10 Amazing Facts - about the World's most Famous Artists

Great artists are often very complex characters. These short art videos cover just 10 amazing facts about each one. Basic information such as context of when the artist lived and what effect that had on their art are talked about. Looking for more detailed information? Checkout Art History School

The artist’s drive, ambition and motivations are all discussed as well as some of their great paintings.
Enjoy.

This short artist video covers 10 important incidents in the life of the artist Vincent Van Gogh. Van Gogh started life as a teacher, an art dealer and a preacher before beginning to paint at the age of 27. The ear cutting episode, the creation of the sunflower paintings and his mental decline, are all covered in this short artist tutorial.

This short artist tutorial explores the long and interesting life of Claude Monet, the French Impressionist painter. Many elements of Monet’s life are covered in the video, from his early caricatures created in Le Havre in the 1850’s, through to the great Impressionist era of the 1870’s. The video concludes with his great water lily paintings produced in Giverny during the last 30 years of his life.

Some fascinating aspects of Pablo Picasso’s long life are explored in this short artist tutorial. Pablo was a child prodigy – he could draw and paint brilliantly – completing 5 years at art school by the age of 18. The video discusses his paintings, and Guernica in particular. It also mentions his female companions such as Olga Khokhlova, before briefly discussing his Blue Period and Cubism. It also suggests why Picasso is regarded as a genius.

The French artist and painter Henri Matisse started painting late, after training to be a lawyer. This short artist tutorial explains his three attempts to get into the Ecole des Beaux Arts in Paris. His meeting with Andre Derain and Maurice Vlaminck led to the creation of Fauvism. Colour was his passion and his paintings are comfortable and easy on the eye. Later in life he produced cutouts, that we see today as amazing collages.

10 important elements of the life of Kandinsky are covered in this short artist video. He was trained as a Law professor before his move into the arts. His meeting with Gabriele Münter, his investigations into colour and his move towards abstraction and abstract art are discussed. Music influenced his painting and his work with the Blue Rider, together with his teaching at the Bauhaus, are all covered. He died in obscurity in 1944.

The French naïve painter, Henri Rousseau, was born in Laval in France and worked for a solicitor when he left school. In this short artist tutorial we follow his life from when he joined the army in 1863 to moving to Paris. In 1868 he married Clemence Boitard, before getting a job as a tax collector. He claimed he didn’t start painting until he was 42, but evidence shows him painting in the Louvre at least 2 years earlier. He was totally self-taught.

Andy Warhol the American Pop artist is covered in this short art tutorial. A controversial artist, Andy used everyday objects such as soup cans, brillo boxes, cartoons, and comic strip characters as the basis of his work. Obsessed with Hollywood he created lots of celebrity portraits of Marilyn Monroe, Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger and Richard Nixon amongst others. The video covers his early life in Pittsburgh to his death in New York in 1987.

Georgia O’Keeffe the American artist known for her close-up paintings of flowers, is explored in this short artist tutorial. Tracking her life from her humble beginnings in Wisconsin, to the remarkable paintings she produced in Abiquiu, New Mexico this short artist tutorial tracks her life. This indomitable woman was one of the pioneers of American Modern Art. She died in 1986 aged 98. Watch our short artist videos to find out more.

Piet Mondrian was a man with two conflicting traits to his temperament that had a great influence on his painting. One was a sense of feeling for rhythm, which was reflected in his interest in music, particularly jazz. The other was his love of order and balance. These two conflicting qualities ebbed and flowed throughout his career, but found resolution in his later abstract paintings, eg. Broadway Boogie Woogie