How well do you know your Art? Below are images of paintings from overstockArt.com currently available in our online gallery.  If you think you can identify the artist and title of each work, please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We will provide the correct answers  in one week (on Friday, Sept. 3rd), along with our next ReproduceTHIS: Know your Art challenge.

Congrats to… <drum role>  No one?
Gold star goes to Amitai. The only person brave enough to make a guess.

Did I stump everyone with that first game?
Lets see if we can get a few more players to take a crack at this new game board.
Good Luck!

How well do you know your Art? Below are images of paintings from overstockArt.com currently available in our online gallery. If you think you can identify the artist and title of each work, please submit your answers by leaving a comment on this post. We will provide the correct answers  in one week (on Friday, August 27th), along with our next ReproduceTHIS: Do you know your Art? challenge.

Good Luck! We will also be posting a congratulations to one weekly winner.

It is a well known fact that Vincent Van Gogh would paint over his own work again and again.

Now, in 2008 scientists have finally revealed the portrait of a woman thought to have been hiding just under the surface of “Patch of Grass,” created in 1887. This new technique based on “synchrotron radiation induced X-ray fluorescence spectroscopy” (repeat that three times fast) can measure the chemicals in pigment that help decipher the various images between each painted layer. These chemical differences are what separate one color from another within the layered surface of the painting forming a visually separate image.

This discovery will give art historians incite to the evolution of Van Gogh’s work and this newest technique will provide even more answers to other lost images perhaps hidden just under the surface of other artist’s paintings.

Can you imagine if they find a another masterpiece hidden behind the Starry Night oil painting?

Georgia Totto O’Keeffe, like most artists, had a life that was to say at the very least interesting.

Georgia O’Keeffe was a poor Midwest farm girl who became the first woman allowed to have one-woman art shows by major museums. When creating her works she liked to undress, get down on her knees and sketch onto sheets of paper that lay on the floor. She would then hang her work around the room to evaluate each one. Georgia tore up every page because she thought the work mimicked other artists. At a young age she would start over and over again hoping to find her own style of imagery

O’Keeffe worked as a commercial artist for 2 years helping her family through her father’s failed business before entering summer art classes where she excelled with natural talent. When she moved to Amarillo, Texas she became a drawing teacher for another 2 years wearing black tailored outfits and her hair pulled tightly back behind her. The townies found her odd from her clothes and the long walks she would take alone.

From Texas she moved to Columbia, South Carolina instructing art at a teachers college. Still struggling to find her personal style in abstract shapes O’Keeffe mailed these drawings to her friend Anita Pollitzer who showed them to Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz exhibited 10 of these drawings in his gallery without O’Keeffe’s permission who confronted him and demanded that the exhibition be closed. The event would not be shut down and the viewing public was shocked over her sexually charged forms. Georgia would forever deny intentionally creating the sexually charged visuals that people saw in her work.

Georgia, young enough to be Stieglitz’s daughter, became involved while he was still married to his wife. They married after his divorce became final and were together until his death. In addition to being together they would also see other people. Stieglitz would sleep around with other women and O’Keeffe would sleep around with both men and women. On one or more occasion Georgia and Alfred were lovers to the same woman.

Georgia found sexual comfort with same sex and mixed couples. One of her crushes was on Margery Latimer and Blanche Matthias. Matthias continuously asked Stieglitz to introduce O’Keeffe to his wife. The couples became great friends hanging out at all night parties.

Spite O’Keeffe’s extra curricular activities she wished to settle down in peace and quiet, not fond of traveling, art exhibitions or dealing with selling her art. She shunned the spotlight unlike other artists, but she did like that other people admired her work.

O’Keeffe would settle in New Mexico calling her home Ghost Ranch and enjoy the view of nature. O’Keeffe would continue to win many awards and show in galleries through the yeas that followed, but started to loose her eye site starting at age 84. This would not slow her creative speed however. She continued to work with the help of an assistant, Juan Hamilton, painting and working in clay.

Georgia received the Medal of Freedom from President Ford in 1977 and the National Medal of Arts from President Reagan in 1985. O’Keeffe died at age 98 leaving most of her estate to her assistant Juan causing a legal suit from her family. Hamilton eventually turned over more than 2/3 of his inheritance to the museums and institutions in her original will.

Fernande, Eva, Olga, Marie-Therese, Dora, Francoise, Jacqueline. These were the women who shaped the life and art of Pablo Picasso.

Fernande Olivier was Picasso’s first love. Her presence showed a significant change in his female nude art. He was a jealous lover and often kept Fernande locked up when he went out alone.

Picasso left Fernande nine years later for another woman Eva Gouel. The affair with Eva, however, did not last long and shortly after their break up she died from tuberculosis. Eva was the first lover to never get over Picasso living in sadness until her death.

Olga Koklova was a Russian ballet dancer who became Picasso’s first wife. Her Russian bourgeois social connections changed Picasso’s life and social work. She gave birth to his son, Paulo and his life with Olga became very demanding. It was after this time that he lost his interest and their marriage fell apart. Picasso’s style became aggressive using colors that expressed his anxiety over Olga who was showing signs of madness. Picasso soon left Olga and she suffered a nervous breakdown with the ending of their marriage. She would stalk him and his mistresses in the following years hoping to regain his interest.

After Olga there was Marie-Therese Walter who played both lover and model for Picasso. It was Therese who gave birth to Picasso’s first daughter, Maya, but never became his wife, though she wanted to be. It would be several years later that Therese would be found with a rope around her neck in the garage of her home, an apparent suicide.

Dora Maar was next with the reputation of a successful photographer and the supposed reason for Picasso taking leave from Marie Therese. Dora became Picasso’s lover for seven years witnessing the step by step creation of the Guernica. Picasso’s use of his lovers in his art is unquestionable, therefore, it isn’t surprising to find Dora Maar’s features in this brilliant masterpiece.

Usually portrayed as a weeping woman by Picasso Dora suffered mental health problems after their break up and is considered the tragic muse of Picasso.

Francoise Gilot was another tragic lover of Picasso. They met when she was only 23 and Picasso was in his mid 60’s, Francoise thought she was entering a world of exciting possibilities in her personal life and artistic career. They stayed together for ten years where she put up with his posturing and unfaithfulness. Francoise had a son and a daughter with Picasso, and after he left her, she appeared to be the only woman to move forward with her life and forget him.

Picasso met his final muse, Jacqueline Roque, while cheating on Francoise. She lived with him becoming not only his lover and muse, but secretary as well. She dedicated herself to Picasso and his work for 20 years until his death in 1973. After he died Jacqueline shot herself, another tragic end to a muse from Picasso’s list.

Diego Rivera was born in Guanajuato, Mexico in 1886; his twin brother died a little over a year old and Rivera fell sick. On the advice of a doctor, the boy was sent to the mountains with his nanny, later boasting that she was the first of his many conquests. He established himself as a talented artist first drawing at age three. His father, wishing to spare the house walls decorated a room covered in paper for the child to paint on. Rivera would later say these were his first murals.

Rivera enrolled in an art school years later. He claimed that while a student, he and some friends decided to try cannibalism having heard that it would make them healthy and strong. The boys supposedly bought and ate cadavers making them strong and healthy. At that time Rivera started having affairs with women many years his senior. How these two subjects related in his mind are beyond me.

Though exenterated these stories are part of the legend Rivera built around himself. And it is true that, though he was an unattractive man with a frog-like face, he had considerable success with women throughout his life. Who needs looks when you have talent?

A large man of huge appetites, eating and drinking, he also indulged his craving for womanizing. In Spain he began living with Russian painter Angelina Beloff and had a son who died as a child. When Rivera left for Mexico he told Beloff he would send for her, but never did. Instead he moved to Paris and met another Russian, Marevna Vorobieva, who bore him a daughter. In addition to his womanizing ways he was also known for his volatile temper engaging in many fights with those who ridiculed his work when cubism came under attack. Unable to sell his art, he returned to Mexico, broke in 1921 their he met a special lady named Frida Kahlo.