Van Gogh’s paintings of sunflowers are probably some of the most famous paintings in the world You may even have seen them on T-shirts and coffee mugs This is a photo of an original painted in 1889 Christie’s Images Corbis
Artists Around the World TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION 3 VISUAL ARTS CHINA Xia Gui Lonely Landscapes 6 EGYPT Hassan Fathy Culture-Conscious Architect 8 ITALY Michelangelo Genius of European Art 10 MEXICO Frida Kahlo The Brilliant Colors of Mexico 12 THE NETHERLANDS Vincent van Gogh Sunflowers and Starry Nights 14 SPAIN Francisco de Goya Painter to the King and to the People 16 Pablo Picasso Exploring with an Artist 18 LITERATURE ARGENTINA Jorge Luis Borges Creator of Fantastical Fictions 20 AUSTRALIA Kath Walker Aboriginal Poet 22 CHILE Isabel Allende The Letter Writer’s Stories 24 ENGLAND Charles Dickens Writer of Life-Changing Stories 26 FRANCE Jules Verne Journey to Everywhere 28 INDIA Rabindranath Tagore Poet Laureate of India 30 JAPAN Basho HaikuMaster 32 NIGERIA Wole Soyinka The Nobel Laureate 34 UNITED STATES Emily Dickinson A Life of Letters and Literature 36 Gwendolyn Brooks Prized Poet of Illinois 38 Mark Twain The Writer and the Mississippi River 40 PERFORMING ARTS AUSTRIA Fanny Elssler Theatrical Ballerina 42 FRANCE Sarah Bernhardt The Divine Sarah 44 GERMANY Ludwig van Beethoven Living for Music 46 INDIA Ravi Shankar Music at His Fingertips 48 JAPAN Akira Kurosawa A Vision in Motion 50 NEW ZEALAND Kiri Te Kanawa New Zealand’s Opera Star 52 PAKISTAN Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan Center Stage of Qawwali 54 UNITED STATES Alvin Ailey Enriching American Dance 56 Louis Armstrong Satchmo Jazz Superstar 58 Jim Henson Muppet Master 60 GLOSSARY 62 INDEX 63 Brit a nnic a LEARNING LIBRARY
y Lone l Lan a p es Xia Gui is known today as one of China’s greatest masters of sc d landscape painting He painted rapidly using short sharp strokes of the brush Most of his landscapes were done in shades of black but a few had light washes of color added to them Xia was probably official court painter to either the emperor Ningzong or the emperor Lizong or maybe both That means he would have lived about the end of the 12th century to the beginning of the 13th century Together with his friend and fellow artist Ma Yuan Xia DID YOU KNOW Xia Gui and his fellow artists used a dramatic kind of brushwork called ax stroke It was named this because it looked like the chop mark of an ax on wood founded the Ma-Xia school of painting This group followed a tradition of very simple landscape painting with little happening in the landscape and few details By showing only selected features such as mountain peaks and twisted trees they aimed to create a feeling of unlimited space and quiet drama The Ma-Xia school had a great influence on later artists Most of Xia’s surviving works are album leaves These were usually square-shaped and they were occasionally glued onto fans The paintings were done on silk mainly in shades of black ink Each landscape showed distant hills in the upper left corner and a closer view of land in the lower right corner In the center groups of trees reach into the empty space all around The empty space was always an important feature of Xia’s work Xia was also a master at composing works on the hand scroll These are rolls of paper that are viewed by unrolling the scroll from one end to the other then rerolling the scroll as you view it The effect is like a continuous imaginary journey through the scenery of nature S EA R C H LIG H T Fill in the blanks Xia Gui made his paintings on album leaves and _______ _______ 6 LEARN MORE READ THESE ARTICLES BASHO MICHELANGELO VINCENT VAN GOGH The painting here known as Swinging Gibbon is said to be by Xia Gui The next generation of painters did not value Xia’s work But about 50 years after that one critic wrote His works have an exciting stimulating quality a remarkable achievement Attributed to Xia Gui active c 1180 1224 China Southern Song dynasty Swinging Gibbon Album leaf ink and color on silk 24 8 x 26 5 cm The Cleveland Museum of Art 2003 John L Severance Fund 1978 1
XIA GUI Answer Xia Gui made his paintings on album leaves and hand scrolls 7
