Thursday, October 17, 2024

Artist of the Day, October 17, 2024: Malika Favre, a French illustrator and graphic artist (#2139)

 Malika Favre (1982) is a French illustrator and graphic artist based in Barcelona. Her style of works could be characterized by pure minimalism within Pop art and Op art, where it sometimes described as 'Pop Art meets Op Art'. She combines simple illustrations with geometric patterns and has developed a unique style of illustration by using positive and negative space and colours, elegant layouts, especially of the female body and its curves.

Malika Favre was born  in the Paris region, France, and grew up there. Her mother was a painter. After high school Favre went to a science prep school because she thought that she wanted to become a quantic engineer. But later decided to enroll in École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Appliqués et des métiers d'art, which is often known as Olivier de Serres. She graduated from Olivier de Serres, and moved to London, to study illustration at Surrey Institute of Art & Design, University College in Farnham.

Favre did an internship for three months at Airside, a British design studio which closed in 2012. In 2006, she started work as an Art Director at Airside, which led to collaborations with numerous high-profile magazines and clients including wallpaper and The Sunday Times. She also worked for UNIT9 in 2006. In 2011 she left Airside to set herself up as an independent illustrator.

Favre is an independent illustrator and has worked on a variety of projects spanning editorial, advertising and publishing. Her unique graphics style, mixing Pop and Op art, is featured by companies such as Sephora, Le Bon Marché, Penguin Books, and newspapers such as Vogue, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Sunday Times, and Vanity Fair.

In 2021, Favre illustrated the poster for Barcelona's annual La Mercè festival.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Malika Favre or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only

 Malika Favre
Her brand

Les Garden-Parties de Lausanne, 2018 Ville de Lausanne

Petits plaisirs, 2018 for the Metropolitan
Louisa Parris, 2021
Louisa Parris, 2021
Louisa Parris, 2021
Van Gogh for the Metropolitan
Art for Webedia books
Art for Webedia books
Art for Webedia books
Art for Webedia books
Turner, 2016, for The New Yorker
In the Shade, 2016, cover, The New Yorker
The Laureate, 2016, cover, The New Yorker

Reporting Hillary Clinton Looks Back in Anger, 2017, cover, The New Yorker
Malika Favre’s “Operating Theatre",  2017, cover, The New Yorker
Coding 101, 2017, cover, The New Yorker
The Butterfly Effect, 2018, cover, The New Yorker
Spring to Mind, 2019, cover, The New Yorker
Summer Hours, 2019, cover, The New Yorker
 2019, cover, The New Yorker
Behind the lens, 2020, cover, The New Yorker
Composed, 2021, cover, The New Yorker
Escape, 2021, cover, The New Yorker
Figurehead, 2022, cover, The New Yorker
Astronautes, for Nat Geo
Lucky Hands - Alice Balas
Lucky Hands - Alice Balas
Saint Augustine for The New Yorker
Siempre Playa Futura
Siempre Playa Futura
Siempre Playa Futura
Start your engines, for Arab News

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Artist of the Day, October 16, 2024: Arno Breker, a German sculptor (#2138)

Arno Breker (1900 – 1991) was a German sculptor who is best known for his public works in Nazi Germany, where they were endorsed by the authorities as the antithesis of degenerate art. He was made official state sculptor, and exempted from military service. One of his better known statues is Die Partei, representing the spirit of the Nazi Party that flanked one side of the carriage entrance to Albert Speer's new Reich Chancellery.

After the fall of Nazi Germany in 1945 Breker continued to thrive professionally as a sculptor in the new West Germany.

Breker was born in Elberfeld, in the west of Germany, the son of stonemason Arnold Breker. He began to study architecture, along with stone-carving and anatomy. At age 20 he entered the Düsseldorf Academy of Arts where he concentrated on sculpture, studying under Hubert Netzer and Wilhelm Kreis. He first visited Paris in 1924, shortly before finishing his studies. There he met with Jean Cocteau, Jean Renoir, Pablo Picasso, Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler, and Alfred Flechtheim. In 1927 he moved to Paris, which he thereafter considered to be his home, in the same year he had an exhibition with Alf Bayrle. Breker was quickly accepted by the art dealer Alfred Flechtheim. He also established close relationships with important figures in the art world, including Charles Despiau, Isamu Noguchi, Maurice de Vlaminck and André Dunoyer de Segonzac, all of whom he later portrayed. He travelled to North Africa, producing lithographs which he published under the title "Tunisian Journey". He also visited Aristide Maillol, who was later to describe Breker as "Germany's Michelangelo".

In 1932, he was awarded a prize by the Prussian Ministry of Culture, which allowed him to stay in Rome for a year. In 1934 he returned to Germany on the advice of Max Liebermann. At this time Alfred Rosenberg, editor of the Nazi newspaper Völkischer Beobachter, actually denounced some of Breker's work as degenerate art. However, Breker was supported by many Nazi leaders, especially Adolf Hitler. Even Rosenberg later hailed his sculptures as expressions of the "mighty momentum and will power" of Nazi Germany. He took commissions from the Nazis from 1933 through 1942, for example participating in a show of his work in occupied Paris in 1942, where he met Jean Cocteau, who appreciated his work. He maintained personal relationships with Albert Speer and with Hitler. In 1936 he won the commission for two sculptures representing athletic prowess, to be entered in the 1936 Olympic games arts competition in Berlin, one representing a Decathlete ("Zehnkämpfer"), which won the silver medal for statues, and the other The Victress ("Die Siegerin"). In 1937 he married Demetra Messala, a Greek model. The same year, Breker joined the Nazi Party and was made "official state sculptor" by Hitler, given a large property and provided a studio with forty-three assistants. Breker was on a list of 378 "Gottbegnadeten" (divinely gifted) artists exempted from wartime military duty by Hitler and chief propagandist Joseph Goebbels. His twin sculptures The Party and The Army held a prominent position at the entrance to Albert Speer's new Reich Chancellery, as well as Josef Thorak's "Striding Horses" (1939), which until 1945 flanked the entrance stairs on the garden front of Adolf Hitler's Reich Chancellery in Berlin.

The neoclassical nature of his work, with titles like Comradeship, Torchbearer, and Sacrifice, typified Nazi ideals, and suited the characteristics of Nazi architecture. On closer inspection, though, the proportions of his figures, the highly colouristic treatment of his surfaces (the strong contrasts between dark and light accents), and the melodramatic tension of their musculatures perhaps invites comparison with the Italian Mannerist sculptors of the 16th century. This Mannerist tendency to Breker's neoclassicism may suggest closer affinities to concurrent expressionist tendencies in German Modernism than is acknowledged.

Until the fall of the Third Reich, Breker was a professor of visual arts in Berlin.

Ninety percent of Breker's public works were destroyed during the bombings of Germany toward the end of the war. In 1946, Breker was offered a commission by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, but he refused, saying "One dictatorship is sufficient for me". In 1948 Breker was designated as a "fellow traveller" of the Nazis and fired, despite which he continued to thrive professionally. He returned to Düsseldorf, now in the new West Germany, which remained his base, with periods of residence in Paris. During this time he worked as an architect. However, he continued to receive commissions for sculptures, producing a number of works in his familiar classical style, working for businesses and individual patrons. He also produced many portrait busts. In 1970 he was commissioned by the king of Morocco to produce work for the United Nations Building in Casablanca, but the work was destroyed. Many other works followed, including sculptures for Dusseldorf's city hall, portraits of Anwar Sadat and Konrad Adenauer, and a statue of Pallas Athene, helmeted and throwing a spear in the same bombastic style as his Nazi-era work. Breker's rehabilitation continued, culminating in the creation of a Breker museum, funded by the Bodenstein family, who set aside Schloss Nörvenich (between Aachen and Cologne) for the purpose. The Arno Breker Museum was inaugurated in 1985, and still open in 2021.

Breker's rehabilitation led to backlashes from anti-Nazi activists, including controversy in Paris when some of his works were exhibited at the Centre Georges Pompidou in 1981. In the same year anti-Breker demonstrations accompanied an exhibition in Berlin. Breker's admirers insisted that he had never been a supporter of Nazi ideology, but had simply accepted their patronage.

© 2024. All content on this blog is protected by international copyright laws All images are copyrighted © by Arno Breker or assignee. Apart from fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review as permitted under the Copyright Act, the use of any image from this site is prohibited unless prior written permission is obtained. All images used for illustrative purposes only 


Torso Matthew,  c. 1927
Romanichel,  c. 1928

Grosser Stehender Kampfer,  c. 1930
The watchman,  c. 1936
Der Fuhrer Bust,  c. 1937
Bereitschaft,  c. 1939 detail
 Pferd,  c. 1939
Wehrmacht,  c. 1939
 Apollo and Daphne,  c. 1940 Bronze
Torso of Apollo,  c. 1940s
Orpheus u. Euridike,  c. 1944
Gerhart Hauptmann,  c. 1945
Pax,  c. 1953-54
Tête de jeune femme au chignon,  c. 1962
Buste de Jean Cocteau,  c. 1963
Head of a Woman,  c. 1966
Nike,  c. 1969
Salvador Dali,  c. 1974-75
Salvador Dali,  c. 1974-75
Girl in love,  c. 1977
Tänzerin,  c. 1977
Verliebtes Madchen,  c. 1977
Die Erwartung,  c. 1978
Grazie,  c. 1979
Junge Venus,  c. 1979
Sinnende,  c. 1980
Sinnende,  c. 1980
Demut,  c. 1982
Frauenakt,  c. 1984
Embrace
Le blessé  (The wounded)
Lion