101 Western painters you should know
1. PABLO PICASSO (1881-1973) – Picasso is to Art History a giant earthquake with eternal aftermaths. With the possible exception of Michelangelo (who focused his greatest efforts in sculpture and architecture), no other artist had such ambitions at the time of placing his oeuvre in the history of art. Picasso created the avant-garde. Then Picasso destroyed the avant-garde. He looked back at the masters and surpassed them all. He faced the whole history of art and single-handed redefined the tortuous relationship between work and spectator
2. GIOTTO DI BONDONE (c.1267-1337) – It has been said that Giotto was the first real painter, like Adam was the first man. We agree with the first part. Giotto continued the Byzantine style of Cimabue and other predecessors, but he earned the right to be included in gold letters in the history of painting when he added to it a quality unknown to date: the emotion
3. LEONARDO DA VINCI (1452-1519) – For better or for worse, Leonardo will be forever known as the author of the most famous painting of all time, the “Gioconda” or “Mona Lisa”. But he is more, much more. His humanist, almost scientific gaze, entered the art of the quattrocento and revoluted it with his sfumetto that nobody was ever able to imitate
4. PAUL CÉZANNE (1839-1906) – “Cezanne is the father of us all.” This lapidary phrase has been attributed to both Picasso and Matisse, and certainly it doesn’t matter who actually said it, because in either case is true. While he exhibited with the Impressionist painters, Cézanne left behind the whole group to develop a style of painting never seen so far, which opened the door for the arrival of Cubism and the rest of the vanguards of the twentieth century
5. REMBRANDT VAN RIJN (1606-1669) – The fascinating use of the light and shadows of his works seem to reflect his own life, moving from fame into oblivion. Rembrandt is the great master of the Dutch painting, and along with Velázquez the main figure of the 17 th century Painting. He is, in addition, the great master of the self-portrait of all times, an artist that had never show mercy at the time of depicting himself
6. DIEGO VELÁZQUEZ (1599-1660) – Along with Rembrandt, one of the summits of the Baroque painting. But unlike the Dutch artist, the Sevillan painter spent most of his life in the comfortable, but rigid courtesan society. Nevertheless, Velázquez was an innovator, a “painter of atmospheres” two centuries before Turner and the Impressionists, and it is shown either in the colossal royal paintings (”Meninas”, “The Forge of Vulcan”) or in the small and memorable sketches of the Villa Medici.
7. WASSILY KANDINSKY (1866-1944) – Although the title of “father of abstraction” has been assigned to several artists, from Picasso to Turner, few painters could claim it with as much justice as Kandinsky. Many artists have achieved the emotion, but very few have changed the way we understand art. Wassily Kandinsky belongs to the latter
8. CLAUDE MONET (1840-1926) – The importance of Monet in the history of art is sometimes “forgotten” by the fact that Art lovers tend to see only the overwhelming beauty that emanates from the canvas, ignoring the complex technique and composition of the work ( a “defect” somehow caused by Monet himself, when he declared “I do not understand why people want to understand my paintings, when it is enough to enjoy them). However, Monet’s experiments, including studies on the changes caused by the daylight on an object at different hours of the day, and the almost abstract quality of their “water lilies” are clearly a prologue to the art of the twentieth century.
9. CARAVAGGIO (1571-1610) – The tough and violent Caravaggio is considered the father of Baroque painting, with his spectacular use of lights and shadows and “tenebrist” scenes using complex perspectives
10. JOSEPH MALLORD WILLIAM TURNER (1775-1881) – Turner is the best landscape painter of the Western painting. Academic painter in his beginnings, Turner was slowly but unstoppably evolving towards a free, atmospheric style, sometimes even outlining the abstraction, which was misunderstood and rejected by critics who had admired him for decades
11. JAN VAN EYCK (1390-1441) – Van Eyck is the colossal pillar on which rests the whole Flemish paintings from the later centuries, the genius of accuracy, thoroughness and perspective, well above any other artist of his time either Flemish or Italian.
12. ALBRECHT DÜRER (1471-1528) – The real Leonardo da Vinci of the Northern European Rennaisance was Dürer, a restless and innovative genious, master of the drawing and the color. He is one of the first artists to represent nature without artifice, either in his landscapes or his drawings of plants and animals
13. JACKSON POLLOCK (1912-1956) – The major figure of the Abstract Expressionism and the painter who divides the twentieth century between avant-garde and post-avant-gardes. His “drips” from the period 1947-1952 are one of the milestones of contemporary art
14. MICHELANGELO BUONARROTI (1475-1564) – Some readers will be quite surprised to see the man who is, along with Picasso, the greatest artistic genius of all time out of the “top ten” of this list, but the fact is that even Michelangelo defined himself as “sculptor”, and even his painted masterpiece (the frescoes in the Sistine Chapel) looks like a painted sculpture. Nevertheless, a masterpiece of this caliber is sufficient to guarantee him a place of honor in the history of painting
15. PAUL GAUGUIN (1848-1903) – One of the most fascinating figures in the history of painting, his works moved from Impressionism (soon abandoned) to the symbolsism, colorful and vigorous, shown is his paintings in Polynesia. Matisse and Fauvism can not be understood without the works of Paul Gauguin
16. FRANCISCO DE GOYA (1746-1828) – Goya is an enigma. In the whole History of Art few figures are as complex for the study as the artist born in Fuendetodos, Spain. Enterprising and indefinable, a painter with no rival in all his life, Goya was the painter of the Court and the painter of the people. He was a religious painter and a mystical painter. He was the author of the beauty and eroticism of the Maja desnuda and the creator of the explicit horror of The executions of May 3rd. He was an oil painter, a fresco painter, a sketcher and an engraver. And he never stopped his metamorphosis
17. VINCENT VAN GOGH (1853-1890) – Few names in the history of painting are now as famous as Van Gogh, despite the complete neglect he suffered in life. His works, strong and personal, are one of the greatest influences in the painting of the twentieth century, especially in the German Expressionism
18. ÉDOUARD MANET (1832-1883) – Manet was the origin of Impressionism, a revolutionary in a time of great artistic revolutions. The “Olympia” or “Déjeuner sur l’Herbe” opened the way for the great figures of the Impressionism
19. MARK ROTHKO (1903-1970) – The influence of Rothko in the history of painting is yet to quantify, because the truth is that almost 40 years after his death the influence of the large masses of color and the emotion of Rothko’s large canvases continues to increase in many painters of the 21st century
20. HENRI MATISSE (1869-1954) – Art critics tend to regard Matisse as the greatest exponent of the twentieth century painting, only surpassed by Picasso. This is an exaggeration, although the almost pure use of color in some of his works strongly influenced many of the following avant-gardes
21. RAFAEL (1483-1520) – Equally loved and hated in different eras, no one can doubt that Rafael is one of the greatest geniuses of the Renaissance, with an excellent technique in terms of drawing and color
22. JEAN-MICHEL BASQUIAT (1960-1988) – Basquiat is undoubtedly the most important and famous member of the “graffiti movement” that appeared in the New York scene in the early’80s, an artistic movement whose enormous influence in later painting is still to be measured
23. EDVARD MUNCH (1863-1944) – Modernist in his context, Munch could be also considered the first expressionist painter in history. Works like “The Scream” are vital to understanding the painting of the twentieth century
24. PIET MONDRIAN (1872 -1944) – Along with Kandinsky and Malevich, Mondrian is the leading figure of the first abstract painting. After emigrating to New York, Mondrian filled his abstract paintings with a fascinating emotional quality, as we can se in his series of “boogie-woogies” created in the mid-40s
25. PIERO DELLA FRANCESCA (1416-1492) – Being one of the key figures of quattrocento , the Art of Piero della Francesca has been described like “cold”, “hieratic” or even “impersonal”. But with the apparition of Berenson and the great historians of his time as Michel Hérubel -who defended the “metaphysical dimension” of the paintings by Piero- his precise and contained Art finally occupied the place that it deserves in the Art history
26. PETER PAUL RUBENS (1577-1640) – Rubens was one of the most prolific painters of all history, thanks in part to the collaboration of his study. Very famous in life, he traveled around Europe to meet orders from very wealthy and important clients. His female nudes are still amazing in our days
27. ANDY WARHOL (1928-1987) – Controversial and brilliant, Warhol is the leading figure of the pop-art and one of the icons of contemporary art. His silkscreen series depicting icons of the mass-media (as a reinterpretation of Monet’s series) are one of the milestones of contemporary Art, with a huge influence in the Art of our days
28. JOAN MIRÓ (1893-1983) – Like most geniuses, Miro is an unclassificable artist. His interest in the world of the unconscious, those hidden in the depths of the mind, link him with Surrealism, but with a personal style, sometimes closer to Fauvism and Expressionism. His most important works are those from the series of “Constellations”, created in the early 40s
29. TOMASSO MASACCIO (1401-1428) – Masaccio is one of the first old masters who used un his works the laws of the scientific perspective. One of the greatest innovative painters of the Early Renaissance
30. MARC CHAGALL (1887-1985) – Artist of dreams and fantasies, Chagall was for all his life an immigrant fascinated by the lights and colors of the places he visited. Few names from the School of Paris of the early twentieth century have contributed so much and with such variety to change the twentieth century Art as this man “impressed by the light,” as he defined himself
31. GUSTAVE COURBET (1819-1877) – Leading figure of realism, and a clear precedent for the Impressionists, Courbet was one of the greatest revolutionaries, both as an artist and as a social-activist, of the history of painting. Like Rembrandt and other predecessors, Courbet did not seek to create beauty, but believed that beauty was achieved when and artist represented the purest reality without artifice
32. TITIAN (c.1476-1576) – After the premature death of Giorgione, Titian became the leading figure of the Venetian painting of his time. His use of color and the taste for mythological themes defined the main features of the Venetian Art of the 16th century. His influence on later artists -Rubens, Velázquez- is extremely important
33. NICOLAS POUSSIN (1594-1665) – The greatest among the French Baroque painters, Poussin had a vital influence on French painting for many centuries. His use of color is unique among all the painters of his era
34. WILLEM DE KOONING (1904-1997) – After Pollock, the leading figure of abstract expressionism, though one of his greatest contributions was not to feel limited by the abstraction, and often resort to a heartbreaking figurative painting (his series of “Women,” for example) with a major influence on later artists such as Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud
35. PAUL KLEE (1879-1940) – In a period of artistic revolutions and innovations, few artists were as crucial as Paul Klee. His studies on color, widely taught at the Bauhaus, are unique among all the artists of his time
36. FRANCIS BACON (1909-1992) – Maximum exponent, along with Lucian Freud, of the so-called “School of London”, Bacon’s paintings rise against all the canons of painting, not only in those terms related to beauty, but also against the dominance of the Abstract Expressionism of its time
37. GUSTAV KLIMT (1862-1918) – Half way between modernism and symbolism appears the figure of Gustav Klimt, who was also devoted to the industrial arts. His nearly abstract landscapes also make him a forerunner of geometric abstraction
38. EUGÈNE DELACROIX (1798-1863) – Eugène Delacroix is the French romanticism painter par excellence and one of the most important names in the European painting of the first half of the 19 th century. “Liberty leading the People” also demonstrates the capacity of the Painting to become the symbol of an age
39. PAOLO UCCELLO (1397-1475) – “Solitary, eccentric, melancholic and poor”. Giorgio Vasari described with these four words one of the most audacious geniuses of the early Florentine Renaissance, arguably the first master of the perspective in Western painting
40. WILLIAM BLAKE (1757-1827) – Revolutionary and mystic, painter and poet, Blake is one of the most fascinating artists of any era. His watercolors, prints and a temperas are filled with a wild imagination (almost crazyness) unique among the artists of his era
41. KAZIMIR MALEVICH (1878-1935) – Creator of Suprematism, Malevich will forever be one of the most controversial figures in the history of art among the general public, divided between those who consider him an essential renewal and those who consider that his works based on polygons of pure colors do not deserve be considered Art
42. ANDREA MANTEGNA (1431-1506) – One of the greatest exponents of the Quattrocento, interested in the human figure, which he often represented under extreme perspectives ( “The Dead Christ”)
43. JAN VERMEER (1632-1675) – Vermeer is the leading figure of the Delft School, and for sure one of the greatest landscape painters of all time. Works such as “View of Delft” are considered almost as “impressionist” due to the liveliness of his brushwork. He was also a skilled portraitist
44. EL GRECO (1541-1614) – One of the most original and fascinating artists of his era, with a very personal technique that would be admired, three centuries later, by the impressionist painters
45. CASPAR DAVID FRIEDRICH (1774-1840) – Leading figure of German Romantic painting, Friedrich is still identified as the painter of landscapes of loneliness and distress, with human figures facing the terrible magnificence of nature
46. WINSLOW HOMER (1836-1910) – The main figure in American painting of his era, Homer was a breath of fresh air for the American scene, which was “stuck” in the academic painting and the more romantic Hudson River School. Homer’s loose and lively brushstroke is almost Impressionist
47. MARCEL DUCHAMP (1887-1968) – One of the major figures of Dadaism and a prototype of a “total artist”, Duchamp is one of the most important and controversial figures of his era. His contribution to painting is just a small part of his huge contribution to the art world
48. GIORGIONE (1478-1510) – As so many other painters who died so young -he passed away at only 32- Giorgione has left us the doubt of what place would his exquisite painting occupy in the history of Art if he had enjoyed a long existence, just as his direct artistic heir – Titian
49. HANS HOLBEIN EL JOVEN (1497-1543) – After Dürer, the greatest of the German painters of his time. The fascinating portrait of the “ambassadors” is still considered one of the most enigmatic paintings of art history
50. EDGAR DEGAS (1834-1917) – Though Degas was not a “pure” impressionist painter, his works shared the ideals of that artistic movement. Degas paintings of young dancers or ballerinas are icons in the painting of the late 19th century
51. FRA ANGELICO (1387-1455) – One of the great colorists from the early Renaissance, and perhaps the first to develop the progresses achieved by Giotto di Bondone
52. GEORGES SEURAT (1859-1891) – Georges Seurat is one of the most important post-impressionist painters, and is considered the creator of the “pointillism”, a style of painting in which small distinct points of primary colors create the impression of a wide selection of secondary and intermediate colors
53. JEAN-ANTOINE WATTEAU (1684-1721) – Watteau is considered today as one of the pioneers of the rococo. Unfortunately, he died at the height of his powers, as is evidenced in the great portrait of “Gilles” painted in the year of his death
54. SALVADOR DALÍ (1904-1989) – “You can not expel me because I am Surrealism,” shouted Dalí when André Breton expelled him from the surrealist movement due to Dalí’s fascist ideals. Although the phrase sounds presumptuous (which was never unusual in Dalí), the fact is that Dalí’s paintings are now the most famous images of all the surrealist movement
55. MAX ERNST (1891-1976) – Halfway between Surrealism and Dadaism appears Max Ernst, important in both movements. Ernst was a brave artistic explorer with the support of his wife and patron, Peggy Guggenheim
56. TINTORETTO (1518-1594) – Tintoretto is the most flamboyant of the Venetian masters (not the best, such honour can only be reclaimed by Titian or Giorgione) and his magna opera closes not only the Venetian splendour till the apparition of the Canaletto era, but also makes him the last of the Cinquecento masters
57. JASPER JOHNS (born 1930) – The last living legend of the early Pop Art, although he has never considered himself a “pop artist”. His most famous works are the series of “Flags” and “Targets”
58. SANDRO BOTTICELLI (1445-1510) – “If Botticelli were alive now he would be working for Vogue”, actor Peter Ustinov once remarked. Botticelli shares with Raphael the fact of being loved or forgotten at different eras, but his use of color is one of the most fascinating among all old masters
59. DAVID HOCKNEY (born 1937) – David Hockney is one of the living myths of the Pop Art . Born in Great Britain, he moves to California , where he feels immediately identified with the light, the culture and the urban landscape of the State
60. UMBERTO BOCCIONI (1882-1916) – The maximum figure of Italian Futurism, fascinated by the world of the machine, on the movement, as a symbol of the contemporary times
61. JOACHIM PATINIR (1480-1524) – Much less technically gifted than other Flemish painters like Memling and van der Weyden, his contribution to the history of art is vital for the incorporation of landscape as a major element in the painting
62. DUCCIO DA BUONISEGNA (c.1255/60 – 1318/19) – While in Florence Giotto di Bondone was changing the history of painting, Duccio of Buonisegna also provided a breath of fresh air to the important Sienese school
63. ROGER VAN DER WEYDEN (1399-1464) – After Van Eyck, the leading exponent of the Flemish paintings of the fifteenth century, a master of perspective and composition
64. JOHN CONSTABLE (1776-1837) – The great figure of the English landscape painting, along with Turner. The limitations he imposed to himself (he never left England) prevents this techincally gifted artist to occupy a higher position in this list
65. JACQUES-LOUIS DAVID (1748-1825) – David is the summit of neoclassicism, whose compositions seem a great reflection of his hectic and revolutionary life
66. ARSHILLE GORKY (1905-1948) – Painter of Armenian origins, he was a surrealist painter who was also one of the leaders of abstract expressionism. He was called “the Ingres of the unconscious”
67. HIERONYMUS BOSCH (1450-1516) – An extremely religious man, the work by Bosch is basically moralizing, didactic. The artist sees in the society of his time the triumph of the sin, the depravation, and all the things that have caused the fall of the human being from its angelical character, and wants to warn his contemporaries of the terrible consequences of his impure acts
68. PIETER BRUEGEL THE ELDER (1528-1569) – Parallelisms are commonly established between the works by Hyeronimus Bosch and those by Brueghel, but the differences between both of them are abysmal. Whereas Bosch’s fantasies are born of a deep deception and preoccupation for the human being, with a clearly moralizing message, works by Bruegel are full of irony and love for the rural life that seems to anticipate the Dutch landscape painting of the next century
69. SIMONE MARTINI (1284-1344) – One of the great painters of the Italian Trecento, who was a step further by helping to expand its progress, leading to the “International Style”
70. FRIDA KAHLO (1907-1954) – The fame that has reached her tragic figure in recent years seems to obscure the importance that Frida had on Latin American art. Kahlo suffered when she was just 17 a bus accident with terrible sequels, breaking her spinal column, pelvis, and her right leg. After this incident, Kahlo’s self-portraits can be considered as quiet but terrible moans
71. FREDERICK EDWIN CHURCH (1826-1900) – Church represents the culmination of the Hudson River School : he possesses the love for the landscape of Cole, the romantic lyricism of Durand, and the grandiloquence of Bierstadt, but being braver and technically more gifted than anyone with them. Church is without any doubt one of the best landscape painters of all time, perhaps only surpassed by Turner and some impressionists and postimpressionists like Monet or Cézanne
72. EDWARD HOPPER (1882-1967) – Hopper is widely known as the painter of urban loneliness. His most famous work, the famous “Nighthawks” (1942) has become the symbol of the solitude of the contemporary metropolis, and it is one of the icons of the 20th century Art.
73. LUCIO FONTANA (1899-1968) – Father of the “White Manifesto”, where he states that “Matter, colour and sound in motion are the phenomena whose simultaneous development makes up the new art”. His “Concepts Spatiales” are already icons of the art of the second half of the twentieth century
74. FRANZ MARC (1880-1916) – After Kandinsky, the great figure of the Expressionist group “The Blue Rider” and one of the most important expressionist painters ever. He died at the height of his artistic powers, when his use of color anticipated the later abstraction
75. PIERRE-AUGUSTE RENOIR (1841-1919) – One of the key figures of the Impressionism, he soon left the movement to pursue a more personal, academic painting
76. JAMES MCNEILL WHISTLER (1856-1921) – Along with Winslow Homer the great figure of American painting of his time. Whistler was an excellent portraitist, which is shown in the fabulous portrait of his mother, considered one of the great masterpieces of American painting of all time
77. THEODORE GÉRICAULT (1791-1824) – Key figure in the romanticism, revolutionary in his life and works despite his bourgeois origins. In his masterpiece, “The raft of the Medusa”, Gericault creates a painting that we can define as “politically incorrect”, as it depicts the miseries of a large group of castaways abandoned after the a shipwreck
78. WILLIAM HOGARTH (1697-1764) – A list of the great portrait painters of all time should never miss the figure of Hogarth, whose studies and sketches could even qualify as “pre-impressionist”
79. CAMILLE COROT (1796-1875) – One of the great figures of French realism of the 19th century and certainly one of the major influences for the impressionists like Monet or Renoir, thanks to his love for “plen-air” painting, emphasizing the use of light
80. GEORGES BRAQUE (1882-1963) – Along with Picasso and Juan Gris, the main figure of Cubism, the most important of the avant-gardes of the 20th century Art
81. HANS MEMLING (1435-1494) – Perhaps the most complete and “well-balanced” of the fifteenth-century Flemish painters, although not as innovative as Van Eyck or van der Weyden
82. GERHARD RICHTER (born 1932) – One of the most important artists of recent decades, Richter is known either for his fierce and colorful abstractions or his serene landscapes and scenes with candles
83. AMEDEO MODIGLIANI (1884-1920) – One of the most original portraitists of the history of painting, considered as a “cursed” painter because of his wild life and early death
84. GEORGES DE LA TOUR (1593-1652) – The influence of Caravaggio is evident in De la Tour, whose use of light and shadows is unique among the painters of the Baroque era
85. JEAN FRANÇOIS MILLET (1814-1875) – One of the main figures of the Barbizon School, author of one of the most emotive paintings of the 19th century: The “Angelus”
86. FRANCISCO DE ZURBARÁN (1598-1664) – The closest to Caravaggio of all Baroque Spanish painters, his latest works show a mastery of chiaroscuro without parallel among the painters of his time
87. CIMABUE (c.1240-1302) – Although in some works Cimabue already represents an evolution of the rigid Byzantine art, his greatest contribution to painting was to discover (the legend says that painting sheeps with a chalk on a rock) a young talent named Giotto (see number 2), who changed forever the Western painting
88. JAMES ENSOR (1860-1949) – Violent painter whose strong, almost “unfinished”, works make him a precursor of Expressionism
89. RENÉ MAGRITTE (1898-1967) – One of the leading figures of surrealism, his apparently simple works are the result of a complex reflection about reality and the world of dreams
90. AMBROGIO LORENZETTI (c.1295-1348) – His cityscapes are the first urban perspectives of the history of Western painting
91. EL LISSITZKY (1890-1941) – One of the main exponents of Russian avant-garde painting, influenced by Malevich, also excelled in graphic design
92. EGON SCHIELE (1890-1918) – Another “died too young” artist, his strong and ruthless portraits influenced the works of later artists, like Lucian freud or Francis Bacon
93. DANTE GABRIEL ROSSETTI (1828-1882) – Perhaps the key figure in the pre-Raphaelite movement, Rossetti left the poetry to devote himself a classic painting that influenced the symbolism
94. TAKASHI MURAKAMI (born 1963) – In the exciting and sometimes treacherous world of contemporary art, few artists are so interesting as Murakami. His “superflat” paintings are already an icon of the Art of the 21st century
95. CLAUDIO DE LORENA (1600-1682) – His works were a vital influence on the landscape painters for centuries, both in Europe (Corot, Courbet) and America (Hudson River School)
96. ROY LICHTENSTEIN (1923-1977) – Along with Andy Warhol the most famous figure of the American Pop-Art. His works are often related to the style of the comics, though Lichtenstein rejected that idea
97. THOMAS GAINSBOROUGH (1727-1788) – English painting of later decades (Turner, Constable…) is influenced by this artist, best known for his landscapes, but also a great portrait
98. GUSTAVE MOREAU (1826-1898) – One of the key figures of symbolism, introverted and mysterious in life, but very free and colorful in his works
99. GIORGIO DE CHIRICO (1888-1978) – Considered the father of metaphysical painting and a major influence on the Surrealist movement
100. FERNAND LÉGER (1881-1955) – Starting in the Cubism, Leger was increasingly attracted to the world of machinery and movement, which results in works such as “The Discs” (1918)
101. JEAN-AUGUSTE-DOMINIQUE INGRES (1780-1867) – Ingres was the most prominent disciple of the David’s neoclassicism, so he can not be considered an innovator. He was, however, a master of classic portrait
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