Meet the artists
Discover the lives, ideas and artworks behind the names. Explore illustrated biographies and original Mazevoo articles.
Caspar David Friedrich
1774 — 1840-05-07Caspar David Friedrich made landscape a setting for reflection. His mountains, shorelines and solitary figures helped define German Romantic painting.
Read the biography →Cassius Marcellus Coolidge
1844 — 1934Cassius Marcellus Coolidge is best known for comic paintings of dogs acting like people, particularly the works commonly grouped as Dogs Playing Poker.
Read the biography →Childe Hassam
1859-10-17 — 1935-08-27Childe Hassam brought Impressionist color and atmosphere to American streets, gardens and coastal scenes. His city views capture the changing life of their surroundings.
Read the biography →Claude Monet
1840 — 1926Claude Monet explored changing light through gardens, rivers and landscapes. His repeated studies of familiar places helped make Impressionism a new way of seeing.
Read the biography →Diego Velázquez
1599 — 1660Diego Velázquez combined acute observation with a remarkably flexible painting technique. His portraits and court scenes are central works of Spanish Baroque art.
Read the biography →Edvard Munch
1863 — 1944Edvard Munch used color and simplified forms to explore emotion, memory and human relationships. His work helped prepare the way for German Expressionism.
Read the biography →Franz Marc
1880 — 1916Franz Marc made animals central to a vivid, expressive vision of nature. He helped establish Der Blaue Reiter, a major group in German modern art.
Read the biography →Georges Seurat
1859 — 1891Georges Seurat brought a deliberate structure to scenes of modern life. His pointillist technique explored how small touches of color combine in the viewer’s eye.
Read the biography →Gustav Klimt
1862-07-14 — 1918Gustav Klimt combined figures, ornament and rich surface pattern in a distinctive approach to painting. His work became closely associated with Vienna’s artistic renewal around 1900.
Read the biography →Hieronymus Bosch
c. 1450 — 1516Hieronymus Bosch filled religious and moral subjects with extraordinary creatures and intricate imagined worlds. His paintings reward close looking at both their stories and their details.
Read the biography →Ivan Aivazovsky
1817 — 1900Ivan Aivazovsky specialized in seascapes, from storms and shipwrecks to maritime scenes. His reputation was built on the drama and atmosphere of the sea.
Read the biography →J. M. W. Turner
c. 1775-04-23 — 1851J. M. W. Turner explored the power of light, weather and color in landscape and marine painting. His work ranges from precise early views to freely handled atmospheric scenes.
Read the biography →Jean-Honoré Fragonard
1732 — 1806Jean-Honoré Fragonard brought movement and imagination to decorative painting, portraits and scenes of everyday life. His lively handling of paint is closely associated with French Rococo art.
Read the biography →Johannes Vermeer
1632 — 1675Johannes Vermeer is celebrated for carefully composed scenes and an exceptional sensitivity to light. His small surviving body of work is closely connected with Delft.
Read the biography →John Collier
1850 — 1934-04-11John Collier painted portraits and narrative scenes with a strong emphasis on observation. He was also a writer on the practice of art.
Read the biography →Leonardo da Vinci
1452 — 1519Leonardo da Vinci joined artistic observation with an enduring curiosity about nature, anatomy and engineering. His paintings and drawings profoundly influenced Renaissance art.
Read the biography →Pablo Picasso
1881 — 1973Pablo Picasso continually reconsidered how images could be made. His long career crossed painting, sculpture and other media, with Cubism among his most influential contributions.
Read the biography →Pierre-Auguste Renoir
1841 — 1919Pierre-Auguste Renoir explored light and movement through landscapes and figure painting. His work is closely associated with the color and sociability of French Impressionism.
Read the biography →Rembrandt
1606 — 1669Rembrandt combined close observation with a powerful sense of human presence. His portraits and narrative scenes made him a central figure in Dutch painting.
Read the biography →Salvador Dalí
1904 — 1989Salvador Dalí combined recognizable objects with unsettling transformations. His paintings, films and other works made him one of the best-known figures associated with Surrealism.
Read the biography →Sandro Botticelli
c. 1445 — 1510Sandro Botticelli is known for graceful figures and flowing contours in religious and mythological painting. His work belongs to the artistic culture of Renaissance Florence.
Read the biography →Vincent van Gogh
1853-03-30 — 1890Vincent van Gogh used expressive brushwork and vivid color to give landscapes, flowers and everyday subjects an unmistakable energy. His paintings are central to Post-Impressionism.
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