Paul Klee grew up in a family of musicians. His father, Hans Klee trained as a singer, and played the piano and the violin at Stuttgart conservator, where he met Ida Frick, Paul’s mother. Ida was training to be a singer as well.

They got married in 1875 and gave birth to their oldest daughter Mathilde, and on December 18th 1879 Pail was born. Paul started school in 1886. Paul began to play the violin at the age of seven.

Paul Klee was so good playing the Violin that at the age of eleven, he became an associate member of the orchestra that gave concerts at the Berne Music Society. At the same time he started drawing, being introduced to this new visual art form by his grandmother. Unlike his musical ability, his passion for drawing was not given encouragement by his parents. Klee kept so much in his parent’s mind that he did not let aside his violin lessons.

Paul Klee in his diary stated that he “would have gladly left school during the last year, but my parents’ wishes prevented me from doing so. I now felt like a martyr. After I had scraped through my school-leaving examination, I began to paint in Munich.” Klee’s decision to leave music aside was for the idea that music had passed its peak. Modern composers left him cold.

However, he had to sustain himself financially speaking, so he still played in an orchestra. He particularly liked the great composers of the 18th and 19th century.

Did you know that Rivera tried cubism?

The Cubist influence reached Diego Rivera in 1912, through his neighbors in Montparnasse the Dutch painters Piet Mondrian, Conrad Kikkert and Lodewijk Schelfhout. However, it was in the next year that his transition to Cubism took place.

In the following five years Rivera made over two hundred works. His attempts, following cubist influences, reached their apogee with the oil painting Woman at a Well. His pastel color’s palette is quite unusual through the earlier cubist artists. Rivera reached maturity in cubism with the painting Sailor at Breakfast, made in 1914. This work reflects better his friendship with Juan Gris, through the mixture of paint with sand and other substances, the thick application of paint and the use of a collage technique.

At his first one-man show in April 1914 at the Galerie Berthe Weil, Rivera included twenty-five cubist works, and some of them were even sold. After this success, his cubist paintings have been shown in exhibitions in Munich, Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam and Brussels. Rivera even took part in the Cubist painters debates, and the most heated discussion were held with Pablo Picasso.

Rivera met Pablo through the artist Ortiz de Zarate. One of Rivera’s last cubist paintings is Motherhood: Angelina and the Child Diego. The painting betrays his preoccupation with scientific and philosophical ideas that led to a so-called “classical” technique. The painting shows his first wife, Angelina holding in her hands Rivera’s son. Diego jr. fell ill weakened by cold and hunger and died at the end of 1918, at the age of two.

Rivera gave up cubist style after an incident called “the Rivera affair.” In the spring of 1917, Diego had a rough exchange with the art critique Pierre Reverdy, who became the theorist of Cubism during the war years. Reverdy wrote hurtful piece about the work of Rivera, in his book “Sur le Cubism.” That started a dispute when Rivera met the writer at a dinner arranged by Leonce Rosenberg. The result of this exchange of replicas was Rivera’s break up with Rosenberg and Picasso, and with the Cubist style. He also lost the friendship of Braque, Gris, Leger, Lipchitz and Severini. The painting Zapatista Landscape, bought by Rosenberg, had been locked away until the 1930s.

The following is a list of the top posts of the week that we’ve shared with our facebook friends on the overstockArt.com facebook page. We try and make our facebook posts informative and engaging as we love to hear what our fellow art lovin’ friend have to say about particular artists and their art. So if you have a moment, check out the overstockArt.com facebook page and share your passion for art and wall decor with us!

• A Classic Chinese Painting that sold for $11.4 Million in auction is found to be fake!
  In a major embarrassment, a painting by the Chinese modern master Xu Beihong that sold at auction last year for $11.4 million has been denounced as a fake!

  The painting — listed as an oil-on-canvas nude study of the artist’s wife, painted in the 1920s — was knocked down for a multi-million dollar price at the Beijing Jiuge Auction House last June. Jiuge was recently named by France’s Conseil de Ventes as one of the top 20 auction houses in the world by auction turnover…

• Winslow Homer’s impact on Watercolor
  American painter Winslow Homer (1836 – 1910) had a revolutionary impact upon watercolor artwork, with his fresh, natural style and beautifully depicted veils of atmosphere that remain unparalleled. Homer’s 1870s watercolors, many of which like “Moonlight” feature children, nostalgically memorialize the simplicity and innocence of the halcyon days before the Civil War.

  Homer excelled at illustration, oil painting, and watercolor and produced a body of work that departed from Impressionism’s artistic conventions. While many of his works — depictions of children at play, bucolic farm scenes, hunters and their prey — have become classic images of nineteenth century American life, other works speak to more universal themes such as man’s primal relationship with nature.

• Fall Color Trends: Deep Red, Purple, Yellow & Neutrals

  Fall is almost here! The advent of a new season is a great time to give your home design a bit of a refresh. Many of the color trends for 2011 reflect the feeling of autumn and the colors mother nature reveals during this time: deep reds, romantic purples, lighthearted yellows and soothing neutrals. Fall calls for warm, rich and cozy spaces, and we’ve created a special collection of our favorite oil paintings that incorporate these lovely hues, including a mini-lesson on the meaning of each color and how to best use them for decorating.

  Red: Red commands attention and can be used to symbolize love, passion and excitement, but it can also represent volatility, danger, and anger. Red is a stimulating color that excites individuals mentally and physically. In general, a little red goes a long way; red is an excellent accent color that can make a focal point more noticeable.

  Purple: The color purple has mystical, magical qualities and is generally an uplifting color that encourages creativity. Historically, purple was the color of royalty, though the shade of purple varied across cultures. Being the combination of both red and blue (the warmest and coolest colors in the spectrum), purple is said to be the ideal color – the bridge between these two opposites that creates a balance.

  
  Yellow: Often associated with the sun, yellow is a positive color that evokes sunny, optimistic feelings of warmth, happiness, even enlightenment. A great accent color, yellow can become a blast of energy when surrounded by cool, subdued colors, while a pale (mellow) yellow can work as a neutral alongside darker or richer colors.

  Neutrals: The tone on tone effect of neutral colors is calming, elegant and versatile. Black, white, silver, gray and brown are classic neutrals that make a great complement when juxtaposed with brighter colors or used as a backdrop. Neutral colors can be cool or warm but are more subtle than blues and reds.

  Explore the seasonal color trends in our new Fall art collection with oil paintings on canvas with tones to match the season.

• Franz Marc’s Vivid Colors
  “Blue is the male principle, astringent and spiritual. Yellow is the female principle, gentle, gay and spiritual. Red is matter, brutal and heavy, and always the color which must be fought and vanquished by the other two.” – Franz Marc

  Known for his use of vivid colors, painter and printer Franz Marc was born in Munich in 1880. His father was a landscape painter, and so Marc’s artistic talents were nurtured from an early age. He studied art both in his hometown and in Paris, and while in France, he was particularly struck by Van Gogh’s expressive use of color. Marc frequented many artists’ circles, and was good friends with “the father of abstract art,” Wassily Kandinsky (who studied art in Germany).

  Both Marc and Kandinsky were proponents of using art to express personal spiritual truths, and Marc made use of bright colors, futurist methods, and cubist touches to get his point across. Colors held special meanings and purposes for him, and as World War I drew near, Marc began to express his emotional agony. Marc often painted animals and nature scenes, but depicted them in an intense style that contrasted the seemingly tranquil nature of his subjects. He joined the war in 1914, and died in battle two years later.

  Visit our Franz Marc Gallery for more animated pastoral scenes in oil on canvas.

This is it! We hope you will continue to enjoy reading our ArtCorner blog and come join us on facebook for more artistic discussions!

Seurat studied color theory and embarked on color theory exploration in order to demonstrate their validity in painting. Most of the contemporary critics were not too keen of his art work, on the contrary, most of them ridiculed his art form, but today he is known as the founder of the pointillism art movement. His best works, such as “Bathers at Asnieres” or “A Sunday on La Grande Jatte” are now studied and admired all around the Globe.

At the beginning of his career, Seurat used J. Aviat’s notes as a guide. Aviat was a lady painter who wrote down Camille Corot’s tips. Seurat found them important in his art study, maybe you will too:

First you must feel your subject, in order, once you have grasped it, to paint it. Thereby: trust. When you copy Nature, you always learn something. I always try to see the work as a whole – like a child blowing a soap bubble. While the bubble is still small, it appears quite round. Then slowly the child blows it up until it is frightened that the bubble will burst. In the same way, I work on all the parts of my painting at once, and bring it cautiously to perfection until, at last, I have achieved the whole effect.”

Camile Corot always began with the shadows, because that hit the eye of the viewer. The artist was interested when he looked at a painting in the form and the importance if the tones. Color wasn’t important, but what you do with it, in order to bring harmony to the tones. “In a painting there is always a point of light, but it must be the only one. You can put it wherever you like: in a cloud, in a reflection on the water or on a cap. But only one should have this intensity.” From this theory resulted Seurat’s “Suburb” or “Seated Woman,” both made in 1883.

Even if Seurat took this “advice” he had begun studying the principles of color in greater detail. For Seurat color was an important part of a painting, and therefore, it must be studied rigorously. Thus “Modern Chromatics” a book written by the New York physicist and amateur Ogden Nicholas Rood, took his attention. It is a study of color theory, which supports that colors reach the eye as different wavelengths, and are mixed on the retina. This gave Seurat the great idea of juxtaposing dabs of primary colors on the canvas rather than mixing them on the palette.

Rood is the one who confirmed that red, yellow and blue are primary colors. He also suggested that orange-red, green and violet-blue give light to the painting.

These theories of color were discussed in a circle of painters to which Seurat was introduced by Signac. Also, the adepts of these ideas were Armand Guillaumin and Camille Pissaro.

Another important theory for Seurat had been written by Charles Henry in the book “Esthethique scientifique”, published in 1885. The principle was rather simple: some lines directions give the viewer the feeling of happiness and others of sadness. Thus, the teaching was about the reduction of sensations to joy and pain, and their reinterpretation on canvas as “dynamogeny” and “inhibitory.” According to this theory, lines moving upwards or from right to left are “dynamogenic” and express happiness, whereas sadness and pain are associated with downwards or from left to right. Colors also have their counterpart in this theory. Red and yellow together with their mixtures stimulate happiness and we can say there are “dynamogenic,” while green, violet and blue give an “inhibitory” effect to the viewer. The most “dynamogenic” color is, in Henry’s opinion, red and the most “inhibitory” is its complementary. The paintings that resulted from this point of view were Seurat’s “Young woman Powdering Herself,” “The Circus” and “Le Chahut.”

Seurat not only put in practice these theories, but also came with his own. In a letter to Maurice Beaubourg, in 1980, he wrote out some of his ideas:

Art is harmony. Harmony is the analogy of contrasting and similar elements, of tone, color and line which, in accordance with their dominant and the influence of the light, can produce cheerful, peaceful or sad compositions.”

In Seurat’s theory the contrasts were: “for tonal value, a bright, light one in contrast to darker one. For color, the complementary colors. For line, those which form a right angle”. He gave cheerfulness as an example. In order to produce the value that gives cheerfulness you have to produce a bright dominant, in color, you make warm dominant, and in line by lines above the horizon. Seurat applied this theory for the first time in “Invitation to the Slideshow”.

Fall is in the air, now bring it in to your home with the season’s hottest decorating trends. Design Expert Dawn Kail of overstockArt.com, makes it easy to add a little fall flair to your home décor with a top five list of decorating trends and tips.

“Fall décor trends feature a mosaic of different colors, textures and decorating styles,” said Kail. “By adding the rich jewel tones and various vintage and natural design elements you will create a cozy autumnal setting that brings the beauty of the season inside your home.”

Create a fall feeling in your home with Kail’s top five decorating tips:

• Rich jewel tones – According to the Pantone Color Institute, the must have fall colors include navy black, coffee brown, phlox (a deep purple shade), jade green, rust, asparagus and pumpkin orange. An easy way to incorporate these rich jewel tones is to add a touch of the colors with pillows, rugs, throws and painted accent pieces.
• Visual and actual texture – Home décor trends this season are marked by a comforting combination of visual and actual texture. Mix wood furnishings with opulent velvet upholstery, herringbone rugs, wool throws, and thick, textured fall themed oil paintings.
• Natural décor elements – An easy way to bring the beauty of fall’s rich color palette into your home is by decorating with natural elements. Create a vibrant fall leaf arrangement by displaying fallen branches, leaves, dried berries and acorns in a glass bowl or on the mantle. Bring the outdoors into your living room with a coffee table made from a slab of wood, stone vases, and marble decorations. Use natural fabrics throughout the home: wool throws, burlap pillows, and organic cotton bedding.
• Vintage – Another trend this season is to make old things new again. Decorating with vintage décor in our twenty-first century spaces creates a comforting sense of nostalgia and warmth. Now is the time to go through your old heirlooms, garage sale and flea-market finds and show them off in a new light. Time to decorate with grandmother’s vintage jade glassware, the embroidered pillow you found at a thrift shop, and the antique chair you just re-upholstered in lush velvet.
• Double-duty décor – Multi-tasking goes into overload in the fall with busy back-to-school schedules and holiday planning already begun. Double duty home décor items that bring style and function into your home are very trendy right now. Use decorative bowls for display and to organize small household items and school supplies, add a welcoming and useful touch to your front entryway or foyer with wall mounted coat racks, or use fine art trivet tiles during your meals and to introduce the fall color palette to your kitchen and dining room.

“The key to home decoration is to keep your furniture neutral so you can easily add a piece of artwork or accent item to give the room a whole new look,” said Kail.

Do you have any cool fall decorating tips to share? Looking for a second opinion on your own decor? Let us know and we’ll be happy to take a look!

The American abstract expressionism won the millionaire’s hearts when coming to spending money. In recent years the Impressionist’s predominant control of the art market has been overtaken by the abstract art movement. The following is a run-down of the most expensive paintings ever sold:

The most expensive painting ever sold is said to be Jackson Pollok’s “Number 5, 1948″. It is said that the art work was bought for $140 million at a private sale in 2006, though the exact price was never confirmed. David Greffen sold it to an unknown buyer, whom is rumored to be David Martinez, a Mexican business man.

The second most expensive painting in art history is Willem De Kooning’s “Woman III,” bought for $137.5 million by Steven Cohen. It is the only woman painting by Kooning owned by a private person.

Gustav Klimt’s “Adele Bloch-bauer I” sits in the 3rd place in the top 10 most expensive artworks. The cosmetic magnate, Ronald Lauder bought it for $135 million, at a private sale, in 2006. The painting originally belonged to Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, but the Nazis confiscated it during World War II. In 1948, after the war, the art work was placed at the National Gallery of Austria.

“Nude, Green Leaves and Bust” by Pablo Picasso is worth $106.5 million. The price was paid by an anonymous buyer, at the Christine’s New York auction, in May 2010. This is the biggest price ever paid at an auction.

The “Nude” painting is followed in top 10 most expensive art works by another canvas made by Picasso, “Garcon a la pipe” (Boy with a Pipe). Now it is in the hands of an anonymous buyer who spend on it over $104 million, at the Sotherby’s auction, in May 2004.

Andy Warhol’s “Eight Elvises” completes the rank, on number 6. The painting is worth $100 million and was sold at a private auction in 2008.

Picasso is present again in the ranking to number 7 with “Dora Maar au chat” (Dora Maar with Cat). The painting was sold at the Sotherby’s auction, in May 2006, for $95.2 million.

Titian is the only old master in the rank, with “Diana and Actaeon,” sold at a private sale on February 2009. A buyer from United Kingdom has it now for $91 million.

Sold only a few months later than Klimt’s first version of “Adele,” the second painting was worth $87.9 million.

Francis Bacon closes the rank with “Tryptich 1976.” A European private buyer gave on it $86.3 million, at the Sotherby’s, in May 2008.

Interesting to note that of the top 10 most sold paintings in history, half of them were bought in 2006, just before the financial meltdown of 2008.

Some painters struck gold by selling their artworks. However most died poor.

In the list of the top 50 most expensive paintings ever sold, Vincent van Gogh and Pablo Picasso are by far the best represented artists. Picasso became a wealthy man in his illustrious career, while Van Gogh sold only one painting in his lifetime.

The Impressionist painter and renowned collector, Anna Boch, bought her first Van Gogh (“The Red Vineyard”) shortly after his death in 1890. She spent on it 400 Francs ($1600 in today’s values), today it would have the ‘priceless’ tag as most Van Gogh’s do…

“Vase with Fifteen Sunflowers” by Vincent van Gogh was bought for of £24.75 Million on March 1987. The sale was significant because it was the first time that a modern artwork became the record holder, in contrast to the old master paintings.

However, the most expensive painting in art history has not been sold in any auction or private sale. Guinness World Records lists the Mona Lisa by Leonardo Da Vinci as having the highest insurance value for a painting in history. It was estimated at $100 million on December 14, 1962. Taking inflation into account, the Mona Lisa would be valued today at around $743 million!

A painter is very sensitive to what happens around him. He is an observer of life and tries to immortalize specific moments by applying parts of reality on canvas. In order to do that he has to look at it very carefully. Therefore, a painter is often interested in other forms of arts: in literature, music, and in this case the ballet, as the movement of the body creates a new reality in the viewer’s eyes. It creates an esthetic beauty from whom you can’t take your eyes off.

How to communicate to the world how you feel when watching a dancer? Could you understand it better if you try to curve your own body in the rhythm of the music? The painter observes the dancer as if hypnotized by the wavy movement of the dancer.

Some may like the art itself and try to understand it. Others have their attention drawn by the movements and sensitivity that the dancer’s body gets by trying to convey a fact of life. Like painting, in order to dance you do not need words. Thus, the painter lays down on canvas an art through another art form. Dance is a story in itself, a story of the body. Therefore dancing has been a very attractive theme for painters such as Edgar Degas.

The ballet subject captured his attention from the 1870s. At first, it was a necessity for Edgar Degas to paint ballerinas, because they were easier to sell, and he was bankrupt. In his first paintings, he included ballet rehearsal themes, such as Ballet Rehearsal on Stage. In this picture Degas tried to show the atmosphere, by the contrasts between the glare of the limelight and the rich shadows in the back, dark stage. Degas points this out by augmenting that “the attraction lies not in showing the source of the light but in showing its effects.” Some say that the non-colorful chiaroscuro of this work is an allusion to the new visual technique of photography.

From then on Degas tried to discover the unusual perspective effects in various paintings by studying the movement of ballerinas. At the same time, the pictures became more colorful. He tried to capture those elements that send the viewer to another world that he cannot perceive.

He showed the ballerina’s world, both by feelings of dancers spread on canvas, and by presenting the viewer to a world that he cannot see except on stage, the world behind the scenes. In fact, it is Degas ballerinas who determined his popular image to this day. He was particularly interested in the hard work dancing requires. His pictures tell a tale of tough examinations, hard practice and beauty of the live performance. The paintings contain dynamic movements and sheer paralysis, motion and rigidity.

However, his most famous ballerina is The Star, made between 1876 and 1877. The dancer is seen in a solo turn on an empty stage. The asymmetry of the painting reinforces the impression of a glimpse of the fleeting moment, which is Degas’s mark.

For the artist ballet represented “everything that remains of the harmonic, unified movement of the Greeks.” Dancing is a reality outside and inside the performer. It presents another part of human both as a dancer and as a viewer. Each had their own feelings, just as Degas writes in his poem:

Everything that the fine word mime implies,
Everything that is said of the ballet,
The body’s silent eloquence – all they say
Of physical mystery in their witty lies,

Those who would pin down Woman as she flies,
Forever on the wing, severely gay,
A butterfly soul, immortal for a day,
Alive unlike a book where pleasure dies –

All that, and the grace of an Atalanta,
The artful artless graces, you have, dancer.
The grace of traditions, the being and seeming,

The secret of the forest: at a very dawn,
At every step I take, you are in my dreaming –
But you, you pause only to tease an elderly faun.”