The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (161 page)

(1901–73).
American painter. He was educated in England, at Eton and Cambridge, and much of his early life was spent travelling and studying in Europe. His early works were mainly of biblical and imaginative subjects, but after settling in New York in 1931 he became a leading figure among the
Social Realists
who used their art as an instrument of social protest and propaganda during the Depression years. He was active in several organizations concerned with the civil rights of artists, and under the banner of the
Federal Art Project
he produced militant paintings of social criticism, his best-known work in this genre being
American Tragedy
(Whitney Mus., New York, 1937), which commemorates a police attack on striking steel workers in Chicago. Even his allegorical religious painting
The New Lazarus
(Whitney Mus., 1954) has sociological overtones, with its figures of starving children. His style varied, but his inclination for the bizarre and grotesque sometimes brings his work close to
Surrealism
, as is seen in what is perhaps his most famous painting,
Lily and the Sparrows
(Whitney Mus., 1939).

 
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(1570–after 1633).
English sculptor. He was the first distinctive personality in English sculpture since the Reformation, but details of his career are scanty. From 1601 to
c.
1614 he was working as a sculptor and painter in Paris, but though he had a studio of some size and several works in both arts are recorded, none has survived. After his return to England he made a number of tombs that stand out for their humanity, freshness of invention, and refinement of handling at a period when most English tomb sculpture was mass-produced. His signed tomb of Lord Teynham (Lynsted , Kent
c.
1622), for example, has, in addition to the recumbent effigy, a distinguished kneeling figure of the widow and a series of touching
reliefs
of mourning children.
Vertue
called him ‘that most exquisite artist’.

 
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(
c.
1520–after 1573).
Netherlandish painter, active mainly in England, where he settled in the 1540s. About thirty of his paintings survive, almost all portraits (there are also a few allegories), dating from 1549 to 1570. He is known also to have painted for pageants and masques. Although his work is uneven, he was the outstanding figure in the history of English painting in the mid 16th cent. He painted Queen Mary and Queen Elizabeth I, but his masterpiece is perhaps the striking allegorical portrait of Sir John Luttrell (Courtauld Inst., London, 1550).

 
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Execias
.

The most famous of Greek
black-figure vase painters
, active in the second half of the 6th cent. BC. Among the best-known works with his signature are an amphora (wine jar) showing Achilles and Ajax gaming (versions BM, London, and Vatican Mus.) and a splendid cup showing Dionysus in his boat (Antikensammlungen, Munich). Many of the works signed by Execias contain battle scenes, but he was able to impart an air of dignity and grandeur even to the most ordinary activities, and his greatest gift was perhaps for conveying pathos and psychological insight.

 
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Expressionism
.

A term used in the history and criticism of the arts to denote the use of distortion and exaggeration for emotional effect. It is used in several different ways and can be applied to various art forms, but is chiefly associated with the visual arts. In its broadest sense it can be used of any art that raises subjective feeling above objective observation, reflecting the state of mind of the artist rather than images that conform to what we see in the external world. The paintings of
Grünewald
and El
Greco
, who conveyed intense religious emotion through distorted, unnaturalistic forms, are outstanding examples of expressionism in this sense (when used in this way the word is usually spelled with a small ‘e’). In a narrower sense, the word Expressionism is applied to a broad trend in modern European art that traces its origin to van
Gogh
, who used colour and line emotionally ‘to express…man's terrible passions’. Among the great artists who represent Expressionism in this sense are
Ensor
and
Munch
. In its narrowest sense, the term Expressionism is applied to one aspect of the trend just described—a movement that was the dominant force in German art from about 1905 to about 1930. The
Brücke
and
Blaue Reiter
groups represent the high point of German Expressionism, and led, in the case of
Kandinsky
, for example, to abstraction. Expressionism represented a rebellion against the naturalism of 19th-cent. art, and its insistence on the supreme importance of the artist's personal feelings has been one of the foundations of aesthetic attitudes in the 20th cent.

 
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