Art and Culture/Art and Sculpture
Art Schools and Movements
Abstract art, nonfigurative art, nonobjective art, and nonrepresentational art are loosely related terms. Abstraction indicates a departure from reality in depiction of imagery in art
Aestheticism (or the Aesthetic Movement) was a European art movement that was part of the anti-19th century reaction and had post-Romantic origins, and as such anticipates modernism. It was a feature of th e late 19th century from about 1868 to about 1900. Artists associated with the Aesthetic style include James McNeill Whistler, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and Aubrey Beardsley
Arte Povera was introduced in Italy during the period of upheaval at the end of the 1960s, when artists were taking a radical stance. The term was introduced by the Italian art critic and curator, Germano Celant, in 1967. Lucio Fontana had ties to Arte Povera
Art Nouveau was most popular from 1890 to1910. The style was influenced strongly by Czech artist Alphonse Mucha, when Mucha produced a lithographed poster, which appeared in 1895 in the streets of Paris as an advertisement for the play Gismonda by Victorien Sardou, featuring Sarah Bernhardt
Ashcan School was a realist artistic movement that came into prominence in the United States during the early twentieth century, best known for works portraying scenes of daily life in New York's poorer neighborhoods. Members included John Sloan
Ashington Group was a small society of artists from Ashington, Northumberland, which met regularly between 1934 and 1984. Despite being composed largely of miners with no formal artistic training, the Group and its work became celebrated in the British art world of the 1930s and 1940s
Barbizon school (c. 1830–1870) of painters is named after the village of Barbizon near Fontainebleau Forest. The leaders of the Barbizon school were Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, Théodore Rousseau, Jean-François Millet and Charles-François Daubigny
Der Blaue Reiter (The Blue Rider) was founded by a number of Russian emigrants, including Wassily Kandinsky, and native German artists, such as Franz Marc. The movement lasted from 1911 to 1914, and was fundamental to Expressionism
Bolognese School flourished in Bologna, the capital of Emilia Romagna, between the 16th and 17th centuries. Its most important representatives include the Carracci family, including Ludovico, and his two cousins, the brothers Agostino and Annibale
Borough Group was founded by Cliff Holden in 1946 with the purpose of developing the ideas of fellow artist David Bomberg, who taught at the then Borough Polytechnic during the 1940s and 1950s
Die Brucke (The Bridge) was a German Expressionist art movement founded by four students of architecture in 1905 in Dresden. The name comes from a passage in Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathrustra. The founders were Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmitt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl. Later members were Emil Nolde, Max Pechstein and Otto Mueller. In 1911 the artists moved to Berlin
Byzantine art is the term commonly used to describe the artistic products of the Eastern Roman Empire from about the 5th century until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. Many religious pictures with gold
Cabal of Naples was a notorious triumvirate of painters in the city of Naples that operated during the early Baroque period from the late 1610s to the early 1640s. It was led by the Spaniard Jusepe de Ribera, who had established himself in Naples after fleeing creditors in Rome in 1616, and also consisted of the Neapolitan Battistello Caracciolo and Greek Belisario Corenzio
Camden Town Group was a group of Post-Impressionist artists active 1911-1913. They gathered frequently at the studio of painter Walter Sickert in the Camden Town area. Spencer Gore was president of Camden Town Group
Cloisonnism was a style of post-Impressionist painting with bold and flat forms separated by dark contours. The term was coined by critic Edouard Dujardin in 1888. In Yellow Christ (1889), often cited as a quintessential cloisonnist work, Gauguin reduced the image to areas of single colours separated by heavy black outlines. In such works he paid little attention to classical perspective and boldly eliminated subtle gradations of colour – two of the most characteristic principles of post-Renaissance painting
COBRA (or CoBrA) was a European avant-garde movement active from 1949 to 1951. The name was coined in 1948 by Christian Dotremont from the initials of the members' home cities: Copenhagen (Co), Brussels (Br), Amsterdam (A)
Color Field painting is a style of abstract painting that emerged in New York City during the 1940s and 1950s. It was inspired by European modernism and closely related to Abstract Expressionism, while many of its notable early proponents were among the pioneering Abstract Expressionists. Color Field painting is characterized primarily by large fields of flat, solid color spread across or stained into the canvas; creating areas of unbroken surface and a flat picture plane
Constructivism was an artistic and architectural movement that originated in Russia from 1919 onward which rejected the idea of ‘art for art's sake’ in favour of art as a practice directed towards social purposes. Best known artist is Vladimir Tatlin, who is most famous for his attempts to create the giant tower, The Monument to the Third International
Cubism or ‘bizarre cubiques’ was a term first used by French art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1908 after seeing a picture by Braque. He described it as ‘full of little cubes’. Cubism used a multiplicity of viewpoints
Analytic cubism was mainly practiced by Braque, and is very simple, with dark, almost monochromatic colours. Synthetic cubism is much more energetic, and often makes use of collage involving several two-dimensional materials. This type of cubism was developed by Picasso – the first work of this new style was Picasso's Still Life with Chair-caning (1911), which included oil cloth pasted on the canvas
Dada or Dadaism is a cultural movement that began in Zurich during World War I and peaked from 1916 to 1922. The movement concentrated its anti-war politics through a rejection of the prevailing standards in art through anti-art cultural works. Its purpose was to ridicule what its participants considered to be the meaninglessness of the modern world. Dada was also anti-bourgeois and anarchistic in nature. The Dada movement in Berlin was instrumental in making montage into a modern art-form. They first coined the term ‘photomontage’, around 1918 or 1919
Danube School is the name of a circle of painters of the 16th century in Bavaria and Austria. They were among the first painters to regularly use pure landscape painting
Degenerate art is the English translation of the German ‘entartete Kunst’, a term adopted by the Nazi regime in Germany to describe virtually all modern art. Such art was banned on the grounds that it was un-German or Jewish Bolshevist in nature. ‘Degenerate Art’ was also the title of an exhibition, mounted by the Nazis in Munich in 1937, consisting of modernist artworks chaotically hung and accompanied by text labels deriding the art
Divisionism was the characteristic style in Neo-Impressionist painting defined by the separation of colours into individual dots or patches which interacted optically. Georges Seurat founded the style around 1884 as chromoluminarism. Divisionism developed along with another style, Pointillism
Donkey's Tail was a Russian artistic group created from the most radical members of the Jack of Diamonds group. The group included such painters as: Mikhail Larionov (inventor of the name), Natalia Gontcharova, Kazimir Malevich, Marc Chagall, and Alexander Shevchenko
Les Fauves (French for The Wild Beasts) were a short-lived and loose grouping of early 20th century Modern artists whose works emphasized painterly qualities and strong colour over the representational or realistic values retained by Impressionism. While Fauvism as a style began around 1900 and continued beyond 1910, the movement as such lasted only three years, 1905 – 1907, and had three exhibitions. The leaders of the movement were Henri Matisse and Andre Derain. Other artists included Maurice de Vlaminck, Raoul Dufy, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, and Georges Braque. The term ‘fauvism’ was coined by Louis Vauxcelles
Found art or more commonly ‘found object’ (French: objet trouve) or readymade—describes art created from the undisguised, but often modified, use of objects that are not normally considered art, often because they already have a non-art function. Marcel Duchamp was the originator of this in the early 20th century
Futurism was founded by the Italian writer Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and he was its most influential personality. He launched the movement in his Futurist Manifesto, which he published for the first time in 1909 in La gazzetta dell'Emilia
Genre paintings feature domestic scenes from everyday life
Gutai group (means ‘tangible; material; concrete’) was an artistic movement and association of artists founded by Jiro Yoshihara in Japan in 1954
Hard-edge painting is painting in which abrupt transitions are found between colour areas. Colour areas are often of one unvarying color. The Hard-edge painting style is related to Geometric abstraction, Op Art, Post-painterly Abstraction, and Color Field painting
Heidelberg School was an Australian art movement of the late 19th century. The movement has latterly been described as Australian Impressionism. The term was coined in July by art critic Sidney Dickenson, reviewing the works of Melbourne-based artists Arthur Streeton and Walter Withers
Hudson River School flourished in the mid-19th century. Founded by Thomas Cole. Frederic Church was a central figure
Impressionism was coined by Louis Leroy after seeing Impression Sunrise by Monet. First impressionist exhibition was in 1874. Eighth and last impressionist exhibition was in Paris in 1886
Independent Group (IG) met at the Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) London from 1952 to 1955. The IG consisted of painters, sculptors, architects, writers and critics who wanted to challenge prevailing modernist approaches to culture. The Independent Group is regarded as the precursor to the Pop Art movement in Britain and the US
International Gothic is a subset of Gothic art developed in Burgundy, Bohemia and northern Italy in the late 14th century and early 15th century. The term was coined by the French art historian Louis Courajod. Practitioners include Gentile da Fabriano and Jacopo Bellini
Intimisme was a development of impressionism, concerned with small, domestic, interior scenes. Includes paintings by Vuillard and Bonnard
Kinetic Art is art that contains moving parts or depends on motion for its effect. The moving parts are generally powered by wind, a motor or the observer
Land art, Earthworks (coined by Robert Smithson), or Earth art is an art movement which emerged in the United States in the late 1960s, in which landscape and the work of art are inextricably linked
London Group is an artists' exhibiting society founded in 1913, when the Camden Town Group came together with the English Vorticists and other independent artists to challenge the domination of the Royal Academy, which had become unadventurous and conservative. Founding artists included Walter Sickert, Jacob Epstein, Wyndham Lewis and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Luminism was a late-impressionist or neo-impressionist style in painting which devotes great attention to light effects. The term has been used for the style of the Belgian painters such as Emile Claus and Théo van Rysselberghe and their followers
Mannerism was a period of European painting, sculpture, architecture and decorative arts lasting from the later years of the Italian High Renaissance around 1520 until the arrival of the Baroque around 1600
Minimalism was a reaction to Pop Art. Minimal art appeared in New York in the 1960s as new and older artists moved toward geometric abstraction; exploring via painting in the cases of Frank Stella, Ellsworth Kelly and others; and sculpture in the works of various artists including Anthony Caro, Sol LeWitt, Carl Andre, Dan Flavin, Donald Judd and others
Mosan art is a regional style of art from the valley of the Meuse in present-day Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. Although in a broader sense the term applies to art from this region from all periods, it generally refers to Romanesque art
Les Nabis were a group of Post-Impressionist avant-garde artists in France in the 1890s. Members included Maurice Denis, Pierre Bonnard, and Edouard Vuillard. Influenced by the work of Gauguin
Nazarene were a group of early 19th century German Romantic painters who aimed to revive honesty and spirituality in Christian art. The name Nazarene came from a term of derision used against them for their affectation of a biblical manner of clothing and hair style
Neoclassicism began after 1765, as a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and as a desire to return to the perceived ‘purity’ of the arts of Rome, the more vague perception (‘ideal’) of Ancient Greek arts, and, to a lesser extent, 16th century Renaissance Classicism. Contrasting with the Baroque and the Rococo, Neo-classical paintings are devoid of pastel colors and haziness; instead, they have sharp colors with chiaroscuro. In the case of Neo-classicism in France, a prime example is Jacques-Louis David
Neo-expressionism is a style of modern painting and sculpture that emerged in the late 1970s and dominated the art market until the mid-1980s. Related to American Lyrical Abstraction, New Image Painting and precedents in Pop painting, it developed as a reaction against the conceptual and minimalistic art of the 1970s
Neo-impressionism was coined by French art critic Felix Feneon in 1886 to describe an art movement founded by Georges Seurat
Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was an art movement that arose in Germany in the early 1920s as an outgrowth of, and in opposition to, Expressionism. The movement essentially ended in 1933 with the fall of the Weimar Republic. Artists included Otto Dix and George Grosz. Term coined by Gustav Hartlaub in 1923
New Sculpture refers to a movement in late 19th century British sculpture. Eros by Alfred Gilbert is one of the best-known examples of New Sculpture
The New York School was founded by Jackson Pollock (‘action painting’). Artists included Willem de Kooning and Philip Guston
Norwich School of painters founded by John Crome. James Stark and John Cotman were members of the Norwich School. Mousehole Heath, near Norwich, featured in paintings by Norwich School artists
Op Art was coined by Time Magazine in 1964 in response to Julian Stanczak's show Optical Paintings at the Martha Jackson gallery, to mean a form of abstract art (specifically non-objective art) that uses optical illusions. Bridget Riley is one of the foremost exponents of op art
Orphism or Orphic Cubism, a term coined by the French poet Guillaume Apollinaire in 1912, was an offshoot of Cubism that focused on pure abstraction and bright colours. Perceived as key in the transition from Cubism to Abstract art, was pioneered by Robert Delaunay and Sonia Delaunay
Outsider Art was coined by art critic Roger Cardinal in 1972 as an English synonym for Art Brut (‘raw art’ or ‘rough art’), a label created by French artist Jean Dubuffet to describe art created outside the boundaries of official culture
Paranoiac-critical method is a surrealist technique developed by Salvador Dalí in the early 1930s. He employed it in the production of paintings and other artworks, especially those that involved optical illusions and other multiple images
Peredvizhniki, often called The Wanderers in English, were a group of Russian realist artists who in protest at academic restrictions formed an artists' cooperative which evolved into the Society for Traveling Art Exhibitions in 1870
Pointillism is the use of dots of paint and does not necessarily focus on the separation of colours
Pont-Aven School produced works of art iconographically due to Pont-Aven and its surroundings. Originally the term was focusing works of the artists' colony emerging there since the 1850s, and some decades later the work of the group of painters gathering around the artist Paul Gauguin in the early 1890s. Their work is characterized by the bold use of pure colour and Symbolist choice of subject matter
Pop Art was a reaction to Abstract Expressionism. The term is often credited to Lawrence Alloway
Post-Impressionism coined by Roger Fry when he organized the 1910 exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists
Post-painterly Abstraction is a term created by art critic Clement Greenberg as the title for an exhibit he curated for the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in 1964
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood (also known as the Pre-Raphaelites) was a group of English painters, poets and critics, founded in 1848 by John Everett Millais, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Holman Hunt. The group's intention was to reform art by rejecting what they considered to be the mechanistic approach adopted by the Mannerist artists who followed Raphael and Michelangelo. They believed that the Classical poses and elegant compositions of Raphael in particular had been a corrupting influence on academic teaching of art. Hence the name Pre-Raphaelite. In particular they objected to the influence of Sir Joshua Reynolds, the founder of the English Royal Academy of Arts. In contrast they wanted to return to the abundant detail, intense colours, and complex compositions of Italian and Flemish art. Other members of the brotherhood were James Collinson (painter), William Michael Rossetti (critic), Frederic George Stephens (critic), and Thomas Woolner (sculptor, poet). Elizabeth Siddal was the model for Millais’s Ophelia. She was the most important model to sit for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood and was married to Dante Gabriel Rossetti. Annie Miller was a model for the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, notable for The Awakening Conscience by William Holman Hunt
Productivism was an art movement founded by a group of Constructivist artists in post-Revolutionary Russia who believed that art should have a practical, socially useful role as a facet of industrial production
Rayonism is a style of abstract art that developed in Russia in 1911. Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova developed rayonism after hearing a series of lectures about Futurism by Marinetti in Moscow
Rococo is an 18th century artistic movement and style. The Rococo developed in the early part of the 18th century in Paris as a reaction against the grandeur, symmetry and strict regulations of the Baroque, especially that of the Palace of Versailles
Romanesque art refers to the art of Europe from approximately 1000 AD to the rise of the Gothic style in the 13th century, or later, depending on region
School of Fontainebleau refers to two periods of artistic production in France during the late Renaissance centered around the royal Chateau de Fontainebleau, that were crucial in forming the French version of Northern Mannerism
Scottish Colourists were a group of painters whose work was not very highly regarded when it was first exhibited in the 1920s and 1930s, but which in the late 20th Century came to have a formative influence on contemporary Scottish art. The leading figure of the movement was John Duncan Fergusson
Section d'Or, also called ‘Groupe de Puteaux’, was a near-Paris-based collective of Cubist painters that was active from 1912 to around 1914. Originating as an offshoot of Cubism, the movement began with an exhibition at the Galerie La Boetie in Paris in 1912, which was also accompanied by publication of the treaty ‘Du Cubisme’ by Metzinger and Gleizes
Sienese School of painting flourished between the 13th and 15th centuries and for a time rivaled Florence, though it was more conservative, being inclined towards the decorative beauty and elegant grace of late Gothic art. Its most important representatives include Duccio, and his pupil Simone Martini
Socialist Realism was the officially approved type of art in the Soviet Union for nearly sixty years. Communist doctrine decreed that all material goods and means of production belonged to the community as a whole. This included means of producing art, which were also seen as powerful propaganda tools
St John’s Wood Clique was a group of seven Victorian artists including WF Yeames
Suprematism was an art movement focused on fundamental geometric forms (in particular the square and circle) which formed in Russia in 1915–1916
Stuckism is an international art movement that was founded in 1999 by Billy Childish and Charles Thomson to promote figurative painting in opposition to conceptual art
Surrealism began in the early 1920s. Leader Andre Breton was explicit in his assertion that Surrealism was above all a revolutionary movement. Surrealism developed out of the Dada activities during World War I and the most important centre of the movement was Paris. From the 1920s onward, the movement spread around the globe
Symbolism is the use of symbols to concentrate or intensify meaning, making the work more subjective than objective
Tachisme is a French style of abstract painting popular in the 1940s and 1950s. It is often considered to be the European equivalent to abstract expressionism. It was part of a larger postwar movement known as Art Informel
Tubism is a term coined by the art critic Louis Vauxcelles in 1911 to describe the style of French artist Fernand Leger. Meant as derision, the term was inspired by Leger's idiosyncratic version of Cubism, in which he emphasized cylindrical shapes
Vanitas was a type of symbolic still life painting commonly executed by Northern European painters in Flanders and the Netherlands in the 16th and 17th centuries. Common vanitas symbols include skulls and rotten fruit
Viennese Secession was founded by Gustav Klimt in 1890s. Ver Sacrum (‘sacred spring’) was the official magazine of the Vienna Secession, and was published from 1898 to 1903
Vorticism group began with the Rebel Art Centre which Wyndham Lewis and others established after disagreeing with Omega Workshops founder Roger Fry, and has roots in the Bloomsbury Group, Cubism, and Futurism. The name Vorticism was given to the movement by Ezra Pound in 1913. BLAST was the short-lived literary magazine of the Vorticist movement in Britain. It had two editions, the first published in July 1914 and the second a year later
Les XX was a group of twenty Belgian painters, designers and sculptors, formed in 1883 by the Brussels lawyer, publisher, and entrepreneur Octave Maus. James Ensor was a founding member
Art terms
Armature – clay or plaster figure support
Ben-Day Dots printing process – named after illustrator and printer Benjamin Day, is similar to Pointillism. Depending on the effect, color and optical illusion needed, small colored dots are closely spaced, widely spaced or overlapping. Ben-Day dots were considered the hallmark of Roy Lichtenstein, who enlarged and exaggerated them in many of his paintings and sculptures
Black cube – art museum that is architecturally designed or renovated with special consideration for the particular needs of modern digital art, installation art, and video art
Capriccio – an architectural fantasy, placing together buildings, archaeological remains and other architectural elements in fictional and often fantastical combinations
Catalogue raisonne – a monograph giving a comprehensive catalogue of artworks by an artist
Chiaroscuro – technique employed in the visual arts to represent light and shadow
as they define three-dimensional objects
Decoupage – the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, or gold leaf
Fresco-secco – a fresco painting technique in which pigments ground in water are tempered using egg yolk or whole egg mixed with water which are applied to plaster that has been moistened to simulate fresh plaster
Glue-size – refers to a technique in painting where pigment is bound to cloth (usually linen) with glue extracted from animal tissue
Gouache – an opaque, water-soluble paint. Also known as ‘body colour’. Associated with the rococo style
Griaille – a painting executed entirely in monochrome or near-monochrome
Illusionistic ceiling painting – which includes the technique of quadratura, is the tradition in Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo art in which trompe l'oeil, perspective tools such as foreshortening, and other spatial effects are used to create the illusion of three-dimensional space on an otherwise two-dimensional or mostly flat ceiling surface
Lead white – known as flake white, is also known as Cremnitz white
Morbidezza – delicacy or softness in the representation of flesh
Photorealism – a genre of art in which an artist studies a photograph and then attempts to reproduce the image as realistically as possible in another medium
Sfumato – without lines or borders, in the manner of smoke. Refers to the blending of colours so there is no perceptible transition between them. Used in the Mona Lisa
Tempera – also known as egg tempera, is a permanent fast-drying painting medium consisting of coloured pigment mixed with a water-soluble binder medium (usually a glutinous material such as egg yolk). Tempera also refers to the paintings done in this medium
Tenebrism – also called dramatic illumination, is a style of painting using violent contrasts of light and dark. A heightened form of chiaroscuro, it creates the look of figures emerging from the dark. Caravaggio was a tenebrist artist
Trompe l’oeil – means ‘fool the eye’. The artistic ability to depict an object so exactly as to make it appear real
Veduta – a highly detailed, usually large-scale painting or, actually more often print, of a cityscape or some other vista
Art galleries
United Kingdom
National Gallery in Trafalgar Square was founded in 1824
National Portrait Gallery was the first portrait gallery in the world when it opened in 1856. The gallery moved in 1896 to its current site at St Martin's Place, off Trafalgar Square. It has three regional outposts at Beningbrough Hall, Bodelwyddan Castle and Montacute House
Tate Britain (known from 1897 to 1932 as the National Gallery of British Art and from 1932 to 2000 as the Tate Gallery) is an art gallery situated on Millbank. Founded by sugar merchant Henry Tate. Tate Britain includes the Clore Gallery of 1987, designed by James Stirling, which houses work by J.M.W. Turner
Tate Modern is based in the former Bankside Power Station. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron. Opened in 2000
Tate Liverpool was founded in 1988
Tate St Ives was founded in 1993
Royal Academy of Arts is based in Burlington House on Piccadilly. Founded through a personal act of King George III in 1768
The Strand block of Somerset House, designed by William Chambers from 1775 to 1780, has housed the Courtauld Institute since 1989.The art collection at the Institute was begun by its founder, Samuel Courtauld, who presented an extensive collection of mainly French Impressionist and Post-Impressionist paintings in 1932
Hayward Gallery is within the Southbank Centre. Opened in 1968
London's Llewellyn Alexander Gallery showcases best art that was rejected for the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, in show called Not The Royal Academy
The Saatchi Gallery is a London gallery for contemporary art opened by Charles Saatchi in 1985 in order to show his sizeable (and changing) collection to the public. It has occupied different premises, first in North London, then the South Bank by the River Thames, and Chelsea (opened to the public in 2007)
White Cube is a contemporary art gallery owned by Jay Jopling with two branches in London: Mason's Yard in central London and Bermondsey in South East London, one in Hong Kong and one in Sao Paulo. The Hoxton Square space in the East End of London was closed at the end of 2012
Dulwich Picture Gallery was designed by Regency architect Sir John Soane using an innovative and influential method of illumination, and was opened to the public in 1817. The building is the oldest public art gallery in England
Walker Art Gallery is in Liverpool
Howarth Art Gallery is in Accrington
Whitworth Art Gallery was founded in 1889 in memory of Joseph Whitworth. Now part of the University of Manchester
Icon is art gallery in Birmingham
Herbert Art Gallery and Museum is in Coventry
The Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, or mima, is a contemporary art gallery based in the centre of Middlesbrough
Fruitmarket Art Gallery is in Edinburgh
The Scottish National Portrait Gallery was established in 1882, before its new building was completed. The London National Portrait Gallery was the first such separate museum in the world, however it did not move into its current purpose-built building until 1896, making the Edinburgh gallery the first in the world to be specially built as a portrait gallery
Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow is most visited museum in the United Kingdom outside London. The gallery is located on Argyle Street, in the West End of the city, on the banks of the River Kelvin
Europe
Austria
Vienna Kunstlerhaus is an art exhibition building in Vienna. It is located on Karlsplatz near the Ringstrasse, next to the Musikverein. It was built between 1865 and 1868 by the Austrian Artists' Society, the oldest surviving artists' society in Austria
France
Louvre opened in 1793. It is located on the Right Bank of the Seine in Paris. The Louvre is the world's most visited museum
Musee d’Orsay is a museum in Paris, on the left bank of the Seine. It is housed in the former Gare d'Orsay, a Beaux-Arts railway station built between 1898 and 1900. The museum holds mainly French art dating from 1848 to 1915
Musée National d'Art Moderne is the national museum for modern art of France. It is located in Paris and is housed in the Centre Pompidou
Musee du Luxembourg is a museum in Paris. From 1750 to 1780 it was the first public painting gallery in Paris
Musee Marmottan Monet in Paris features a collection of over three hundred Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works by Claude Monet (with the largest collection of his works in the world), Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Alfred Sisley, Camille Pissarro, Paul Gauguin, Paul Signac and Pierre-Auguste Renoir
Toulouse-Lautrec Museum is in Albi, 85 km northeast of Toulouse
Germany
Brandhorst is a new modern art museum in Munich
Haus der Kunst in Munich was constructed from 1934 to 1937 following plans of architect Paul Ludwig Troost as the Third Reich's first monumental structure of Nazi architecture and as Nazi propaganda
Alte Pinakothek is an art museum situated in the Kunstareal in Munich. It is one of the oldest galleries in the world and houses one of the most famous collections of Old Master paintings. The Neue Pinakothek covers 19th century art and the recently opened Pinakothek der Moderne exhibits modern art, all galleries are part of Munich's Kunstareal (the ‘art area’)
Museum Island in Berlin contains five museums, including the Bode Museum and the Pergamon Museum
Italy
Peggy Guggenheim Collection is a modern art museum on the Grand Canal in Venice
Bargello, also known as the Bargello Palace or Palazzo del Popolo (Palace of the People) is a former barracks and prison, now an art museum, in Florence. Its collection includes Donatello's David
Uffizi gallery is located in Florence. The building of Uffizi was begun by Giorgio Vasari in 1560 for Cosimo I de' Medici so as to accommodate the offices of the Florentine magistrates, hence the name uffizi, "offices".
Borghese art gallery is in Rome. Home to works by Caravaggio, Titian and Raphael
Netherlands
Mauritshaus is an art museum in The Hague. The museum houses the Royal Cabinet of Paintings which consists of 841 objects, mostly Dutch Golden Age paintings
Rijksmuseum is a Netherlands national museum dedicated to arts and history in Amsterdam. Established in 1800
Stedelijk is a museum for modern art. It is located at the Museum Square in the borough Amsterdam South, where it is close to the Van Gogh Museum, the Rijksmuseum, and the Concertgebouw
Russia
The Hermitage in St Petersburg was founded in 1764 by Catherine the Great and has been open to the public since 1852. Its collections, of which only a small part is on permanent display, comprise over three million items, including the largest collection of paintings in the world
Tretyakov Gallery is an art gallery in Moscow, the foremost depository of Russian fine art in the world
Spain
Golden Triangle of Art is made up of three important art museums that are close to each other in the centre of Madrid. The three art museums are: Prado Museum, National Museum featuring pre-20th century art; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, National Museum featuring 20th century modern art; Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, private museum, historical through contemporary art
Upon the deposition of Isabella II in 1868, The Royal Museum was nationalized and acquired the new name of Museo del Prado
MACBA – Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art
Guggenheim Museum Bilbao was designed by Frank Gehry and opened in 1997
Dali Theatre and Museum is a museum of the artist Salvador Dali in his home town of Figueres, in Catalonia. The museum facade is topped by a series of giant eggs
USA
Metropolitan Museum of Art (colloquially The Met), located in New York City, is the largest art museum in the United States. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works. Established in 1870
Frick Collection is an art museum located in New York. It houses the collection of industrialist Henry Clay Frick
Whitney Museum of American Art is on Madison Avenue in New York. The Whitney places a particular emphasis on exhibiting the work of living artists for its collection
The idea for The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York was developed in 1928 primarily by Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (wife of John D. Rockefeller Jr.) and two of her friends. It opened to the public on 7 November 1929, nine days after the Wall Street Crash
In 1939, the Guggenheim Foundation's first museum, The Museum of Non-Objective Painting, opened in New York City. It adopted its current name Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum after the death of its founder in 1952
Norman Rockwell Museum is home to the world's largest collection of original Rockwell art. Founded in 1969, the museum is located in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where Rockwell lived the last 25 years of his life
Smithsonian American Art Museum (formerly the National Museum of American Art) is a museum in Washington, D.C
National Gallery of Art, and its attached Sculpture Garden, is a national art museum in Washington, D.C., located on the National Mall
Exhibitions
In 1673, the royally sanctioned French institution of art patronage, the Académie royale de peinture et de sculpture (a division of the Académie des beaux-arts), held its first semi-public art exhibit at the Salon Carré. The Salon's original focus was the display of the work of recent graduates of the École des Beaux-Arts, which was created by Cardinal Mazarin, chief minister of France, in 1648. In 1725 the Salon was held in the Palace of the Louvre, when it became known as Salon or Salon de Paris. In 1737, the exhibitions became public
In 1863 the Paris Salon jury turned away an unusually high number of the submitted paintings. Uproar resulted, particularly from regular exhibitors who had been rejected. In order to prove that the Salons were democratic, Napoleon III instituted the Salon des Refuses, containing all the works that the Salon had rejected that year
Roger Fry organised Manet and the Post-Impressionists in 1910 and Second Post-Impressionist exhibition in 1912
The Armoury Show in 1913 was the first modern art exhibition in New York
Freeze was a 1988 show by Young British Artists. Its main organiser was Damien Hirst
Sensation was an exhibition of the collection of contemporary art owned by Charles Saatchi, including many works by Young British Artists, which first took place in 1997 at the Royal Academy of Art
Miscellaneous
The K Foundation was an art foundation set up by Bill Drummond and Jimmy Cauty in 1993 following their retirement from the music industry
The £25,000 Charles Wollaston Award, is awarded each year at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition
Artes Mundi is the UK’s largest prize for contemporary visual artists
Leo Castelli was an American art dealer. He was best known to the public as an art dealer whose gallery showcased cutting edge Contemporary art for five decades
Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA) was founded by Roland Penrose and others in 1946. The ICA's founders intended to establish a space where artists, writers and scientists could debate ideas outside the traditional confines of the Royal Academy
Wildenstein Index Number refers to an item in a numerical system published in catalogues by Daniel Wildenstein, a distinguished scholar of Impressionism, who published catalogues raisonnes of artists such as Claude Monet, Edouard Manet and Paul Gauguin through his family business, Wildenstein & Company. In these catalogues, each painting by an artist was assigned a unique number. These index numbers are now used throughout the art world, in art texts, and on art websites to uniquely identify specific works of art by specific artists
Cahiers d'Art was a French artistic and literary magazine founded in 1926 by Christian Zervos. Works published include a catalog of works by Pablo Picasso
Ultramarine was the most prestigious blue of the Renaissance. Good ultramarine was more expensive than gold. Blue was reserved for Mary’s cloak
Your Paintings is a website which aims to show the entire UK national collection of oil paintings. Your Paintings is a joint initiative between the BBC, the Public Catalogue Foundation and participating collections and museums from across the UK
Most expensive paintings (May 2021)
Salvator Mundi – Leonardo da Vinci, $450 million
Interchange – Willem de Kooning, $300 million
The Card Players – Paul Cezanne, $250 million
When Will You Marry? – Paul Gauguin, $210 million
Number 17A – Jackson Pollock, $200 million
Water Serpents II – Gustav Klimt, $183 million
No 6 (Violet, Green and Red) – Rothko, $186 million
Pendant portraits of Marten Soolmans and Oopjen Coppit – Rembrandt, $180 million
Women of Algiers, Picasso, $179 million
Nu couche, Amedeo Modigliani, $170 million
Sculptors
Carl Andre (born 1935) is an American minimalist artist recognized for his ordered linear format and grid format sculptures. His sculptures range from large public artworks to more intimate tile patterns arranged on the floor
Equivalent VIII – made up of 120 bricks
Edward Hodges Baily (1788 – 1867)
statue of Nelson at the top of the column
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598 – 1680) was a pre-eminent Baroque sculptor and architect of 17th century Rome
Ecstasy of St Theresa – the two focal sculptural figures (St Theresa and an angel with a gold spear) derive from an episode described by Teresa of Avila in her autobiography The Life of St. Teresa of Jesus (1515–1582), a mystical cloistered Discalced Carmelite reformer and nun
Fountain of the Four Rivers – fountain in Rome. The four gods on the corners of the fountain represent the four major rivers of the world known at the time: the Nile, Danube, Ganges, and Plate. The Nile is personified with a shroud over its head, as its source had not yet been discovered
Abduction of Proserpine
Apollo and Daphne
Charity with Four Children
David
Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius
Gutzon Borglum (1867 – 1941), the son of Mormon Danish immigrants
Mount Rushmore
Louise Bourgeois (1911 – 2010) was a French-American artist and sculptor, best known for her spider structures, titled Maman, which resulted in her being nicknamed the “Spiderwoman”
Maman – first made an appearance as part of Bourgeois’ commission for The Unilever Series for Tate Modern’s Turbine Hall in 2000
Cells
Constantin Brancusi (1876 – 1957) is called the patriarch of modern sculpture. Born in Romania
Bird in Space – sold in 2005 for $27.5 million, at the time a record price for a sculpture sold in an auction
The Column of the Infinite
Thomas Brock (1847 – 1922) made seven statues of Queen Victoria
Imperial Memorial to Queen Victoria in front of Buckingham Palace
Alexander Calder (1898 – 1976) was an American sculptor known as the originator of the mobile, a type of kinetic sculpture. His early works in wire defined figures with delicate lines in space. Many of his works hung from the ceiling rather than standing on a plinth
Bruno Catalano (born 1958)
Citizens of the World – sculptures that look like they are missing vital organs, on the Marseille waterfront
Anthony Caro (1924 – 2013) was an abstract sculptor whose work was characterized by assemblies of metal using 'found' industrial objects, particularly steel
Early One Morning
Antonio Canova (1757 – 1822) was an Italian sculptor from the Republic of Venice who became famous for his marble sculptures that delicately rendered nude flesh
The Three Graces is a Neo-Classical sculpture in marble of the three charities, daughters of Zeus – identified on some engravings of the statue as Euphrosyne, Aglaea and Thalia, who were said to represent beauty, charm and joy
Perseus with the Head of Medusa
noted statues of Napoleon and George Washington
Maurizio Cattelan (born 1960) is known for his satirical sculptures
La Nona Ora (The Ninth Hour), depicting the Pope John Paul II struck down by a meteorite
Gold toilet
Banana stuck to wall
Benvenuto Cellini (1500 – 1571) was an Italian goldsmith, painter, sculptor, soldier and musician of the Renaissance, who also wrote a famous autobiography. He had to flee Florence in 1563, having killed his brother’s murderer and was later charged four times for sodomy. Works include salt cellars and candlesticks
Cellini Salt Cellar (in Vienna called the Saliera) is a part-enamelled gold table sculpture. It was completed in 1543 for Francis I of France. The Saliera is the only work of gold which can be attributed to Cellini with certainty and is sometimes referred to as the ‘Mona Lisa of Sculpture’. In 2003, the Saliera was stolen from the Kunsthistorisches Museum. It was recovered in 2006
Perseus Holding the Head of Medusa
Dale Chihuly (born 1941) is an American glass sculptor, with works at V&A. Chihuly's largest permanent exhibit can be found at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art
Christo (born 1935) Christo Javacheff was born in Bulgaria. Worked with his wife Jeanne-Claude (1935 – 2009)
Christo erected 7500 saffron-coloured vinyl panels in Central Park in 2005
Valley Curtain project – a 400-metre long cloth was to be stretched across Rifle Gap, a valley in the Rocky Mountains near Rifle, Colorado by Christo in 1972
Reichstag
Eiffel Tower
Serpentine
Tony Cragg (born 1949) was the director of the Kunstakademie Dusseldorf. Won the Turner Prize in 1988
Paul Day (born 1967)
The Meeting Place – 9m bronze statue at new St Pancras
Battle of Britain Monument in London is a sculpture on the Victoria Embankment. Opened in 2005
Donatello (c. 1386 – 1466) was an early Renaissance sculptor from Florence. He is known for his work in bas-relief. Donatello was born Donato di Niccolo di Betto Bardi
First large scale bronze equestrian statue was by Donatello
Statue of David – 1440s. David is bearing the sword of Goliath. Cast in bronze. Displayed in Bargello Palace, Florence
Jacob Epstein (1880 – 1959)
St Michael and the Devil – sculpture at Coventry Cathedral, 1958
Jacob and the Angel
Rock Drill
Statue of Lazarus at New College Oxford
Dan Flavin (1933 – 1996) was an American minimalist sculptor who created sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures. These works, which he called ‘icons’, have been credited with helping to start the minimalist movement in 1963
George Frampton (1860 – 1928)
lions at the British Museum
Peter Pan’s sculpture in Kensington Gardens
Edith Cavell Memorial that stands outside the National Portrait Gallery
Elizabeth Frink (1930 – 1993)
Eagle on pulpit in Coventry Cathedral
Naum Gabo (1890 – 1977) was a prominent Russian sculptor in the Constructivism movement and a pioneer of Kinetic art. Lived in St Ives during World War II
Jim Gary (1939 – 2006) was an American sculptor popularly known for his large, colourful creations of dinosaurs made from discarded automobile parts
Lorenzo Ghiberti (1378 – 1445)
sculpted the bronze doors known as the Gates of Paradise in the Baptistery in Florence after winning a competition against Brunelleschi
Alberto Giacometti (1901 – 1966) was born in Switzerland. Sculptures were mainly bronze ‘stick figures’. The two most expensive sculptures ever sold are both by Giacometti
Three Men Walking – Giacometti
Alfred Gilbert (1854 – 1934) was a central participant in the New Sculpture movement
Eros – first statue to be cast in aluminium. 1893, memorial to Lord Shaftesbury in Piccadilly Circus. The statue depicts Anteros as ‘the Angel of Christian Charity’
Icarus – bronze sculpture
Memorial to the Duke of Clarence
Eric Gill (1882 – 1940) was an English sculptor, typeface designer, stonecutter and printmaker, who was associated with the Arts and Crafts movement. He is a controversial figure, with his well-known religious views and unusual sexual behaviour. An artistic community in Ditchling founded by Eric Gill during the early 20th century, and known as The Guild of St Joseph and St Dominic, survived until 1989
Prospero and Ariel, for the BBC's Broadcasting House in London
The Creation of Adam, three bas-reliefs in stone for the League of Nations building in Geneva
Ecstasy
Andy Goldsworthy (born 1956) is an outdoor sculptor and land artist. Exhibits at Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Anthony Gormley (born 1950) won the Turner Prize in 1994 with Field for the British Isles and was knighted in 2014
Event Horizon – the project consists of 31 male bodies, all cast from the body of the artist himself, which were placed on top of prominent buildings along the London's South Bank
Horizon Field is a 2010 sculpture installation. The installation features 100 life-sized cast iron statues of the human body left 2,000m above sea-level in the Austrian Alps
Angel of the North was completed in 1998
Quantum Cloud is located next to the Millennium Dome. At 30 metres high, it is Gormley's tallest sculpture to date
Another Place consists of 100 cast iron sculptures of Anthony Gormley's own body, facing towards the sea. After being displayed at several locations in Europe, it has become permanently erected at Crosby Beach
Maggi Hambling (born 1945) was commissioned to produce a sculpture to commemorate Benjamin Britten in 2003. The result was Scallop, a pair of oversized, 12 ft high, steel scallop shells installed on Aldeburgh beach
Memorial sculpture to Oscar Wilde, in Trafalgar Square – Maggi Hambling
Barbara Hepworth (1903 – 1975) was born in Wakefield and was married to abstract painter Ben Nicholson
Pierced Form – Barbara Hepworth
Three Forms – Barbara Hepworth
Winged Figure – Barbara Hepworth sculpture on John Lewis, Oxford Street
Crucifixion Homage to Mondrian – Barbara Hepworth. In grounds of Winchester Catrhedral
Barbara Hepworth museum in St Ives
Eva Hesse (1936 – 1970) was a German-born American sculptor, known for her pioneering work in materials such as latex, fibreglass, and plastics
Damien Hirst (born 1945) was born in Bristol and grew up in Leeds
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living, a 14’ tiger shark immersed in formaldehyde in a display case became the iconic work of British art in the 1990s
Away from the Flock – a dead sheep in a glass tank of formaldehyde
Mother and Child Divided – a cow and a calf sliced in half in a glass tank of formaldehyde
For The Love of God – a platinum cast of an 18th century skull covered in 8,601 diamonds
Damien Hirst won the Turner Prize in 1995. He is reportedly the United Kingdom's richest living artist
Nancy Holt (1938 – 2014) was an American artist famous for her public sculpture, installation art and land art. Works include Sun Tunnels, Dark Star Park, and Sky Mound
Philip Jackson (born 1944) is Royal Sculptor to the Queen
Jackson has designed many statues of footballers, including Bobby Moore outside Wembley Stadium
Charles Jagger (1885 – 1934) is best known for his war memorials, especially the Royal Artillery Memorial at Hyde Park Corner and the Great Western Railway War Memorial in Paddington Railway Station
Donald Judd (1928 – 1994) was a minimalist artist who used materials such as metals, industrial plywood, concrete and colour-impregnated Plexiglas
Cloud Gate, a public sculpture by Indian-born British artist Anish Kapoor (born 1954), is the centerpiece of the AT&T Plaza in Millennium Park within the Loop community area of Chicago
ArcelorMittal Orbit is a 114m tall sculpture and observation tower in the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park. It is Britain's largest piece of public art. Designed by Anish Kapoor
Anish Kapoor won the Turner Prize in 1991 and was knighted in 2013
Jeff Koons (born 1955) is an American artist known for his reproductions of banal objects – such as balloon animals produced in stainless steel with mirror finish surfaces
Jeff Koons was commissioned in 1992 to create a piece for an art exhibition in Germany. The result was Puppy, a 12.4 m tall topiary sculpture of a West Highland White Terrier puppy, executed in a variety of flowers on a steel substructure. The piece was purchased in 1997 by the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation and installed outside the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao
In 2013, Koons's Balloon Dog (Orange) sold at Christie's in New York City for US$58.4 million
The New, Made in Heaven, Celebrations – series by Jeff Koons
Jeff Koons was influenced by Ed Paschke and Chicago Imagists
In 1991, Koons married Hungarian-born naturalized-Italian pornography star Cicciolina (Ilona Staller)
Paul Landowski (1875 – 1961) was a French monument sculptor of Polish ancestry. Landowski is widely known for the 1931 Christ the Redeemer statue in Rio de Janeiro, a collaboration with civil engineer Heitor da Silva Costa. He won a gold medal at the Art competitions at the 1928 Summer Olympics for Sculpture
Lee Lawrie (1887 – 1963) was one of the United States' foremost architectural sculptors. His most prominent work is the free-standing bronze Atlas (installed 1937) at New York City's Rockefeller Center
LC-1, LC-2, LC-3, and LC-4 – chairs designed by Le Corbusier (1887 – 1965)
Sol LeWitt (1928 – 2007) – work ranges from Wall Drawings, over 1100 of which have been executed, to photographs and hundreds of works on paper and extends to structures in the form of towers, pyramids, geometric forms, and progressions. These works range in size from maquettes to monumental outdoor pieces
The Lightning Field (1977) is a land art work in New Mexico, by sculptor Walter De Maria (1935 – 2013). It consists of 400 stainless steel poles with solid, pointed tips, arranged in a rectangular 1 mile × 1 kilometre grid array
Franz Messerschmidt (1736 – 1783) was a German-Austrian sculptor most famous for his ‘character heads’, a collection of busts with faces contorted in extreme facial expressions
Bacchus – marble statue by Michelangelo (1475 – 1564) in the Bargello, Florence
Pieta – Michelangelo, 1498. Marble sculpture in St Peter’s Basilica in Rome, depicts the body of Jesus in the arms of his mother Mary after the Crucifixion. In 1972, Laszlo Toth, a Hungarian-born Australian, leaped over a guard rail in St Peter's crying, "I'm Jesus Christ!" and attacked the statue with a hammer. The only sculpture ever signed by Michelangelo
Statue of David by Michelangelo, 1501. Sculpted in marble. Displayed in the Accademia Gallery in Florence. 17’ high. Commissioned by the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Duomo (Operai). Started by di Duccio, then Rossellino. Slingshot in left hand. It soon came to symbolize the defense of civil liberties embodied in the Florentine Republic, an independent city-state threatened on all sides by more powerful rival states and by the hegemony of the Medici family. The eyes of David, with a warning glare, were turned towards Rome
Barcelona chair – designed by Mies van der Rohe (1886 – 1969)
Amedeo Modigliani (1884 – 1920) abandoned sculpting in 1914 and focused solely on his painting
In 2010 Modigliani's Tête, a limestone carving of a woman's head, became the second most expensive sculpture ever sold (now the third most expensive)
Henry Moore (1898 – 1986) was best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures which are located around the world as public works of art. His forms are usually abstractions of the human figure, typically depicting mother-and-child or reclining figures. Born in Castleford
Three Standing Figures – first sculpture by Henry Moore
Shelter Drawings – drawings made by Henry Moore in London Underground shelters during WWII
Madonna and Child – sculpture in St Paul’s Cathedral by Henry Moore
Ron Mueck (born 1958) is an Australian hyperrealist sculptor working in the United Kingdom. Mueck's sculptures faithfully reproduce the minute detail of the human body, but play with scale to produce disconcertingly jarring visual images
Boy – sculpture by Ron Mueck. A 5m tall sculpture of a boy, crouching. First shown in the Millennium Dome exhibition
Worker and Kolkhoz Woman – Vera Mukhina (1889 – 1953), known as the “Queen of Soviet Sculpture”
David Nash (born 1945) is known for works in wood and shaping living trees. Nash also makes land art, of which the best known is Wooden Boulder
Claes Oldenburg (born 1929) is a Swedish sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring very large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions of everyday objects
Eduardo Paolozzi (1924 – 2005) was born in Edinburgh. Knighted in 1988
The Statue of Newton (after William Blake), by Eduardo Paolozzi, is outside the British Library
Paolozzi is well known for his Pop Art collages
Paolozzi designed the mosaic patterned walls of the Tottenham Court Road tube station
Claire – female alter-ego of Grayson Perry (born 1960)
Westfield Vase – Grayson Perry
The Tomb of the Unknown Craftsman – Grayson Perry
Phidias (c. 480 – c. 430 BC) was a Greek sculptor, painter and architect, who is commonly regarded as one of the greatest of all sculptors of Classical Greece: Phidias' Statue of Zeus at Olympia was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Phidias also designed the statues of the goddess Athena on the Athenian Acropolis, namely the Athena Parthenos inside the Parthenon and the Athena Promachos, a colossal bronze statue of Athena
Praxiteles of Athens was the most renowned of the Attic sculptors of the 4th century BC. He was the first to sculpt the nude female form in a life-size statue
Marc Quinn (born 1964) is a member of the Young British Artists
Self – sculpture of Mark Quinn’s (born 1964) head, using his own frozen blood
Sphinx, a sculpture of the British supermodel Kate Moss in a complicated yoga position was designed by Marc Quinn
Alison Lapper Pregnant – Marc Quinn. Alison Lapper has a congenital disorder, phocomelia, which caused her to be born without arms and with truncated legs
Red and Blue Chair was designed in 1917 by Gerrit Rietveld (1888 – 1964). It represents one of the first explorations by the De Stijl art movement in three dimensions
The Burghers of Calais, The Age of Bronze – Auguste Rodin (1840 – 1917)
The Burghers of Calais serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais was under siege by the English for over a year
The Gates of Hell depicts a scene from The Inferno, the first section of The Divine Comedy. The original sculptures, including The Thinker and The Kiss, became works of art on their own. The plaster original was restored in 1917 and is displayed at the Musee d'Orsay in Paris
Some critics believe The Thinker was originally intended to depict Dante at the Gates of Hell
Le Baiser (The Kiss) was originally titled Francesca da Rimini, as it depicts the 13th century Italian noblewoman immortalised in Dante's Inferno (Circle 2, Canto 5) who falls in love with her husband Giovanni Malatesta's younger brother Paolo. Sculpted in 1889
Monument to Balzac – Rodin
Doris Salcedo (born 1958) is a Colombian-born sculptor. Created Shibboleth, the crack in the floor of the Turbine Hall at Tate Modern
Following Alison Lapper Pregnant on the Fourth Plinth in Trafalgar Square was Model for a Hotel 2007 (formerly Hotel for the Birds) by Thomas Schuette (born 1954)
Richard Serra (born 1939) is an American minimalist sculptor and video artist known for working with large scale assemblies of sheet metal. Serra was involved in the Process Art Movement
David Smith (1906 – 1965) was an American sculptor. Many sculptures of industrial parts welded together
The Cubi series is a group of stainless steel sculptures built from cubes, rectangular solids and cylinders with spheroidal or flat endcaps. These pieces are among the last works completed by David Smith
The Heavy Horse – sculpture of a Clydesdale horse by Andy Scott (born 1964), near the M8 in Glasgow
The Kelpies are two 30-metre high horse-head sculptures, standing next to a new extension to the Forth and Clyde Canal, in Falkirk. The sculptures were designed by Andy Scott
Jason deCaires Taylor (born 1974) is an English sculptor specializing in the creation of contemporary underwater sculptures which over time develop into artificial coral reefs. His most ambitious project to date is the creation of the world's largest underwater sculpture museum, MUSA, situated off the coast of Cancun
Pietro Torrigiano (1472 – 1528) was an Italian sculptor of the Florentine school. Torrigiano was invited to England to execute the effigial monument for Henry VII and his queen, which still exists in the lady chapel of Westminster Abbey
James Turrell (born 1943) is best known for his work in progress, Roden Crater, a natural cinder cone crater located outside Flagstaff, Arizona that he is turning into a massive naked-eye observatory
Ecce Homo – Mark Wallinger (born 1959). Ecce Homo was the first work to occupy the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square
State Britain is an installation artwork by Mark Wallinger displayed in Tate Britain. It is a recreation from scratch of a protest display about the treatment of Iraq, set up by Brian Haw outside Parliament. Wallinger won the Turner Prize in 2007 for this piece
In 2013, it was announced that Wallinger had created a set of 270 enamel plaques, one for every London tube station, to mark the 150th anniversary of the London Underground
Ai Weiwei (born 1957) collaborated with Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron as the artistic consultant on the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. As a political activist, he has been highly and openly critical of the Chinese Government's stance on democracy and human rights
Ai Weiwei's S.A.C.R.E.D installation is a six-part work composed of six iron boxes depicting scenes from the Chinese artist's 81-day incarceration back in 2011
Ai Weiwei's "sunflower seeds" – a work made up of 10 tonnes of porcelain seed replicas – was bought by Tate Modern in 2012
Holocaust Memorial in Vienna – Rachel Whiteread (born 1963)
House by Rachel Whiteread was a concrete cast of the inside of an entire Victorian terraced house completed in 1993, exhibited at the location of the original house, 193 Grove Road, in East London. It drew mixed responses, winning her both the Turner Prize for best young British artist in 1993 and the K Foundation art award for worst British artist. Tower Hamlets London Borough Council demolished House in 1994
With Untitled Monument (2001), (also variously known as Plinth or Inverted Plinth), Rachel Whiteread became the third artist to provide a sculpture for the empty fourth plinth in Trafalgar Square. Her sculpture was an 11 ton resin cast of the plinth itself
Korczak Ziolkowski (1908 – 1982) was the American designer and sculptor of Crazy Horse Memorial, in custer County, South Dakota. It depicts Crazy Horse, an Oglala Lakota warrior, riding a horse and pointing into the distance. The memorial was commissioned by Henry Standing Bear, a Lakota elder
Venus de Milo (Aphrodite of Melos) is a 2nd century BC Greek sculpture, in the Louvre
The Winged Victory of Samothrace, also called Nike of Samothrace, is a marble sculpture of the Greek goddess of Victory, Nike, discovered in 1863 on the island of Samothrace by the French archaeologist Charles Champoiseau. The statue is now displayed in the Louvre in Paris
Venus de' Medici is a lifesize Hellenistic marble sculpture depicting the Greek goddess of love Aphrodite. It is housed in the Uffizi
Capitoline Wolf is a bronze sculpture of a she-wolf suckling twin infants, inspired by the legend of the founding of Rome. The statue was long thought to be an Etruscan work of the 5th century BC, with the twins added in the late 15th century AD, probably by the sculptor Antonio Pollaiolo
Discobolus of Myron ("discus thrower") s a Greek sculpture that was completed c. 450 BC. The Townley Discobolus, a Roman copy, is at the British Museum
Elgin Marbles are a collection of classical Greek marble sculptures (mostly by Phidias and his pupils), inscriptions and architectural members that originally were part of the Parthenon and other buildings on the Acropolis of Athens. Thomas Bruce, the 7th Earl of Elgin obtained a controversial permit from the Ottoman authorities to remove pieces from the Parthenon while serving as the British ambassador to the Ottoman Empire from 1799 to 1803
Most expensive sculptures (May 2021)
Pointing Man – Alberto Giacometti, $141 million
The Walking Man I – Alberto Giacometti, $104 million
Chariot – Alberto Giacometti, $101 million
Rabbit – Jeff Koons, $91 million
Portrait of Nancy Cunard, Constantin Brancusi, $71 million
Turner Prize
Turner Prize started in 1984, with a prize on £10,000
Drexel Burnham Lambert sponsorship ended in 1990 when the prize was not awarded
Prize increased to £20,000 in 1991 with sponsorship from Channel 4
In 2004 the first prize was increased to £25,000
In 2007 the prize was held outside London for the first time, in Tate Liverpool
In 2019 the prize was shared by all nominees (Lawrence Abu Hamdan, Helen Cammock, Tai Shani, and Oscar Murillo) after they wrote a letter asking the judges not to choose a single winner
2020 prize cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic
Notable winners
| 1984 | Malcolm Morley | Inaugural prize |
| 1985 | Howard Hodgkin | |
| 1986 | Gilbert and George | |
| 1989 | Richard Long | |
| 1991 | Anish Kapoor | |
| 1993 | Rachel Whiteread | First female winner, for House |
| 1994 | Antony Gormley | |
| 1995 | Damien Hirst | |
| 1996 | Douglas Gordon | First winner with a video |
| 1997 | Gillian Wearing | Video 60 minutes of Silence |
| 1998 | Chris Ofili | Paintings using elephant dung |
| 1999 | Steve McQueen | Tracey Emin exhibited My Bed |
| 2000 | Wolfgang Tillmans | First photographer and first non-British winner |
| 2001 | Martin Creed | Work No. 227: The lights going on and off |
| 2003 | Grayson Perry | |
| 2004 | Jeremy Deller | Film Memory Bucket |
| 2005 | Simon Starling | Shedboatshed |
| 2006 | Tomma Abts | |
| 2007 | Mark Wallinger | State Britain |
| 2010 | Susan Philipsz | First sound artist to win |
| 2015 | Assemble | Architecture and design collective |
| 2018 | Lubaina Himid | |
| 2019 | Charlotte Prodger |
