Library: Art History by Credo Reference: American Artists

US Artists

Andy Warhol: Topic Page
A founder of the Pop Art movement of the 1960s. Much of his work was collaborative and produced in a loft called ‘the Factory’.
Arshile Gorky (1904 - 1948): Topic Page
Gorky was an American painter who played a key role in the merging of abstraction and Surrealism to prepare for the new style of Abstract Expressionism.
Bruce Nauman (1941-): Topic Page
Born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, he studied mathematics and art at Wisconsin University. In the 1960s he became a leading exponent of Conceptual Art, using neon lights and holograms in addition to producing minimalist sculptures from more conventional materials, as in From Hand to Mouth and Six Inches of My Knee Extended to Six Feet (both 1967).
Edward Hopper (1882 - 1967): Topic Page
US painter, printer, and illustrator. One of the foremost American realists, and the most famous exponent of New Realism in the 20th century, he is often associated with American Scene painting.
Ellsworth Kelly (1923 - 2015): Topic Page
American painter, b. Newburgh, N.Y. He moved to New York City in 1941, studying at Pratt Institute, and later attended the Boston Museum Arts School. In Paris during the late 1940s, he studied at the Académie des Beaux-Arts and met many giants of modern art.
Frank Stella (1936 - ): Topic Page
American painter whose abstract works are characterized by geometric forms, brilliant colors, and often irregularly shaped canvases.
Frederic Remington (1861 - 1909): Topic Page
US artist and illustrator. He is known for his lively paintings, sculptures, and sketches of the American West, which he recorded during several trips to the region. In his detailed, rugged bronzes, he focused on movement to depict the vigorous, energy of cowboys, American Indians, and horses.
Georgia O'Keefe (1887 - 1986): Topic Page
The first internationally acclaimed American woman artist, Georgia O'Keeffe emerged in the twentieth century as one of the cultural icons of her time.
Grandma Moses (1860 - 1961)
From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
Grandma Moses has been described as an “authentic primitive” – that is, a painter whose talent developed in complete isolation from contemporary artistic trends.
Jackson Pollock (1912 - 1956): Topic Page
The American painter Jackson Pollock was the leading figure of the New York School of the 1940s. Brought up in California, he moved to New York in 1929 and studied at the Art Students' League under Thomas Hart Benton, the American Regionalist.
Jasper Johns (1930 - ): Topic Page
Jasper Johns is a painter, sculptor, and printmaker of the neo-dada movement of the 1950s and early 1960s and an important precursor of pop art.
Jean-Michel Basquiat (1960-1988): Topic Page
American painter, b. Brooklyn, N.Y. Born into a middle-class Haitian and Puerto Rican family, he was a 1980s art star whose rise and fall were rapid, dramatic, and emblematic of the era.
Jeff Koons (1955 - ): Topic Page
American artist, b. York, Pa., studied Maryland Institute College of Art (B.F.A., 1976), Art Institute of Chicago. He moved to New York City in 1977 and has lived and worked there since. Koons has been damned and praised with equal fervor by critics, called shallow, cynical, and the bad boy of American art by some and post-ironic, awesome, and a post-pop superstar by others.
Kenneth Noland (1924 - 2010): Topic Page
Kenneth Noland was one of the best known contemporary American Minimalist painters. He worked within a range of 1960s styles collectively named “post-painterly abstraction” by Clement Greenberg.
Mark Rothko (1903 - 1970): Topic Page
Russian-born American abstract expressionist painter whose works are characterized by horizontal bands of subtle color with blurred edges.
Mark Tobey (1890 - 1976): Topic Page
U.S. painter. Influenced by Chinese calligraphy, he devised a style of improvisatory abstract painting called “white writing”.
Norman Rockwell (1894 - 1978): Topic Page
American painter Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was born and spent his childhood in New York City.
Richard Diebenkorn (1922-1993): Topic Page
US painter. A leading member of the second generation of abstract expressionists, he gained worldwide renown for his Ocean Park series of mainly abstract canvases 1967–88.
Robert Rauschenberg (1925 - 2008): Topic Page
American painter. Rauschenberg became a pivotal figure in the emerging pop art movement.
Willem de Kooning (1904 - 1997): Topic Page
The American Abstract Expressionist painter, Willem de Kooning was born in Rotterdam and apprenticed as a commercial painter and decorator. In 1926 he went to New York, initially with no idea of becoming an artist.

American Photographers

Berenice Abbot (1898 - 1991): Topic Page
Photographer, born in Springfield, Ohio, USA.
Ansel Adams (1902 - 1984): Topic Page
American photographer, b. San Francisco. He began taking photographs in the High Sierra and Yosemite Valley, with which his name is permanently associated, becoming professional in 1930.
Dianne Arbus (1923 - 1971): Topic Page
American photographer. Began, in the late 1950s, to make the intimate and powerful visual record of life on the freakish margins of society, for which she became renowned.
Richard Avedon (1923 - 2004): Topic Page
Richard Avedon's career spanned sixty years, beginning as a fashion photographer for Harper's Bazaar in the 1940s when he was barely twenty years old.
Imogen Cunningham (1883 - 1976)
From The Penguin Biographical Dictionary of Women
In a career that spanned 75 years Imogen Cunningham drew on a wide range of subjects for her photographs, including people, landscapes, cityscapes, and, especially, plants and flowers. Her work reflected the major advances in art photography that took place in the 20th century.
Walker Evans (1903 - 1975): Topic Page

U.S. photographer. In 1934 his images of New England architecture were exhibited in the first one-man photographic show at the Museum of Modern Art. From 1935 he photographed rural victims of the Great Depression for the Farm Security Administration; these images were published in American Photographs (1938).
Robert Frank (1924 - ): Topic Page
Swiss-American photographer and filmmaker, b. Zurich. He emigrated to the United States in 1947 and became a citizen in 1963. Frank is considered the pioneer of the “snapshot aesthetic,” in which the documentary image is rendered bluntly and without conscious artistry.
Lewis Wickes Hine (1874-1940): Topic Page
American photographer, b. Oshkosh, Wis. Hine dedicated much of his photographic career, which began shortly after he bought his first camera in 1903, to exposing in sharp, painful images the social evils of the industrial revolution in the United States.
Dorothea Lange (1895 - 1965): Topic Page
American photographer, b. Hoboken, N.J. During the 1930s, the state of California commissioned a report on the way of life of migrant laborers.
Annie Liebowitz (1949 - )
From The Palgrave Macmillan Dictionary of Women's Biography
American photographer, best known for her portraits of celebrities, from rock musicians to politicians. She has done fashion photography, magazine work and advertising and many of her images are famous.
Eadweard Muybridge (1830-1904): Topic Page
Born Edward James Muggeridge, also known as Muggridge, Maygridge, Muygridge, Eduardo Santiago Muybridge. He was a photographer, inventor, and lecturer. One of the most influential and colourful photographers of the nineteenth century, Muybridge's achievements span three distinct categories: landscape photography, motion photography, and early cinema.
Irving Penn (1917 - 2009)
From The Columbia Encyclopedia
American photographer, brother of Arthur Penn, b. Plainfield, N.J.; studied Philadelphia Museum School of Industrial Art (1934–38). Best known for his fashion work, he is also a master of portraiture and still life.
Jacob Riis (1849 - 1914)
From Encyclopedia of American Studies
The first major documentary photographer in America, Jacob Riis used the camera to expose the appalling living conditions of the immigrants of the Lower East Side in New York City toward the end of the nineteenth century.
Cindy Sherman (1954 - ): Topic Page
US photographer. A leading experimental photographer and pioneer in staged photography, Sherman specializes in taking pictures, using herself as the model, in various staged roles suggested by cinema, advertising, and art.
Alfred Stieglitz (1864 - 1946): Topic Page
American photographer, editor, and art exhibitor. The first art photographer in the United States, Stieglitz more than any other American compelled the recognition of photography as a fine art.
Weegee (1899 - 1968): Topic Page
(Arthur Fellig), American photojournalist. Drawn to the grotesque and illicit, he created contrasty black-and-white shots of grisly crime scenes, fires, and car crashes and of New Yorkers at pleasure spots and grim scenes.
Edward Weston (1886 - 1958): Topic Page
American photographer, b. Highland Park, Ill. Weston began to make photographs in Chicago parks in 1902, and his works were first exhibited in 1903 at the Art Institute of Chicago.

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