CLIL Fioriti Gabriel

Gizzarelli Mariano Mastrangelo Emanuela

Palena Federico Rodini Nicolas

Neoclassicism

The artistic style known as "Neoclassicism" was the

predominant movement in European art and architecture

during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.

It reflected a desire to rekindle the spirit and forms of

classical art from ancient Greece and Rome.

Neoclassicism was also, in part, a reaction against the

ostentation of Baroque art and Rococò, stimulated by the

discovery of Roman ruins at Herculaneum and Pompeii, along

with publication in 1755 of the highly influential

book Thoughts on the Imitation of Greek Works of Art, by

the German art historian and scholar Johann Winckelmann. A

fundamental step was the Grand Tour that was an important

artistic experience made by famous painters, sculptors and

architects who spread this art in all Europe.

Neoclassical works were serious,

unemotional, and heroic.

Neoclassical painters depicted

subjects from Classical literature

and history, as used in

classic Greek art and

Republican Roman art.

Neoclassical topics are: beauty,

harmony, balance.

Founders and famous artists of Neoclassicism include

Anton Raphael Mengs, Jacques –Louis David, Antonio

Canova, Robert Adam, Giuseppe Piermarini, Leo Von

Klenze.

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•He was born in 1748 in Paris, France;

•At 18 years old, the gifted artist began

to attend the Royal Academy of art and

sculpture;

•In 1774 he won the “Prix de Rome”;

•In 1775 he went to Rome and studied

the Italian masterpieces, in particular

those of Renaissance, Baroque and the

ruins of Ancient Rome; After these

experiences he broke with the previous

training, he acquired Raphael’s view

considered as a model of style, nobility

and Classical arts;

.

Jacques-Louis David

•In 1784 he painted his most famous oil

on canvas “The Oath of Horatii”

considered the manifesto of

Neoclassicism;

•He took part in the French revolution as

a Jacobite. When Robespierre died

Jacques-Louis David was imprisoned.

Here he drew his famous “Marie

Antoinette on the Way to the Guillotine”;

•He worked for Napoleon and he

became “first artist of the imperator”, after

Napoleon’s death he was exiled in

Bruxelles where he died on 29th

Decembre 1825.

The Oath of the Horatii represents the moment before the fight between Curati and

Horatii. The story of Oath of the Horatii came from Roman history involving a conflict

between the Romans and a rival group from Alba. Rather than continue a war, they elect

three soldiers to solve their dispute. The Romans select the Horatii and the Albans select

the Curati. In the painting we can see the moment of the Oath of the Horatii when they

promise to defend Rome. To tell the story of the Oath, David created a rigorously

organized painting with a scene set in a Roman atrium dominated by three arches at the

back.

The Oath of the Horatii

We see a group of three young men framed by the first arch. One of the

women on the right of the painting is Camilla, sister of the three Horatii who

is married to one of Curati and is desperate because she knows that whatever

happens she will lose or her brothers or her husband. Sabina is married to a

Horatii brother and resting her head upon Camilla. The mother of Horatii

covers two young children with a dark veil, as an ill omen of death. The

contrasts between the bodies show not only the differences between the roles

of the men and women in society, but also the two sides to war: honor and

celebration on one side, anguish and misfortune on the other. This opera was

considered the manifesto of Patriotism.

The Crystal Palace was built by the architect Joseph Paxton to house the great

exhibition of 1851.

In January 1850 a committee was formed to choose the design for a temporary

exhibition building that would show the latest technologies and innovations from

around the world: The “Great Exhibition of the Works of Industry of all Nations.”

Impressed by the low cost proposal, the committee accepted Paxton’s innovative

plan, leaving only 8 months for construction, which began immediately in Hyde Park.

The Crystal Palace

The crystal palace was made almost exclusively of glass and iron.

All parts were prefabricated and easy to erect, and every modular unit

was self supporting, allowing the workers freedom in assembling the

pieces. Thanks to Paxton’s simple and brilliant design, the structure

was completed within 5 months.

The construction consists of a central nave over half a kilometer long.

The nave is cut by a transept which is covered by a barrel vault.

The method of construction was a breakthrough in technology and

design, and paved the way for more sophisticated pre-fabricated design.

When the exhibition was closed 6 months later, the structure was

reassembled in the south London suburb of Sydenham Hill.

Tragically, the building was destroyed in a fire in 1936.

The impressionism was a French art movement which marked a

momentary break from tradition in European painting. Developing in Paris

in the 1860s , its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually in the

United States.

They were artists who rejected traditional painting. The impressionists

refused the official government-sanctioned exhibitions, or salons, and were

consequently shunned by academic art institutions.

Impressionists aimed to capture the momentary, sensory effect of a scene,

the impression of objects made in the eye in an instant. To achieve this

effect, many impressionist artists moved from the studio to the streets and

countryside, painting “en plain air”.

Impressionism

The Impressionists loosened their brushwork and

lightened their palettes to include pure, intense colors.

They abandoned traditional linear perspective and

avoided the clarity of form that had previously served to

distinguish the more important elements of a picture from

the lesser ones. .

Picking up on the ideas of Gustave Courbet, the

Impressionists aimed to extend the possible subjects for

paintings. Getting away from depictions of idealized forms

and perfect symetry, but rather concentrating on the world

as they saw it. The world appeared imperfect.

Part of the Impressionist idea was to

capture a split second of life, a moment in

time on the canvas: the impression.

Scientific thought at the time was

beginning to recognize that what the eye

perceived and what the brain understood

were two different things. The

Impressionists sought to capture the

optical effects of light to convey the

passage of time, changes in weather, and

other shifts in the atmosphere in their

canvases. Their art did not rely on

realistic depictions.

Claude Monet Claude Monet was born in Paris, in 1840. At the age of five

he moved to Le Havre.

When he was fifteen he became popular as a caricaturist.

He was influenced by Eugene Boudin, an important

painters of landscape that introduced to Monet the outdoor

painting. Infact from this moment he preferred the ‘En

Plain Air’ paintings, studying the various effects of changing

lights in different moments of the day and of the year.

His military service in Algeri helped him to develop his

knowledge of colours and lights of Africa beginning to love

the nature.

He studied in Paris at the Accademie Suisse where he met

Pisarro and Cezanne. He worked also with students of

Ingres and he met Sisley, Bazille and Renoir.

Then he moved to London during the Franco-Prussian war

organizing some exhibitions but with little recognition.

In 1892 he married and after years of poverty he became

famous, travelling around Europe until his death in 1926.

Impression, Sunrise This famous painting of 1872, Impression, Sunrise, was created from a scene in

the port of Le Havre. Monet depicts a mist, which provides a hazy background

to the piece set in the French harbor. The orange and yellow hues contrast

brilliantly with the dark vessels. It is a striking and candid work that shows the

smaller boats in the foreground almost being propelled along by the movement

of the water. The horizon has disappeared and the water, sky, and reflections

have all merged together. The buildings and ships in the background are only

vague shapes and the red sun dominates the painting. His aim was not to create

an accurate landscape, but to record the impressions formed while looking at

that landscape.

From the 15th April to 15th May 1874, Monet

exhibited his work together with Camille

Pissarro, Alfred Sisley, Édouard Manet, Paul

Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and some other thirty

artists. They organized their exhibition on

their own as they were usually rejected at the

Paris Salon. Most visitors were disgusted and

even outraged over such a graffiti.

Pablo Picasso and Cubism

Pablo Picasso was born in Malaga,

Spain, in October of 1881. In 1901

he went to Paris, which he found as

the ideal place to pratice new style

and experiment with a variety of art

forms.

During his stay in Paris, Pablo

Picasso was constantly updating his

style; he worked from the blue

period, the rose period, African

influenced style, to cubism,

surrealism, and realism.

Picasso did not feel that art should copy nature. He felt no obligation to remain tied to the more traditional artistic techniques of perspective, modeling and felt two-dimensional object. Cubism involves different ways of seeing, or perceiving, the world around us. Picasso believed in the concept of relativity – he took into account both his observations and his memories when creating a Cubist image. He felt that we do not see an object from one angle or perspective, but rather from many angles selected by sight and movement.

Picasso became fascinated with the process of

construction and deconstruction, a fascination that

is evident in his Cubist works. When creating these

Cubist pieces, Picasso would simplify objects into

geometric components and planes that may or may

not add up to the whole object as it would appear in

the natural world. He would distort figures and

forms and simultaneously depict different points of

view on one plane.

Picasso actively created works of Cubist art for around

ten years. Within this time span, his Cubist style

evolved from Analytical Cubism (1907-1912) to

Synthetic Cubism (1913-1917). With Analytical

Cubism, Picasso utilized a muted color palette of

monochromatic browns, grays, and blacks and chose to

convey relatively unemotional subject matters such as

still lives and landscapes , but he did not yet

incorporate elements of texture and collage.

With Synthetic Cubism, Picasso incorporated texture,

patterning, text, and newspaper scraps into his Cubist

works. While he still portrayed relatively neutral

subjects such as musical instruments, bottles, glasses,

pitchers, newspapers, playing cards, and human faces

and figures, his technique had progressed to the point

where he was consistently including elements of

collage. With Synthetic Cubism, Picasso redefined the

visual effect of his original Cubist technique and

incorporated new materials, paving the way for the

artistic avant-garde movement to ignite throughout

Europe. Cubism is renowned as a groundbreaking

artistic movement in and of its own right, yet it also

influenced generations of artists to follow, shaping the

very history of art. .

Guernica is a mural-sized oil painting on canvas by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. It was

completed in June 1937. The painting was created in response to the bombing of Guernica,

a Basque Country village in northern Spain, by Nazi German and Fascist Italian warplanes

at the request of the Spanish Nationalists. The painting became famous and widely

acclaimed, and it helped bring worldwide attention to the Spanish Civil War. In January

1937, the Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to create a large mural

for the Spanish display at the Exposition Internationale des Arts et Techniques dans la Vie

Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

Guernica

.

In January 1937, the Spanish Republican government commissioned Picasso to

create a large mural for the Spanish display at the Exposition Internationale des Arts

et Techniques dans la Vie Moderne at the 1937 World's Fair in Paris.

.

The scene presents on the left, a wide-eyed bull

standing over a woman grieving over a dead child in

her arms. The large gaping wound in the horse's side

is one of the major focuses of the painting. Under

the horse there is a dead dismembered soldier; his

hand on a severed arm still grasps a shattered sword,

near a flower, a symbol of hope. On the open palm

of the dead soldier’s hand there is a stigma, a symbol

of martyrdom derived from the stigmata of Christ. A

light bulb blazes in the shape of an evil eye over the

suffering horse's head (the bare lamp of the torturer's

cell). To the upper right of the horse, a frightened

female figure, who seems to be witnessing the scenes

before her, appears to have floated into the room

through a window. Her arm, also floating in, carries a

flame-lit lamp. The lamp is positioned very close to

the bulb, and is a symbol of hope, clashing with the

lightbulb. On the right there Is a woman surrounded

by flames suffering and burning in the fire over a

floating female figure. She looks up blankly into the

blazing light bulb.

SOURCES:

www.wikipedia.org

www.storiadellarte.com

www.frammentiarte.it

www.louvre.fr

www.biography.com

www.victorianweb.org

www.britannica.com