Jean Philippe Arthur Dubuffet was a French painter and sculptor of the Ecole de Paris. His idealistic approach to aesthetics embraced so-called "low art" and eschewed traditional standards of beauty in favor of what he believed to be a more authentic and humanistic approach to image-making. He is perhaps best known for founding the art movement art brut, and for the collection of works—Collection de l'art brut—that this movement spawned. Dubuffet enjoyed a prolific art career, both in France and in America, and was featured in many exhibitions throughout his lifetime.
Keith Allen Haring was an American artist whose pop art emerged from the New York City graffiti subculture of the 1980s. His animated imagery has "become a widely recognized visual language". Much of his work includes sexual allusions that turned into social activism by using the images to advocate for safe sex and AIDS awareness. In addition to solo gallery exhibitions, he participated in renowned national and international group shows such as documenta in Kassel, the Whitney Biennial in New York, the São Paulo Biennial, and the Venice Biennale. The Whitney Museum held a retrospective of his art in 1997.
Jean-Paul Riopelle, was a Canadian painter and sculptor from Quebec. He had one of the longest and most important international careers of the sixteen signatories of the Refus Global, the 1948 manifesto that announced the Quebecois artistic community's refusal of clericalism and provincialism. He is best known for his abstract painting style, in particular his "mosaic" works of the 1950s when he famously abandoned the paintbrush, using only a palette knife to apply paint to canvas, giving his works a distinctive sculptural quality. He became the first Canadian painter since James Wilson Morrice to attain widespread international recognition and high praise, both during his career and after his death. He was a leading artist of French Lyrical Abstraction.
Solomon "Sol" LeWitt was an American artist linked to various movements, including conceptual art and minimalism.
James Lee Byars was an American conceptual artist and performance artist specializing in installations and sculptures, as well as a self-considered mystic. He was best known for his use of personal esoteric motifs, and his creative persona that has been described as 'half dandified trickster and half minimalist seer'. Byars was born Detroit, Michigan, and died in Cairo, Egypt.
Raymond Roussel was a French poet, novelist, playwright, musician, and chess enthusiast. Through his novels, poems, and plays he exerted a profound influence on certain groups within 20th century French literature, including the Surrealists, Oulipo, and the authors of the nouveau roman.
Robert Doisneau was a French photographer. From the 1930s, he photographed the streets of Paris. He was a champion of humanist photography and, with Henri Cartier-Bresson, a pioneer of photojournalism.
Marcel Barbeau, was a Canadian painter, sculptor, graphic and performance artist who used different forms of abstraction and art techniques and technology to express himself.
Guy Bourdin, was a French artist and fashion photographer known for his highly stylized and provocative images. From 1955, Bourdin worked mostly with Vogue as well as other publications including Harper's Bazaar. He shot ad campaigns for Chanel, Charles Jourdan, Pentax and Bloomingdale's.
Shahabuddin Ahmed is a Bangladeshi painter. He was awarded the Chevalier De L'ordre Des Arts Et Des Lettres by the Ministry of Cultural Affair and Communication of France in 2014. He was the recipient of Independence Day Award by the Government of Bangladesh in 2000. His paintings are displayed in galleries like Olympic Museum, Lausanne, Switzerland, Municipal Museum of Bourg-en-Bresse, France, Seoul Olympic Museum, South Korea, the National Taiwan Museum and Bangladesh National Museum.
Rodolfo Morales was a Mexican painter, who incorporated elements of magic realism into his work.
Bethan Huws is a Welsh multi-media artist whose work explores place, identity, and translation, often using architecture and text. Her work has been described as "delicate, unobtrusive interventions into architectural spaces".
Nadir Afonso, GOSE was a Portuguese geometric abstractionist painter. Formally trained in architecture, which he practiced early in his career with Le Corbusier and Oscar Niemeyer, Nadir Afonso later studied painting in Paris and became one of the pioneers of Kinetic art, working alongside Victor Vasarely, Fernand Léger, Auguste Herbin, and André Bloc.
Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger is an Israeli-British artist, writer, psychoanalyst and philosopher based in France. Born in Mandatory Palestine, she lived and works in Paris. She is a feminist theorist and artist in contemporary New European Painting who invented the concept of the Matrixial Gaze and related concepts around trauma, aesthetics and ethics. Ettinger is a professor at European Graduate School in Saas-Fee, Switzerland and at GCAS, Dublin. In 2023, she was part of the Finding Committee for the Artistic Director of Documenta's 2027 edition. She resigned from that role with a public letter intended to open a radical discussion in the artworld, following the administration's rejection of her request for a pause due to the attacks on civilians in Israel and in Gaza and the ongoing heavy losses of life.
Alison Mary Wilding OBE, RA is an English artist noted for her multimedia abstract sculptures. Wilding's work has been displayed in galleries internationally.
Keith Milow is a British artist. He grew up in Baldock, Hertfordshire, and lived in New York City (1980–2002) and Amsterdam (2002–2014), now lives in London. He is an abstract sculptor, painter and printmaker. His work has been characterised as architectural, monumental, procedural, enigmatic and poetical.
Gastón Ugalde is considered the father of contemporary bolivian art and was the recipient of the prestigious Konex Award in 2002 along with Oscar Niemeyer. Ugalde was named "the most important living Bolivian artist" by the Konex Foundation in Argentina and was also referred to as the "Andean Warhol" by art critics. Ugalde was also known as "the enfant terrible" of the Bolivian Art Scene.
Charlélie Couture is a French and American musician and multi-disciplinary artist, who has recorded over 25 albums and 17 film soundtracks, and has held a number of exhibitions of paintings and photographs. He has also worked as a poster designer, and has published about 15 books of reflections, drawings and photographs.
Luis Frangella was an Argentine figurative post-modern painter and sculptor associated with the expressionist painting of the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1980s. He received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1982. He died of AIDS in 1990.
Ray Smith (1949–2018) was an English sculptor, painter, illustrator and writer. He exhibited his work widely, and received a number awards, including an award by the Arts Council of Great Britain in 1973, and the Royal Society of Arts Architecture Award in 1993. Smith also wrote several books on art for the publisher Dorling Kindersley and designed a selection of album covers.
