Jean-Charles Cazin is an intriguing and influential artist of the late 19^th-century, French Realist movement. His style defies easy classification among the artistic currents of his day and was atypical compared to his famous contemporaries. Similar to his friend and contemporary Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904), Cazin was of the same generation as the Impressionists yet he followed his own realist interpretation of nature. While mainly a landscape artist, Cazin’s early works focus on genre studies and interior scenes as well. However, it is as an innovative landscape artist that he acquired world renown.

The son of a doctor, Cazin was born in Samer in the northern Pas-de-Calais region of France. The family moved from Samer to Boulogne-sur-Mer when he was five. As a young boy he displayed a talent for drawing which his parents encouraged. The seaside landscapes of this area marked Cazin’s artistic sensibilites. Cazin finished his education in England where he was strongly influenced by the pre-Raphaelite movement. In 1863, he enrolled in the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin, studying under Horace Lecoq de Boisbaudran (1802-1897).

The 1860s was a significant period in Cazin’s development. During this time he met and established friendships with his contemporaries Bonvin, Fantin-Latour, Legros, Ribot and Lhermitte and was one of the exhibitors at the now famous Salon des Refusées in 1863, where he exhibited Souvenir des Dunes de Wissant. He was recommended by his former teacher Lecoq de Boisbaudran for a teaching position at the École Spéciale d’Architecture in Paris in 1866. He moved to Chailly, near Barbizon, where he produced a series of landscapes that were accepted at the Salons of 1865 and 1866. He was nominated for the post of Director of the École de Dessin and Curator of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Tours in 1868. Cazin reorganized the school and became interested in the promotion the industrial arts.

Cazin’s position as curator allowed him the opportunity to travel and study museum collections in other cities and countries. By 1871, the upheaval of the Paris Commune following the Franco-Prussian War and disagreements with the central museum administration concerning his programs forced him to move to England (1871-1875). As his exiled compatriot, the sculptor Jules Dalou, Cazin taught art to London students, experimented with wax painting, developed an interest in ceramics and collaborated with the Fulham Pottery as a painter/decorator. And, like Dalou, Cazin’s difficult years of exile in London would be followed by future success in France.

In 1875, Cazin returned to France and he settled near the coastal town of Boulogne where he had spent his childhood. In 1876 he submitted his first major work to the Paris Salon, entitled The Boatyard, and continued to exhibit at the Salon through 1883, receiving a First Class Medal in 1880 and a Gold Medal at the 1889 Universal Exposition.

His chief paintings from this period have a religious and historical interest, such as The Flight into Egypt (1877), Marie-Magdelane at Evening Time (Berlin), Hagar and Ishmael (1880, Tours, Musée des Beaux-Arts), Tobie (Lille, Musée des Beaux-Arts) or Judith (1883). Afterwards, Cazin painted luminous landscapes, sometimes in combination with figure-subjects such as Souvenir de Fête, (1881, Paris, Petit Palais); and Journée Faite, (1888, Musée d’Orsay) which brought him wide renown and made him a leader of a new school of idealistic, subject-painting in France.

In the late 1880’s a divergence grew between older artists faithful to the academic traditions and the younger artists who followed a freer expression of their talents. In 1890 this divergence of ideas and styles led to the creation of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts and Cazin, a founding member, would soon be elected its Vice-president. That year Harper’s New Monthly Magazine published an article entitled Some Modern French Painters and devoted eight pages to the life and work of Cazin, of which the following excerpt:

“In the manner of M. Cazin’s painting we never remark rough impasto, the violence of the palette knife, or the caprices of the undisciplined brush. The aspect of his pictures is always attractive, and their suave and distinguished tone is often absolutely fascinating; the details are subordinate to the general unity; the picture is one and harmonious. M. Cazin’s dream of life is sweet, tender, full of compassion….”
In 1893, Cazin traveled to America and exhibited nearly 180 paintings at the American Art Galleries. The exhibition, which not only displayed works from the artist’s collection but many that were already in important American collections, was an instant success and was reviewed in many publications. Demand for the artist’s work soared and his works soon found their way into even more American collections, including those being formed by Frick, Lockhart and Byers.

In 1898, the French government appointed Cazin to finish the mural decorations in the Panthéon in Paris begun by Pierre Puvis de Chavannes (1824-1898). Cazin exhibited by no less than fifteen works at the Decennial Exhibition of 1900 and the publishers Goupil & Co. reviewed the artist and his work on exhibit in an article that begins as follows:

“With M. Jean-Charles Cazin we come to one of the most incontestable glories of contemporaneous French painting. I shall not be contradicted when I say that his landscapes constitute the principal attraction of our Decennial Exhibition…. In the same manner, M. Jean-Charles Cazin stands out among all contemporaneous French landscape-painters with all the grandeur of his genius.”

That same year, Cazin was awarded a Grand Prix in at the 1900 Universal Exposition in Paris. Cazin remained at the forefront of French landscape painting until his death in 1901. Examples of his work are in many private and public collections throughout the world.
Selected Museum Collections:

Musée des Beaux-Arts de Arras; Staatliche Museen, Berlin; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Art Institute of Chicago; Cleveland Museum of Art; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Douai; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lille; National Gallery and Tate Gallery, London; Minneapolis Institute of the Arts; Yale University Art Gallery, New Haven; Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Musée du Louvre, Musée d’Orsay and Petit Palais, Paris; The Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia; Frick Art & Historical Center, Pittsburgh; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pontoise; Musée de l’Hotel Sandelin, Saint Omer; Musée Jean-Charles Cazin, Samer; San Francisco, Museum of Fine Arts; Musée des Beaux-Arts de Tours; Musée National du Chateau et des Trianons, Versailles; Corcoran Gallery of Art and National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bibiliography:
– Bénézit, E. Dictionnaire des Peintres, Sculpteurs, Dessinateurs et Graveurs, Paris, 1999.
– Coffin, William A. “Jean-Charles Cazin.” The Century Magazine, Volume 55, Issue 3, January 1898, pgs. 393-399
– Frantz, Henri. The Salon of 1900 and the Decennial Exhibition, Goupil & Co., Paris & New York, 1900, pgs. 60 – 62
– Hamel, Maurice. The Salon of 1901, Goupil & Co., Paris & New York, 1901, pgs. 54-57
– Rehs Galleries, Inc., Jean-Charles Cazin 1841-1901
– Weisberg, Gabriel P. “Jean-Charles Cazin’s Reception in America.” Apollo: The International Magazine of the Arts, February 1999, pgs. 35-40
– Weisberg, Gabriel P. Collecting in the Gilded Age: Art Patronage in Pittsburgh, 1890-1910, Frick Art & Historical Center, 1997

 

Carl Haag was a preeminent late 19th-century Romantic watercolorist and traveler, one of the most famous Orientalists of his day.  Born in Erlangen, Germany in 1820, he was trained at the academies of Nuremberg and Munich.  He became court painter to the duke of Saxe-Coburg and GothaIn 1847, he traveled to London to study watercolour technique, and was fortunate enough to attract the patronage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. He made many visits to Balmoral, recording the life of the royal couple and their children in numerous stunning watercolours.  He eventually became a naturalized British subject. From 1850, he exhibited at the Society of Painters in Water-Colours and was elected a full member in 1853. He returned to Austria and Germany for a visit in 1857, the date of the present watercolor. In 1858 Haag made his first visit to Egypt, where he joined forces with the English painter, Frederick Goodall. Both artists were captivated by the beauty of the landscape, and the exotic quality of Arab life. In 1859, Queen Victoria commissioned Haag to paint The Dome of the Rock, becoming the first artist to do so—he was under heavy guard even with the permission of the Pasha of Egypt.  Haag continued his travels throughout the Holy Land, painting views of Palestine and of Jerusalem. He died in 1915.

Dan Harris (1925-1980) left the United States for shows in Galeria Obelisco in Rome, and Galerie Furstenburg in Paris. He was disappointed with the conservativism of the Monterey Peninsula in the 1950s, and left Carmel after his gaudily painted house was taken by eminent domain for a highway! He never returned.

Zev, more of the Story

“…..Once upon a time there was a young man named Dan Harris. A most real person living in a most real country called the United States of America. He was an artist, not a painter only; there was hardly any material he did not use to give shape to the world of his imagination and dreams: pencil, pen, water color, oil on canvas, mosaic and finally–in search for a tangible third dimension, he turned to sculpture as well……

At a certain moment however his world of dreams and imagination did no longer seem to fit into the reality of Dan Harris in America.  Asking himself where in this world of his own, much more real to him than the so called reality of his surrounding, had its origin, he remembered his ancestors, the old people they belonged to and the old continent they had come from.  That was the moment when Dan Harris disappeared and was reincarnated as Zev, the wolf, which was the Hebrew name of his grandfathers; and off he went to explore Europe.  He saw many countries and people, lived for some time in Paris and settled down in Rome.

When contemplating the recent watercolors and small sculptures exhibited in the “Espace” Gallery in Amsterdam, one cannot help adopting his fairy tale.s For Zev is a great story-teller and he carries us away with him into his empire. Strange birds of all kinds live in this world of Zev’s, little men and animals, born out of fantasy–and all these creatures spread an infinite charm, full of humor, playfulness, warmth and human understanding.  Though full of humor, these works are by no means a joke; though full of fun, they never make fun of the world.

Next to birds there is one subject that returns over and over again in paintings, mosaics, drawings and sculptures and that is the moon.  Not only in the form of the oldest satellite of our world; the shape of it fascinates Zev and turns up most unexpectedly in the position of walking legs, female garments, in a constant metamorphosis, just as a tree suddenly takes the shape of the “Menorah” and vice versa.

When describing the work of an artist we cannot avoid using analogies, and to someone who does not know Zev’s work I would say: draw a line from Chagall and another one from Paul Klee; where the two shall meet you will find Zev–there is a definite mental kinship with these two great artists.

He draws from dreams and the subconscious, but entirely lacks the cerebral, chilly sterility of most surrealists of our time [1950]; he does not deny nature as a source of inspiration but is as far away from naturalism and even realism as one could imagine; he shapes a world of his own and is as yet by no means an abstract artist–we find the real artists of our time  producing works of art because they have to, using means of expression as the only language suitable for what they have to say: Zev is one of them.”

Magda van Emde Boas, Amsterdam

Hanneke Beaumont was born in Maastricht, Netherlands in 1947. After studying dentistry in the United States, she moved back to Europe, to Belgium, where she still lives today. Beaumont started her artistic studies in 1977 at the Académie de Braine l’Alleud, then at La Cambre & in Anderlecht, and received her first solo exhibition in 1983. Beaumont currently works in Brussels and in Pietra Santa, Italy.

An important turn in her career happened in 1994 when she was awarded the major award of Centre International d’Art Contemporain Château Beychevelle for her sculpture group “Le Courage”. Shortly after this, she participated in the second Exposiciòn Internacional de Esculturas en la Calle, organized by the Colegio de Arquitectos de Canarias in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, where her work was permanently installed. Many other public and private collectors have manifested great interest in her work. She now enjoys an international reputation with exhibitions in the US, Canada, Belgium, France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.

Beaumont’s sculptures are realized in terracotta, bronze and cast iron, and she is known for sculpting figural life-sized human forms. Her gender neutral subjects are impressively passé in posture, and are meant to symbolize the general nature of the human race.

Her works can be found in the permanent collections of the Frederik Meijer Gardens and Sculpture Park, Grand Rapids, MI; Vero Beach Museum, Vero Beach, FL; on view in the City of Bad Homburg v.d. Hone; in Brussels in front of the European Council of Ministers and; and in several other major public venues.

Hanneke Beaumont was just awarded – by the City of Pietrasanta through the cultural circle “Fratelli Rosselli” – the 21st “Premio Pietrasanta e la Versilia nel Mondo” award (2011), the honor previously given to Fernando Botero, Kan Yasuda, Jean-Michel Folon, Giò Pomodoro, Igor Mitoraj, Helaine Blumenfeld, Novello Finotti, and Marc Quinn.

Hijack is a prodigy in his own right and one of the most talked-about, up and coming artists in today’s contemporary art scene. Hijack’s works are a revelation in street art – imaginative, brilliantly constructed and seen in cultural hot spots all over the globe, from Los Angeles to London.  As he’s evolved as an artist, Hijack has crafted a persona, inspired by the spirit of music and the poetry of everyday moments, that creates colorful and meaningful perspectives on life.

Based in Los Angeles, Hijack started as an underground street artist, silently stenciling the streets at night.  He targeted Los Angeles’ most heavily trafficked areas – from the hikers in Runyon Canyon to the tourists of Melrose Avenue. Whether his work was on display for an hour, or a month, Hijack created a moment of serenity and introspection for LA’s fast-paced culture.

In April 2013, Hijack took the UK art scene by storm with his first solo exhibition. The show was so highly anticipated that it sold out. Works including: Never too Young to Dream Big and Perfection is False, struck a chord with the exhibition’s attendees. When Hijack hit the streets tagging a stencil of Never too Young to Dream Big in London, it caused such a sensation that it quickly caught the attention of UK news outlets and websites. The exhibition garnered a mass of buzz and Hijack’s landmark debut was featured in Art of England’s June 2013 issue, Huffington Post UK, The Art Newspaper and The Telegraph.

In October of 2013, Hijack was invited, along with Mr. Brainwash, to do an exhibit at the Dieresis Cultural Center in Guadalajara, Mexico. The exhibit was extended for months, attracting large crowds, drawing a mass of media attention, and delighting international art collectors and audiences.

The year of 2014 proved an incredible one for Hijack, as his rise within the art scene was meteoric. In June 2014 Hijack mounted a solo show titled Life Through Street Art at one of Paris’ most chic contemporary galleries. In November 2014, Hijack had his Asian art show debut. The show created an avalanche of press for Hijack, including a feature in Vogue Japan.

The following year was nothing short of extraordinary. In 2015, he collaborated with world-renowned Swiss watchmakers Hublot and Fashion TV to have a show on the Swiss Alps in Gstaad. The show took place at the famous Palace Hotel and again received the attention of art collectors across the globe.

In addition to his gallery shows and solo street art installations, Hijack also collaborates with other internationally-renowned street artists, including New York’s Cope and Japan’s Dragon 76.

Lately Hijack has been entrenched in a new body of artwork, working with shattered glass to create stark, three-dimensional images. His talent is showcased in his detailed stencil work, controlled paint drips and urban compositions that are simple yet striking. His work on cement, glass and metal give a fresh and raw feel to his works, which live somewhere in the intersection between street art and fine art.   For Hijack, art is a lifestyle, a passion. And his signature style, steeped in positivity, presents a refreshing future for the next generation of artists.

In a unique manner, David Drebin’s work combines voyeuristic and psychological viewpoints. He offers the viewer a dramatic insight into emotions and experiences, and the distinctive tension and depth in Drebin’s pictures arise from the free combination of such differing topics as humor and sex, melancholy and sex, and melancholy and humor.

After graduating from Parsons School of Design in New York City in 1996, David Drebin rapidly made a name for himself as an internationally renowned photographer creating images of movie stars, athletes, and various entertainers. He subsequently was commissioned for countless high profile advertising campaigns around the world.

Drebin’s first comprehensive illustrated book, Love and Other Stories was published in 2007 and signaled the transformation from commercial photographer into art photographer.

Drebin’s photographs are epic, dramatic and, above all, cinematic and have been collected around the world. In a unique and opulent way, Drebin stages femme fatales against the gigantic backdrops of cities such as Hong Kong, New York, and Paris. With their impressive skyscrapers, they provide the viewer with a nearly infinite surface for the imagination.

Mr. Brainwash, the pseudonym for Thierry Guetta, is an internationally-known Pop Artist and videographer whose street art and Contemporary pieces are highly valued by collectors. Mr. Brainwash utilizes famous artistic and historic images, including Albert Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, Andy Warhol, Kate Moss, and Mickey Mouse, and alters them in significant ways. Born in Paris, Guetta moved to L.A. at age 15 with his father and siblings after his mother passed away. He attended high school for about a year before dropping out and becoming an event organizer in Hollywood.

Guetta sold vintage clothing in L.A., New York, and Miami before his fascination with graffiti was ignited during a trip to France in 1999. There he learned that his cousin was the famous street artist Space Invader. Guetta began filming Invader and other street artists in action, including Shepard Fairey and Zevs. While filming, Guetta encountered the most famous street artist: Banksy. At the encouragement of Banksy, Guetta began creating his own street art and had his first solo show as Mr. Brainwash in 2008. In 2009, Mr. Brainwash assisted Banksy in launching his Los Angeles show Barely Legal, which was attended by notable celebrities and collectors. The two artists then decided to make a documentary following the secretive life of Graffiti artists. Exit Through the Gift Shop, directed by Banksy, includes shots of Invader taken by Banksy and Mr. Brainwash. The film premiered at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival and was nominated for an Oscar. Mr. Brainwash’s artistic evolution and rise to fame is documented in the film, and the success of Exit Through the Gift Shop brought Mr. Brainwash a massive following. Musicians such as Madonna and the rock band Red Hot Chili Peppers are fond of the artist, and Mr. Brainwash has been hired for several promotional projects.

Mr. Brainwash’s art fuses historic pop imagery with images of contemporary pop culture to create a brand of Pop Art uniquely his own, considered a “graffiti hybrid.” The graffiti hybrid style is highly appealing to collectors. Mr. Brainwash’s first solo show attracted over 30,000 visitors, and he has had significant sales at prestigious auction houses.

Cayla is an outstanding young artist whose creative and intelligent mind thrive on a contemporary style. She was proudly raised by a single mother who exposed her to a vast amount of culture and world experiences. Her influences come from a wide array of writers, musicians, and epistemologists. The most prominent including: Jack Kerouac, Ella Fitzgerald, Chuck Palahniuk, and several others. A large portion of Cayla’s works merge traditional acrylic paints with other unique materials; she transcends the confines of mixed media art to create a style all her own. A signature approach of intricate designs pervade all of Birk’s body of work – her instantly recognizable gestures and marks boast austere verbiage and shroud depictions.

Gilles Cenazandotti was born in 1966 and grew up on the Northern Cape of Corsica. Over a ten-year period, Cenazandotti conceived site-specific design commissions with fashion designer, Jean Paul Gaultier at the same time he was realizing a series of interior fabrications with interior designer, Philippe Starck. Not only has he collaborated with Gaultier and Starck, but with Hermes and Printemps as well. He lives and works between Paris and Morsiglia, Cap Corse. His vision for translating mere objects, often considered as obsolete, into magnificent installations sets Cenazandotti apart from even the most progressive Contemporary artists working today. His works are frequently sculptures of endangered species, which are created out of items that the artist handpicks off Mediterranean beaches. Harvesting products found directly from the tidal overflow of debris, each sculpture and collage is formed by Cenazandotti’s preservation of each item. The artist does not alter the shape or color of any piece that he finds. The irony is that the extraordinary creatures are constructed of petroleum, oil and plastic based products that are destroying their habitats and the environment. Cenazandotti develops a reflection on the future of our planet and the evolution of our lifestyles that approaches science fiction, a universe necessary to the survival of man and species. His work attempts to show a complex, enigmatic nature, a technological paroxysm where man tries to imitate nature through artificial recreation. Gilles Cenazandotti is a force bridging lines of inquiry, an emerging talent, and dedicated activist. The artist’s recent investigations diversify and transform consumer culture into an expressive aesthetic experience that is rich with collective responsibility.

Arshile Gorky (Armenian-American 1904–1948) was sort of a bridge between the art of Europe and of America. Born in Armenia, he came to the United States in 1920. He and  de Kooning, an immigrant in 1926, and Hans Burkhardt, the Swiss-American who shared Gorky’s studio in the 30s, became friends, suffering through the lean times of the Depression and the early 1940’s–unknown.

Under the WPA, De Kooning and Gorky painted murals in public buildings; this kept the artists going, and offered the opportunity to meet one another, to form bonds, and share artistic and moral support.

Gorky was influenced by the painterly abstraction of Kandinsky, who wrote that “painting, like music, should not be a description of the external world, but rather contain its own reality, which comes from the ‘inner necessity’ of the artist – the inner artistic vision.”

Abstract Expressionists Pollock, de Kooning,  Kline, Rothko,  Still, Newman,  Guston, and others were influenced by Gorky in their thinking and manner of painting, in varying degrees (de Kooning probably the most).

At the New Jersey Airport, Man’s Conquest of the Air, a mural was eventually demolished–only sketches such as the present example remain.  This drawing is related to Gorky’s signature biomorphism and abstraction.