorials
  • Blog
  • Gallery
  • Team
    • Faculty Advisors
    • Student Team
  • Contact Us
  • Event1
  • Event2