Articles

Roberto Matta, Untitled (Psychological Morphology) (detail), 1939, © Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris via Art Institute of Chicago

Arthur Kingsley

Roberto Matta, the Surrealist Who Painted the Mind

A Chilean architect trained under Le Corbusier painted the landscapes of the mind, taught automatism to New York's future stars, and was expelled by Breton.

Vu Cao Dam, Conversation d'élégantes au jardin (Conversation of Elegant Women in the Garden), 1939 via Sotheby’s

Sebastian Moore

The Life and Career of Vietnamese Painter Vu Ca...

A Hanoi-trained sculptor reached Paris in 1931, lost access to bronze during the war, and remade himself as a painter of silk and Riviera light.

Johannes Vermeer, The Wine Glass, 1658–60 via Wikipedia/Public Domain

Arthur Kingsley

Inside Vermeer's Illustrious Career and Few Sur...

A look at the surviving Vermeer paintings and the discourse of attribution, from his early history scenes to the quiet interiors that closed out his career.

Irving Norman, Flight (detail), 1955 via the artist’s website

Taylor Grant

Irving Norman: The Social Surrealist Painter, R...

A machine gunner turned painter filled room-sized canvases with jewel-toned visions of war, until a 2003 article pulled him from obscurity.

Artemisia Gentileschi, Mary Magdalene in Ecstasy, c. 1625 via National Gallery of Art

Louisa Penrose

Artemisia Gentileschi: Life and Career of a Bar...

Artemisia Gentileschi survived a public rape trial at seventeen and went on to become the first woman admitted to Florence's painting academy.

Lee Krasner, Palingenesis, 1971. Pollock-Krasner Foundation, New York © The Pollock-Krasner Foundation via Kasmin Gallery, New York

Eliza Warren

Lee Krasner Destroyed Her Own Paintings to Keep...

Lee Krasner was already an established New York painter before Jackson Pollock. Inside a career built on destruction, reinvention, and grief.

Arshile Gorky, How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life, 1944, © Arshile Gorky Foundation, via the Arshile Gorky Foundation [AGCR: P296]

Nathan Cole

Arshile Gorky and the Art of Studying Everyone ...

Before his signature abstraction, Arshile Gorky moved through Cézanne, Picasso, Munch, Léger, and Kandinsky, building the language that made him.

David Montgomery, David Hockney, 1969, Getty Images via W Magazine.

Nathan Cole

David Hockney (1937-2026): A Life in Light and ...

David Hockney, the pioneering British painter behind A Bigger Splash, has died at 88. A look at his life, work, and lasting influence.

Katsushika Hokusai, Carp Swimming by Water Weeds, 1831. Accession no. 1943.3 via The Cleveland Museum of Art

Samuel Reed

Why Katsushika Hokusai Is Art History’s Greates...

Hokusai transformed the woodblock print through radical compositions, atmospheric landscapes, and graphic experimentation that reshaped the history of art.

Mary Cassatt, Nurse Reading to a Little Girl, 1895 via The Met

Eliza Warren

Mary Cassatt’s Oeuvre in the Art of Youth and W...

From Parisian theatre boxes to domestic interiors, Mary Cassatt developed an Impressionist oeuvre centered on women, childhood, intimacy, and everyday life.