Cat Art History: Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso.org

Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and theatre designer. 

One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore.

He also liked cats!

Here are just a handful of many Picasso cat images for your enjoyment:

Watercolor Cat, 1955

Crazy Woman With Cats, 1901

Dora Maar au Chat, 1941

Cat Catching a Bird, 1939

Femme au chat assise dans un fauteuil, 1964

Pablo Picasso, 1954 

Disclaimer:

All images posted today were found on the interwebs, and used solely for the enjoyment of our readers.  The artwork titles and dates were also found online; some obviously already translated to English, but I did not find the original titles that could be French or Spanish.

Van Gogh Sketch

For Caturday, I'm not using my own artwork, but a sketch of Vincent van Gogh's "Daubigny's Garden", that the artist included in a letter to his brother, Theo.

This relates to our Thursday post: Van Gogh in America

Click on the image above to enjoy a jigsaw puzzle.
Note the cat is there!

This is an image of the Van Gogh letter.

Van Gogh in America, exhibiting until January 22, 2023 at the Detroit Institute of Arts.

Vincent Willem van Gogh was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in Western art history. 

The son of a minister, van Gogh suffered his entire life with mental health issues.

He began work at age 16, when his uncle got him a job as a trainee with an art dealership in The Hague.  

Vincent also was employed at the firm’s London and Paris offices before he was fired in 1876. 

Afterward, he was briefly a schoolteacher in England, then worked at a bookstore back in the Netherlands. 

In 1878, he went to the Borinage, a mining district in Belgium, and worked among the poor as a lay preacher; he gave away his belongings and slept on floors, but after less than a year on the job the religious organization sponsoring van Gogh decided he wasn’t cut out to be a pastor and dismissed him. 

His next career choice, artist, would of course make him internationally famous, although not until after his death.

  

In a decade, he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of which date from the last two years of his life.

Born: March 30, 1853, Zundert, Netherlands

Died: July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, France

Periods: Realism, Post-Impressionism, Modern art, Impressionism, Japonisme, Cloisonnism, Pointillism, Neo-Impressionism

This is the only other image of a cat in van Gogh's entire catalog of images. 

Let's Hop!

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Cat Art History: Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Newell Wyeth (July 12, 1917-January 16, 2009) was an American watercolorist and tempera painter, noted primarily for his realistic depictions of the buildings, fields, hills, and people of his immediate world.

He was one of the best-known U.S. artists of the middle 20th century.

And he included cats in his artwork.

Christina’s Bedroom (1947)

Cat Nap (1963)

Miss Olson (1952)

Disclaimer: Images of Andrew Wyeth art posted here were gathered from the interwebs, and used solely for the enjoyment of our readers, who happen to really, really like cats.

Cat Art History: Henri Matisse

https://www.wikiart.org/en/henri-matisse

Henri Émile Benoît Matisse; 12/31/1869 – 11/3/1954 was a French visual artist, known for both his use of color, his fluid and original draughtsmanship, and is included in the Fauvist, Modernist, Post-Impressionist movements.

Fauvism: expressing emotion with wild, often dissonant colors, without regard for the subject's natural colors.

Modernism: A break with the past and the concurrent search for new forms of expression.

Post-Impressionism: Emerged as a reaction against Impressionists' concern for the naturalistic depiction of light and color.

Most important: He liked cats!

Girl With Black Cat, 1910.

Blue Cat, cutout from 1940's

Unable to find a date for this photograph.

Cat With Red Fish, 1914

The artist with his cat, 1951.

Cat Art History: Alexander Calder

Alexander Calder, July 22, 1898 - November 11, 1976, was an Modern, Abstract, and Surrealist artist, innovating with his three-dimensional kinetic sculptures powered by motors or air currents, and his monumental public sculptures.

The artist undoubtedly studied cats, sculpting them as whimsical and playful.

La Cornue, or "Calder's Cat", 1974
Located in Grenoble, France

Mary Reynolds with her cats, no date

The Rattle Cat, 1969

Cat Lamp, 1928

Cat, sculpture,1930

Cat, mobile,1966

Go to https://calder.org/ for more information on this amazing artist.

Cat Art History: Franz Marc

Franz Marc (1880-1916) was a German printmaker and artist; he is considered to be one of the key figures of the Expressionist movement in Germany.

Expressionist artists often employed swirling, swaying, and exaggeratedly executed brushstrokes in the depiction of their subjects. 

These techniques were meant to convey the emotional state of the artist, reacting to the anxieties of the modern world.

Franz Marc painted horses, elephants, deer, cows, gazelles, foxes...and cats!

All images below are from franzmarc.org.

Cats on a Red Cloth, 1909-1910

Girl with Cat II, 1912

Three Cats, 1913

Two Cats, Blue and Yellow, 1912

Two Cats, 1909

Cats, Red and White 1912

Here are some additional websites:

http://scihi.org/franz-marc/

https://artincontext.org/franz-marc/

https://www.wikiart.org/en/franz-marc