CHRISTOPHER WOOD

 

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture by Gautam Shah

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Christopher Wood (1901-1930) was a British painter. He trained as a painter, From 1921, at the Académie Julian in Paris. He travelled around Europe and north Africa between 1922 and 1924. Wood committed suicide, at the age 29. Most of Wood's greatest works are from 1929 and 1930 (just before he committed suicide).

Wood was ‘known for his idiosyncratic paintings depicting the region around St. Ives’. He painted the openness of the sea coast (Cornwall, Brittany) that was full of pleasure. He was forced to use cheap oil paints and often house paints, and cheap canvas.

Wood extensively used awkward perspectives and distorted scale to create naivety in his art. Wood’s use of colour is muted for his landscape art of coastal scenes, but brilliant in portraits. He used simple brush strokes, minimal details to paint people or objects.

Wood saw the world from his own sensuality and not for confirmation from anyone. He painted a zebra surreally standing on the roof terrace of Le Corbusier’s Villa Savoye near Paris. This was also supposed to be a cover for a book by Irish poet Paul Muldoon, but rejected by the publisher.

GUO XI

 

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

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Guo Xi (1020-1090) was a Chinese landscape painter of Northern Song Dynasty, from Henan Province. His works cover a wide variety of themes, like forests, mists, mountains, skies, seasons, rocks. He also painted large screens, walls and scrolls. He was a well-educated courtier.

Guo Xi developed a style of brushstrokes and manner of presenting the details. He used multiple layers (as many as 8) of ink, to create soft blended areas in his paintings. His style is characterized by curled impressionistic strokes for clouds, rocks, trees and mountains. Guo Xi painted three types of trees, lesser-bending trees, crouching, gnarled trees and vertical tall trees, each representing a trait of human personality.

Guo Xi’s major contribution, to Art of Landscape painting was to depict multiple view points in the same scene. This technique, called ‘the angle of totality’ produced a blend of multiple perspectives or floating perspective.

Guo xi’s work inspired many later artists and even had landscapes dedicated to him.

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JACOB JOHANN VERREYT

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SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

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Jacob Johann Verreyt (1807-1872) was Belgium painter of moon, nocturnal scenes and mountains. He was the most a powerful representative of the ‘Belgian Romantic school of painting’. He had his art education in Antwerp, but mostly stayed in Germany. He worked with portraits, figures, genre scenes, landscapes, usually by moonlight. He exploited the darker tones. His contour lines and edges are well defined. He worked in oil and watercolour.

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