Introduction to Art: American Artists

A founder of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Much of his work was collaborative and produced in a loft called ‘the Factory’.

Gorky was an American painter who played a key role in the merging of abstraction and Surrealism to prepare for the new style of Abstract Expressionism.

Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he studied mathematics and art at Wisconsin University. In the 1960s he became a leading exponent of Conceptual Art, using neon lights and holograms in addition to producing minimalist sculptures from more conventional materials, as in From Hand to Mouth and Six Inches of My Knee Extended to Six Feet (both 1967).

US painter, printer, and illustrator. One of the foremost American realists, and the most famous exponent of New Realism in the 20th century, he is often associated with American Scene painting.

American painter, b. Newburgh, N.Y. He moved to New York City in 1941, studying at Pratt Institute, and later attended the Boston Museum Arts School. In Paris during the late 1940s, he studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and met many giants of modern art.

American painter whose abstract works are characterized by geometric forms, brilliant colors, and often irregularly shaped canvases.

US artist and illustrator. He is known for his lively paintings, sculptures, and sketches of the American West, which he recorded during several trips to the region. In his detailed, rugged bronzes, he focused on movement to depict the vigorous, energy of cowboys, American Indians, and horses.

The first internationally acclaimed American woman artist, Georgia O'Keeffe emerged in the twentieth century as one of the cultural icons of her time.

From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Grandma Moses has been described as an “authentic primitive” – that is, a painter whose talent developed in complete isolation from contemporary artistic trends.

The American painter Jackson Pollock was the leading figure of the New York School of the 1940s. Brought up in California, he moved to New York in 1929 and studied at the Art Students' League under Thomas Hart Benton, the American Regionalist.

Jasper Johns is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker of the neo-dada movement of the 1950s and early 1960s and an important precursor of pop art.

American painter, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Born into a middle-class Haitian and Puerto Rican family, he was a 1980s art star whose rise and fall were rapid, dramatic, and emblematic of the era.

American artist, b. York, Pa., studied Maryland Institute College of Art (B.F.A., 1976), Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1977 and has lived and worked there since. Koons has been damned and praised with equal fervor by critics, called shallow, cynical, and the bad boy of American art by some and post-ironic, awesome, and a post-pop superstar by others.

Kenneth Noland is one of the best known contemporary American Minimalist painters. He works within a range of 1960s styles collectively named “post-painterly abstraction” by Clement Greenberg.

Russian-born American abstract expressionist painter whose works are characterized by horizontal bands of subtle color with blurred edges.

U.S. painter. Influenced by Chinese calligraphy, he devised a style of improvisatory abstract painting called “white writing”.

One of the most important painters of the twentieth century, who fled Nazi Germany and after World War II emigrated to the United States.

American painter Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was born and spent his childhood in New York City.

US painter. A leading member of the second generation of abstract expressionists, he gained worldwide renown for his Ocean Park series of mainly abstract canvases 1967–88.

1925–, American painter. Rauschenberg became a pivotal figure in the emerging pop art movement.

The American Abstract Expressionist painter, Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam and apprenticed as a commercial painter and decorator. In 1926 he went to New York, initially with no idea of becoming an artist.

Photographer, born in Springfield, Ohio, USA.

American photographer, b. San Francisco. He began taking photographs in the High Sierra and Yosemite Valley, with which his name is permanently associated, becoming professional in 1930.

American photographer. Began, in the late 1950s, to make the intimate and powerful visual record of life on the freakish margins of society, for which she became renowned.

Richard Avedon's career spanned sixty years, beginning as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s when he was barely twenty years old.

From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
In a career that spanned 75 years Imogen Cunningham drew on a wide range of subjects for her photographs, including people, landscapes, cityscapes, and, especially, plants and flowers. Her work reflected the major advances in art photography that took place in the 20th century.

From France and the Americas: Culture, Politics, and History
American photographer (active 1929-1975) whose lyrical black-and-white images owe much in style to the influence of French photography.

American photographer, b. Hoboken, N.J. During the 1930s, the state of California commissioned a report on the way of life of migrant laborers.

From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American photographer, best known for her portraits of celebrities, from rock musicians to politicians. She has done fashion photography, magazine work and advertising and many of her images are famous.

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
American photographer, brother of Arthur Penn, b. Plainfield, N.J.; studied Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (1934–38). Best known for his fashion work, he is also a master of portraiture and still life.

From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The first major documentary photographer in America, Jacob Riis used the camera to expose the appalling living conditions of the immigrants of the Lower East Side in New York City toward the end of the nineteenth century.

US photographer. A leading experimental photographer and pioneer in staged photography, Sherman specializes in taking pictures, using herself as the model, in various staged roles suggested by cinema, advertising, and art.

American photographer, editor, and art exhibitor. The first art photographer in the United States, Stieglitz more than any other American compelled the recognition of photography as a fine art.

(Arthur Fellig), American photojournalist. Drawn to the grotesque and illicit, he created contrasty black-and-white shots of grisly crime scenes, fires, and car crashes and of New Yorkers at pleasure spots and grim scenes.

American photographer, b. Highland Park, Ill. Weston began to make photographs in Chicago parks in 1902, and his works were first exhibited in 1903 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

Born Edward James Muggeridge, also known as Muggridge, Maygridge, Muygridge, Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. He was a photographer, inventor, and lecturer. One of the most influential and colourful photographers of the nineteenth century, Muybridge's achievements span three distinct categories: landscape photography, motion photography, and early cinema.

American photographer, b. Oshkosh, Wis. Hine dedicated much of his photographic career, which began shortly after he bought his first camera in 1903, to exposing in sharp, painful images the social evils of the industrial revolution in the United States.