JOSEPH BEUYS

An elusive guru of modern art with mysterious and dark origins - the life of Beuys was an extension of his performance art. As teenage volunteer for the Nazi air force known as the Luftwaffe, he began to consider life as an artist. Later on, Beuys would often tell the story of his body being salvaged from the wreckage of his crashed plane by the indigenous people of Crimea and nursed back to health wrapped in fat and animal skins. The plane crash happened but no other part of the story was true - instead it was a way to bridge a gap between his fascist, violent beginnings and the deeply humanist, emotional, shamanistic artist he became. He crated a charismatic, messianic persona that was deeply spiritual, and proclaimed far and wide the healing power of art in a world that was wounded. “Our vision of the world", he said, “must be extended to encompass all the invisible energies with which we have lost contact.” This work, ‘The Shaman’, is a self portrait - an animalistic form appears in the centre and above it, the disembodied hat-wearing head of Beuys, all rendered in a thick, almost blood-like red. It is the portrait of a spiritual man, not unfamiliar with the darkness of violence.

CHARLES BIEDERMAN

Ideologically absolute and socially difficult, Charles Biederman rose through the ranks of American artistic society quickly. He gained recognition for technical skill and conceptual ideation but with it, a reputation for being difficult to work with. He dropped out of school, fell out with curators and gallerists, abandoned artists and influences in a strong-headed search for artistic truth. In 1936, he was being touted as one of the key players of American Modern Art but by 1937 he had all but abandoned the style that had brought his acclaim. The painting here, full of loose, naturalistic forms and anthropomorphised shaped would later be rejected by Biederman and replaced with strict geometry. There was, he thought, an incompatibility with the modern world of mathematical rigour and the depiction of biological shapes, a so called ‘conflict of forms’ of which he fell on the geometric side. Not long after, Biederman would reject painting altogether, instead working in three dimensional reliefs and mixed media collages to communicate his ideas of the modern world. Biederman was restless and cocksure, paying little attention to social convention or norms in pursuit of greatness. He found it.

ANDRIAEN VAN DE VENNE

Commercially viable but laden with political and religious allegories, the work of van de Vedde achieved him enormous success and fame in his lifetime, becoming a popular illustrator of the current day. This work, one of a series depicting the changing seasons, is exemplary of his style, full as it is with wry wit, shrewd observations and a genuine, aesthetic beauty. Revellers skate across a frozen lake at the height of winter, wearing ornamental garb that shows their wealth. To their left, an old, peasant women and her two young children stand with a look of worry across their faces, on the precipice of the land and water. It is a painting of two halves, a sign of the differences in culture explained through the mediums of the earth. On the bank, there is poverty and crudeness; a man defecates by a tree while a dog does the same infant of him, a figure looks perversely at the revealed bottom of a fallen woman and the trees are bear and sad. The colours are muted browns and greys that speak to a sadness of the winter period. Yet, on the right hand sign, a winter sun shines and wealth abounds in fanciful dress, playful movement and bright colours. Van de Vedde creates a work of truthful duality, a portrait of a nation in winter time, divided by inhabiting the same space.