HIROSHI YOSHIDA

 

Post -332 (This artist was published in 2018 -it is now being republished on this Blog site.

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Hiroshi Yoshida (1876-1950) was a Japanese painter and wood-block print-maker. He began his artistic training with his adoptive father. Hiroshi Yoshida is regarded as one of the greatest artists of the shin-hanga style. Around the age of twenty, he moved to Kyoto, and later to Tokyo. Yoshida travelled widely across the world. He is known for the excellent depiction of local architecture and people, but yet maintained his Japanese flavour.

Yoshida, From 1920, started giving attention to print making. His wood-block style prints are characterized by neat edge delineation of the form, and nearly shade-less in-fill of colour into the formed zones. He adapted, both, the oil and water, colours in art, He was the key person in the Meiji Fine Arts Society.

Yoshida had excellent sense of colour contrast, and capacity to form complex composition of visual elements. His, this talent was nearly unmatched. He was an artist of the industrial age and wars, but these have not affected his art subjects.

 

.

ANTONIO SANT'ELIA

 

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -by Gautam Shah

Post -331

Antonio Sant'Elia, (1888-1916), was an Italian architect. He studied at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts (1909-11), and then graduated in architecture at Bologna (1912). He began to produce architectural images from 1911 onwards. 

At that point of time, the scene in Europe was live with classicism and art nouveau. Sant’Elia was first influenced by Otto Wagner, Adolf Loos, Renzo Picasso, and the Viennese Secession movement. But, he began to develop his own style, through learning about modern materials, technologies and new trends in architecture.

Sant’Elia became an influential member of the Futurist movement in architecture. He was instrumental in composing The Manifesto of Futurist Architecture (published in 1914). The futurists believed, traditional architectural styles were outdated and inadequate for the new realities.

Sant'Elia's vision consisted of an industrialized and mechanized city of the future. This was perceived not as a conglomerate of buildings, but as a large integrated urban entity. His designs have oblique lines, elliptical forms, towers, multi-level movement areas, stepped walls, etc.

His life was interrupted by the outbreak of the war, in which he participated as a volunteer, and died. His only completed work, is the Villa Elisi in San Maurizio.

A considerable number of schematic drawings were produced during the years, 1913-14. These are villas, towers, bridges, lighthouses, workshops, railway stations, power plants and high-rise apartments. 

 

.

1 Industrial Age ART

 

SUNDAY Feature on ART of Architecture -ASSORTS -by Gautam Shah  

Post 330

1 Industrial Age ART

Industrial age marks a period from later half of 18^th C to first half of 19^th. It was a period of significant innovations and social upheaval. This included migration from rural areas, fast urbanization and degradation of social life.

Art, branched in to two major streams. 1 The artists of the period went on to country life, coastal, uncharted territories for tracing fresh scenes. First it was plein-air, but followed by Impressionism and Expressionism. 2 At another extreme, the artists stayed in own urban localities, capturing industrial buildings, production areas, construction sites, poor condition of workers and the evolving city scapes. In both the cases, the common characteristic was truthful depiction without any personal bias. But both Arts, were subtly experimenting with the form and composition, which ultimately led, to cubism, abstraction and surrealism, etc.

Some used, plein-air sketching, whereas, others began to use camera for the first capture. This was also the period when artists’ colours, in many pre-mixed shades, began to be available in collapsible tubes. Black colour was a taboo for centuries, now, Auguste Renoir believed it to be ‘the king of all colours’ and Vincent Van Gogh, said ‘whoever tries to suppress the black, has nothing to do (with art?)’.

There were few distinct classes of Industrial Age Art. Urban Landscape showing street architecture and Industrial plants, Complexities of construction sites and technical buildings, like cranes, silos, bridges, towers, scaffolding, degradation of living environments, urban level twilight and night street scenes, modern life-style (fashion), and new modes of entertainments.

 

,