From Heinrich Aldegrever's two engraved self-portraits of 1530 and 1537 at the ages of 28 and 35, it is evident that he was born in 1502, presumably in Paderborn, home of his parents, Herman and Katherine Trippenmeker, called Aldegrever. Like his father (who had demanded, unsuccessfully, to be executed along with sixteen Paderborn citizens who had been arrested during a religious uprising in 1532), Aldegrever participated in the Protestant Reformation. He established himself permanently in nearby Soest ca. 1525, where he entered the painters' guild around 1526-27, and became a citizen of the city in 1530. His first engraving is dated 1527. Aldegrever's training and course of his presumed Wandejyabr are uncertain, but trips to Nuremberg (according to van Mander, who implies that Aldegrever had worked in Durer's shop), Monster (perhaps as assistant to Ludger Tom Ring), and Bruges or Antwerp (where he could have been in touch with Joos van Cleve) have been proposed.


Aldegrever produced nearly 300 engravings (a third of which were ornamental sheets) and three etchings on iron. He was also active as a painter, and perhaps as a goldsmith. in the latter capacity it is certain that he made at least three silver seats and a signet ring for Duke Wilhelm of Cleves. Although Aldegrever was not a member of the goldsmiths' guild, he apparently taught this craft to his son, Christoph. Aldegrever may also have been a stained-glass painter. Stained-glass windows in Soest (Patroclimilnster) and Conches (Sainte-Foy) have been attributed to Aldegrever; although the latter, which bears his name, may simply be after one of his engravings (B. 252).

In 1531 Aldegrever is mentioned as a cojuror of the Patrocli Shooting Guild, and he participated in the institution of the Reformation in Soest in the same year. 1537 he is mentioned by the satirist Daniel von Soest as having portrayed the judge Johan van Holte and his beloved posing in the nude, according to their wishes. About this time Aldegrever engraved his famous portraits of the Anabaptist leaders Jan van Leyden and Bernhard Knipperdolling (B. 182, B. 183), and in 1540 he engraved portraits of Luther and Melanchthon (B. 184, 185).

Between 1541 and 1549 his activity is uncertain, and he produced no dated engravings, but between 1549 and 1555 he issued his series of the Labors of Hercules (B. 83-95), the Seven Virtues and Seven Deadly Sins (B. 117-123, 124-130), and his remarkable Biblical series treating the stories of Dives and Lazarus (B. 44-48, cat. 37), the Good Samaritan (B. 40-43, Cat. 35), Susannah (B. 30-33), and Lot (B. 14-17).

Aldegrever died between 1555, the last year in which he dated an engraving, and 1561, when his son is recorded as saying that his father had been a capable stained-glass and panel painter. Many of Aldegrever's compositions are highly derivative, and his monogram mimics that of one of his favorite sources, Albrecht Darer. Van Mander reports that Alclegrever was buried very humbly, and that he was only awarded a tombstone (carrying his name and monogram) posthumously, at the behest of an artist from Monster who came seeking Aldegrever only to discover that he had died.

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Georges Braque was born on May 13, 1882, in Argenteuil-sur-Seine, France. He grew up in Le Havre and studied evenings at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts there from about 1897 to 1899. He left for Paris to study under a master decorator to receive his craftsman certificate in 1901. From 1902 to 1904, he painted at the Académie Humbert in Paris, where he met Marie Laurencin and Francis Picabia. By 1906, Braque's work was no longer Impressionist but Fauve in style; after spending that summer in Antwerp with Othon Friesz, he showed his Fauve work the following year in the Salon des Indépendants in Paris. His first solo show was at Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler's gallery in 1908. From 1909, Pablo Picasso and Braque worked together in developing Cubism; by 1911, their styles were extremely similar. In 1912, they started to incorporate collage elements into their paintings and to experiment with the papier collé (pasted paper) technique. Their artistic collaboration lasted until 1914. Braque served in the French army during World War I and was wounded; upon his recovery in 1917, he began a close friendship with Juan Gris.

After World War I, Braque's work became freer and less schematic. His fame grew in 1922 as a result of an exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in Paris. In the mid-1920s, Braque designed the decor for two Sergei Diaghilev ballets. By the end of the decade, he had returned to a more realistic interpretation of nature, although certain aspects of Cubism [more] always remained present in his work. In 1931, Braque made his first engraved plasters and began to portray mythological subjects. His first important retrospective took place in 1933 at the Kunsthalle Basel. He won First Prize at the Carnegie International, Pittsburgh, in 1937.

During World War II, Braque remained in Paris. His paintings at that time, primarily still lifes and interiors, became more somber. In addition to paintings, Braque also made lithographs, engravings, and sculpture. From the late 1940s, he treated various recurring themes, such as birds, ateliers, landscapes, and seascapes. In 1954, he designed stained-glass windows for the church of Varengeville. During the last few years of his life, Braque's ill health prevented him from undertaking further large-scale commissions, but he continued to paint, make lithographs, and design jewelry. He died on August 31, 1963, in Paris.

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Spanish painter; born in Figueras, Catalonia, where he died in 1989. Trained at Madrid's school of fine arts, he was drawn simultaneously to Academicism, Impressionism, Futurism, and Cubism; after reading Freud, his passions turned to dreams and the unconscious. In 1928, he met Picasso and Breton and joined the Surrealists. He also met Gala Eluard, who became his companion and muse. in 1929, he began formulating the "paranoid-critical" method, which would provide the foundations for most of his paintings; Construction molle avec haricots bouillis; premonition de la guerre (soft construction with boiled beans; premonition of civil war),1936; Girafes en feu (burning giraffes), 1936-1937. After a stay in the United States from 1940 to 1948, where his influence was felt on fashion, advertising, and ballet sets, he went back to Spain to undergo a religious crisis; Le Christ de Saint-Jean-de-la-Croix, 1951, and returned to the baroque traditions and landscapes of his youth, in harmony with his temperament. His rich and complex personality was revealed through his writings; The Secret Life of Salvador Dali, 1941; Journal of a Genius, 1954. Two enormous retrospectives have been done on him, in the Boymans Van Beuningen Museum of Rotterdam (1970-1971), and at the Georges Pompidou Center in Paris (1979-1980). In 1974 he created his own museum in Figureras. Another museum, in Cleveland, houses the Reynold Morse Collection. He was elected to the Beaux-Arts Academy of Paris in 1979.

"It soon became apparent, however, that there was an inherent contradiction in Dalí's approach between what he himself described as 'critical paranoia' - which lent itself to systematic interpretation - and the element of automatism upon which his method depended. Breton soon had misgivings about Dalí's monsters which only lend themselves to a limited, univocal reading. Dalí's extreme statements on political matters, in particular his fascination for Hitler, struck a false note in the context of the Surrealist ethic and his relations with the rest of the group became increasingly strained after 1934.The break finally came when the painter declared his support for Franco in 1939. And yet he could boast that he had the backing of Freud himself, who declared in 1938 that Dalí was the only interesting case in a movement whose aims he confessed not to understand.Moreover, in the eyes of the public he was, increasingly as time went by, the Surrealist par excellence, and he did his utmost to maintain, by way of excessive exhibitionism in every area, this enviable reputation.

"In 1936, Dalí returned to a classical manner of painting, switching haphazardly between Italian, Spanish and pompier styles. From 1939 to 1948, he lived in the United States, cultivating his persona as a genial eccentric, and earning from Breton the nickname Avida Dollars (an anagram of his name) in 1940. In Spain once more (at Port Lligat), he provided a constant source of interest for the gossip columns, which described the parties he threw, his carefully orchestrated 'eccentricity' and all the pomp and ceremony of his church wedding in 1958 to Gala (Éluard's first wife), whom he had first met in 1929 and who was to remain the only woman in his life, his muse, his model and his most effective agent. If he declared that Meissonier was a better painter than Picasso, that Perpignan

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A personal recollection (by Alex Adelman): I was very fortunate to have met Victor Vasarely several times and will always remember him as a very warm, funny, charming, intelligent man. However, what struck me most about him was that he had a child-like innocence and wonderment toward both people and the world around him. The last time I saw him, a year or so ago, I remember fondly watching him play Yvaral several games of chess. Needless to say, he beat Yvaral each time! We shared a glass of wine, chocolates and then he entertained us with Hungarian folk songs. It was a truly fun and memorable occasion!

Internationally recognized as one of the most important artists of the 20th century. He is the acknowledged leader of the Op Art movement, and his innovations in color and optical illusion have had a strong influence on many modern artists.

In 1947, Vasarely discovered his place in abstract art. Influenced by his experiences at Breton Beach of Belle Isle, he concluded that "internal geometry" could be seen below the surface of the entire world. He conceived that form and color are inseparable. "Every form is a base for color, every color is the attribute of a form." Forms from nature were thus transposed into purely abstract elements in his paintings. Recognizing the inner geometry of nature, Vasarely wrote, "the ellipsoid form...will slowly, but tenaciously, take hold of the surface, and become its raison d'etre. Henceforth, this ovoid form will signify in all my works of this period, the 'oceanic feeling'...I can no longer admit an inner world and another, an outer world, apart. The within and the without communicate by osmosis, or, one might rather say: the spatial-material universe, energetic-living, feeling-thinking, form a whole, indivisible...The languages of the spirit are but the supervibrations of the great physical nature."

Vasarely was born in Pecs, Hungary in 1906. After receiving his baccalaureate degree in 1925, he began studying art at the Podolini-Volkmann Academy in Budapest. In 1928, he transferred to the Muhely Academy, also known as the Budapest Bauhaus, where he studied with Alexander Bortnijik. At the Academy, he became familiar with the contemporary research in color and optics by Jaohannes Itten, Josef Albers, and the Constructivists Malevich and Kandinsky.

After his first one-man show in 1930, at the Kovacs Akos Gallery in Budapest, Vasarely moved to Paris. For the next thirteen years, he devoted himself to graphic studies. His lifelong fascination with linear patterning led him to draw figurative and abstract patterned subjects, such as his series of harlequins, checkers, tigers, and zebras. During this period, Vasarely also created multi-dimensional works of art by super-imposing patterned layers of cellophane on one another to attain the illusion of depth.

In 1943, Vasarely began to work extensively in oils, creating both abstract and figurative canvases. His first Parisian exhibition was the following year at the Galerie Denise Rene which he helped found. Vasarely became the recognized leader of the avant-garde group of artists affiliated with the gallery.

In 1955, Galerie Denise Rene hosted a major group exhibition in connection with Vasarely's painting experiments with movement. This was the first important exhibition of kinetic art and included works by Yaacov Agam, Pol Bury, Soto, and Jean Tinguely, among others.

During the 1950's, Vasarely wrote a series of manifestos on the use of optical phenomena for artistic purposes. Together with his paintings, these were a significant influence on younger artists. According to the artist, "In the last analysis, the picture-object in pure composition appears to me as the last link in the family 'paintings,' still possessing by its shining beauty, an end in itself. But it is already more than a painting, the forms and colors which compose it are still situated on the plane, but the plastic event which they trigger fuses in front of and in the plane. It is thereby an end, but also a beginning, a kind of launching pad for future achievements."

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Edouard Manet was born on January 23, 1832, in Paris. While studying with Thomas Couture from 1850 to 1856, he drew at the Académie Suisse and copied the Old Masters at the Musée du Louvre. After he left Couture’s studio, Manet traveled extensively in Europe, visiting Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, and Italy. In 1859 he was rejected by the official Paris Salon, although Eugène Delacroix intervened on his behalf. In 1861 Manet’s paintings were accepted by the Salon and received favorable press, and he began exhibiting at the Galerie Martinet in Paris. During the early 1860s his friendships with Charles Baudelaire and Edgar Degas began. The three paintings Manet sent to the Salon of 1863, including Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (see p. 37), were relegated to the Salon des Refusés, where they attracted the attention of the critic Théophile Thoré.

In 1865 Manet’s Olympia and Christ Mocked were greeted with great hostility when shown at the Salon. That year the painter traveled to Spain, where he met Théodore Duret. He became a friend of Emile Zola in 1866, when the writer defended him in a controversial article for the periodical L’Evènement. In 1867 Zola published a longer article on Manet, who that year exhibited his work in an independent pavilion at the Paris World’s Fair. The artist spent the first of several summers in Boulogne at this time. In 1868 two of his works were accepted by the Salon but were not shown to advantage.

The dealer Paul Durand-Ruel began buying his work in 1872. That same year The Battle of the Kearsarge and the Alabama was shown at the Salon, and Manet traveled to the Netherlands for the second time. The poet Stéphane Mallarmé, who met the artist in 1873, wrote articles about him in 1874 and 1876 and remained a close lifelong friend. Manet declined to show with the Impressionists in their first exhibition in 1874. That summer he worked at Gennevilliers and Argenteuil with Claude Monet and the following year he visited Venice. In 1876 he exhibited Olympia and two paintings rejected that year by the Salon at his own studio. From 1879 to 1882 Manet participated annually at the Salon. In 1880 he was given a solo exhibition at Georges Charpentier’s new gallery, La Vie Moderne, Paris. In 1881 Manet, then ailing, was decorated with the Légion d’Honneur. He died on April 30, 1883, in Paris. A memorial exhibition of his work took place at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts the following year.

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Born in Leiden - died in Amsterdam Rembrandt, the son of a miller and a baker's daughter, was originally intended to become a scholar. He went to Latin School and then enrolled at the University of Leiden. After only a year he left to become apprenticed from 1622 to 1624 to a mediocre Leiden painter, Jacob van Swanenburgh. More important for his artistic development, however, was the short period of about six months that be spent training under Pieter Lastman in Amsterdam. In 1625 he began a working association with his friend Jan Lievens in Leiden, finally moving to Amsterdam in 1631/32. In the history of Dutch painting this date represents an important milestone, as Rembrandt was to become the incomparable representative of Amsterdam art. He soon established himself in Amsterdam, received many commissions and opened a large workshop. In 1634 he married Saskia, a lawyer's daughter, who brought a considerable dowry into the marriage.

In 1639 he bought a large house, never quite paid for, which he filled with works of art and curios. Soon his passion for collecting exceeded his finances. In 1642, the year he painted "The Night Watch" Saskia died, and from 1649 he lived with Hendrickje Stoffels whom he could not marry without losing Saskia's legacy to their son Titus. In 1656 he went bankrupt, and his house and all possessions were put up for compulsory auction. Rembrandt spent his final years in poverty and isolation in rooms on the outskirts of Amsterdam, his powers of creation undiminished.

Rembrandt was the most universal artist of his time and he influenced painting for half a century, irrespective of schools or regional style. From his many fields of activity his pupils developed their own specialties, ranging from trompe l'oeil painting to the very detailed Leiden style. Unlike most Dutch painters of the time, who worked in fairly narrow fields, Rembrandt depicted almost every type of subject.

Although Amsterdam's leading portraitist for a decade ("Jan Six", Amsterdam, Foundation Six), also doing group portraits (The Staalmeesters," he was a painter of numerous biblical scenes ("The Sacrifice of Isacc," St. Petersburgh, Hermitage), of the mythological works works ("Philemon and Baucis", Washington, National Gallery) and landscapes ("Landscape in Thunders Brunswik, Herzog-Utrich-Museum) as well at life. In his work, branches of painting often overlapped, as for example in the group portrait "The Night Watch," where he took liberties with a number of rules. Rembrandt's fame rests on his continual development of pictorial devices and unvarying excellence of execution (unlike the works of Rubens, man which were left in part to workshop routine), a well as on his brilliant handling of light and shade and his ability to suggest states of mind through facial expression.

Apart from his greatness as a painter he was a powerful draughtsman and etcher. About 300 of his etchings survive. In this field he extended the technique and artistic possibilities, for example introducing the chiaroscuro effect, raising it to an art for in its own right. Amongst his approximately 15 drawings, the landscape scenes are particularly captivating in their serenity and harmony despite the spontaneous handling of line.

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"Yet Cubism and Modern art weren't either scientific or intellectual; they were visual and came from the eye and mind of one of the greatest geniuses in art history. Pablo Picasso, born in Spain, was a child prodigy who was recognized as such by his art-teacher father, who ably led him along. The small Museo de Picasso in Barcelona is devoted primarily to his early works, which include strikingly realistic renderings of casts of ancient sculpture.

"He was a rebel from the start and, as a teenager, began to frequent the Barcelona cafes where intellectuals gathered. He soon went to Paris, the capital of art, and soaked up the works of Manet, Gustave Courbet, and Toulouse-Lautrec, whose sketchy style impressed him greatly. Then it was back to Spain, a return to France, and again back to Spain - all in the years 1899 to 1904.

"Before he struck upon Cubism, Picasso went through a prodigious number of styles - realism, caricature, the Blue Period, and the Rose Period. The Blue Period dates from 1901 to 1904 and is characterized by a predominantly blue palette and subjects focusing on outcasts, beggars, and prostitutes. This was when he also produced his first sculptures. The most poignant work of the style is in Cleveland's Museum of Art, La Vie (1903), which was created in memory of a great childhood friend, the Spanish poet Casagemas, who had committed suicide. The painting started as a self-portrait, but Picasso's features became those of his lost friend. The composition is stilted, the space compressed, the gestures stiff, and the tones predominantly blue. Another outstanding Blue Period work, of 1903, is in the Metropolitan, The Blind Man's Meal. Yet another example, perhaps the most lyrical and mysterious ever, is in the Toledo Museum of Art, the haunting Woman with a Crow (1903).

"The Rose Period began around 1904 when Picasso's palette brightened, the paintings dominated by pinks and beiges, light blues, and roses. His subjects are saltimbanques (circus people), harlequins, and clowns, all of whom seem to be mute and strangely inactive. One of the premier works of this period is in Washington, D.C., the National Gallery's large and extremely beautiful Family of Saltimbanques dating to 1905, which portrays a group of circus workers who appear alienated and incapable of communicating with each other, set in a one-dimensional space.

"In 1905, Picasso went briefly to Holland, and on his return to Paris, his works took on a classical aura with large male and fernale figures seen frontally or in distinct profile, almost like early Greek art. One of the best of these of 1906 is inthe Albright-Knox Gallery in Buffalo, NY, La Toilette. Several pieces in this new style were purchased by Gertrude (the art patron and writer) and her brother, Leo Stein. The other major artist promoted by the Steins during this

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Police in Sao Paulo are hunting the gang that pulled off a daring dawn theft of a Picasso painting worth an estimated $US55 million ($A64.2 million) and another precious work from Latin America's most renowned museum.

The three or four intruders stole Portrait of Suzanne Bloch, by Pablo Picasso, and The Coffee Worker, by Brazil's Candido Portinari in a lightning-fast heist just after dawn in the Museum of Art of Sao Paulo, police said.

They used a hydraulic car jack to force open a door and a crowbar to break a glass barrier in the distinctive city-centre building, which was closed at the time.

"It was professional. There was nothing amateur about it at all. It was carried out on command and took only three to four minutes," Marcos Gomes de Moura, the police chief in charge of the investigation, told reporters.

"It was carried out with a lot of care," he said, adding that the robbery was captured on security cameras. The jack and the crowbar were left behind.

The theft was discovered hours later, when a museum employee turning up for work noticed that the main door to the building was forced. The rooms containing the paintings were not alarmed.

The museum said it was appealing for Interpol help to track down the stolen works, which were among the most important in its collection.

The robbery was the worst in its 60-year history, the institution said in a statement.

A museum spokesman declined to put a value on the stolen works. But an expert, art collector and gallery owner Jones Bergamin, told the G1 website of the news network Globo that the Picasso was estimated to be worth $US55 million ($A64.2 million) and the Portinari $US5 million ($A5.8 million).

The museum stayed shut all day today as investigators went over the scene.

The museum's director, Fernando Pinto, noted in a statement that "the paintings were in two separate rooms some distance apart, which proves they were specifically targeted in the robbery."

The curator of the museum, Teixeira Coelho, told O Globo Online that whoever ordered the robbery would never be able to sell the well-known paintings.

"Any crazy collector who wanted these works would only want them for himself, because he could never exhibit them or sell them," he said.

De Moura said investigators were questioning 30 employees of the museum.

"We are looking at what they did each day in the days leading up to the robbery," he said, though he declined to speculate if the heist may have been an inside job.

"I'm not in a position to say whether there was any lapse in security," he said.

One of the leads police are checking is whether the gang was connected with a failed earlier robbery attempt at the museum in October. Then, two men dressed as security guards entered the second floor but fled without taking anything.

Robbers have struck Brazil's galleries several times. In February 2006, a four-man gang armed with guns and a grenade rounded up guards and tourists in a Rio de Janeiro gallery and stole works by Salvador Dali, Henri Mattisse, Picasso and Claude Monet.

Picasso's Portrait of Suzanne Bloch is a representation of a Belgian opera singer who was a friend and patron to the famed Spanish artist. The 65cm by 54cm work was painted in 1904.

The Coffee Worker (O Lavrador de Cafe) by Portinari shows a black coffee plantation worker and was painted on a 100cm by 81cm canvas in 1939. The artist, known for his neo-realism, is considered one of Brazil's most influential.

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