The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists (434 page)

School of Paris
.

See
PARIS, SCHOOL OF
.

 
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See
REMBRANDT
.

 
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(1804–71).
Austrian painter, graphic artist, and designer, trained in Vienna and in Munich under
Cornelius
. Schwind represents the tail-end of Germanic
Romanticism
and his most characteristic works depict an idealized fairy-tale Middle Ages, with knights in armour, damsels in distress, enchanted woods and castles, and much loving depiction of costume, architecture, etc. He was at his best working on a small scale, as in his numerous book illustrations and his woodcuts for
Fliegende Blätter
, a humorous Munich periodical. In his young days Schwind, who was an accomplished violinist, had been friendly with Franz Schubert and late in his own life he depicted Schubert's Vienna circle in a number of drawings.

 
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(1887–1948).
German painter, sculptor, maker of constructions, writer, and typographer, a leading figure of the
Dada
movement who is best known for his invention of ‘Merz’. The word was first applied to collages made from refuse, but Schwitters came to use it of all his activities, including poetry. He used the word as a verb as well as a noun: a fellow artist was once nonplussed when Schwitters asked him to
merz
with him. In his early work Schwitters was influenced by
Expressionism
and
Cubism
, but after the First World War (in which he served for a time as a draughtsman) he became the chief (indeed, virtually only) representative of Dada in Hanover. In 1918 he began making collages from refuse such as bus tickets, cigarette wrappers, and string, and in 1919 he invented Merz. The name was reached by chance: whilst he was fitting the word ‘Commerzbank’ (from a business letter-head) into a collage, Schwitters cut off some letters and used what was left. He called the collages Merzbilden (Merz pictures) and in about 1923 began to make a sculptural or architectural variant—the Merzbau (Merz building)—in his house in Hanover (it was destroyed by bombing in 1943). From 1923 to 1932 he published a magazine called
Merz
and in this period he was much occupied with typography. In 1937 his work was declared
degenerate
by the Nazis and in the same year he fled to Norway, where at Lysaker he began a second Merzbau (destroyed by fire in 1951). When the Germans invaded Norway in 1940, he moved to England, where he lived for the rest of his life—in London (after release from an internment camp) from 1941 to 1945, and then at Ambleside in the Lake District. Here, in an old barn in Langdale, he began work on his third and final Merzbau, with financial aid from the Museum of Modern Art, New York. It was unfinished at his death and is now in the Hatton Gallery, Newcastle upon Tyne. The day before he died Schwitters received British citizenship.

 
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(1904–33).
Italian painter. He was the son of a soldier and adopted his pseudonym (in 1927) in homage to Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general who defeated Hannibal. He studied briefly (1924–5) at the Academy in Rome before being expelled with his friend Mario Mafai (1902–65), with whom he introduced a romantic
Expressionist
vein into Italian painting in opposition to the prevailing pomposity of officially approved art under Mussolini's Fascist government. His subjects were mainly scenes of modern Rome, painted with violent brushwork and a feeling of visionary intensity. His career was very short, virtually ending in 1931 because of the tuberculosis that killed him, but he was highly influential, becoming a symbol of heroic individuality to Italian artists after the Second World War.

 
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Scopas of Paros
.