Recently in Fresco History Category

The frescoes were recently uncovered in a room at the Church of the Birth of John the Baptist in Presnya, located on a quiet side street near the Moscow Zoo. Vasnetsov painted the frescoes in the 1890s, but they were painted over in the Soviet era and forgotten for decades.

The restoration will give art historians a chance to examine previously unstudied works by the artist, who is best known for "The Three Bogatyrs," a painting of three medieval Russian warriors on horseback that often turns up in parodies and advertisements.

The discovery also comes at a time when works by Vasnetsov and his peers are hot items on the art market, eagerly snapped up by rich Russians seeking to amass prestigious art collections. Last year, a canvas by the artist called "Wise Oleg" set a record for his work when it sold for $637,000 at a Sotheby's auction in London.

from The Walls have The Word by Melchor Peredo


Being a student, I went at times to the Palacio Nacional to invite Diego Rivera to give a conference at the School "La Esmeralda", the voluminous artist himself moved-disturbed by the interruption, slightly in its scaffold, descending his protruding eyes towards me and skewered: Yes I will go, because that is a revolutionary school. "The Yuca" that more than his assistant he was from time to time his model, posed as the face of the black slave brought by the army of Hernán Cortez from Cuba. Diego was shading with smooth tones of vineyard black before applying color. Naturally, already on the wet plaster. According to Juan O'Gorman his great friend and communist comrade the master always worked this way, what gave him total liberty at the moment of the application of color. The curious thing if this resulted for him for the fresco; his easel paintings generally in oil were executed under the impressionist principle to exclude black in the shadows. What he did instead, then, was to shade with the Complementarie's. The amazing thing is that his frescoes, initially almost grisaille (monochrome) in color, in the end, black turns out to be almost imperceptible one. What is his secret?

There were times when Van Gogh and Monet would have been without canvas and paints had it not been for the generosity of Julien “Pere” Tanguy, the Montmarte art store proprietor turned benefactor, who often accepted their paintings in exchange for supplies. Much to the dismay of Madame Tanguy, this fatherly man was also known to advance supplies to young artists who had no means of repayment. With so many of his customers paying in art, he became known as an eccentric collector and art dealer, displaying paintings in his shop windows. Artists began meeting at the shop, exchanging ideas and eventually creating new styles and the Impressionist techniques that enrich society today.

The modern day equivalent of Tanguy’s art shop for the Italian art scene is Zecchi Colori Art Supply store, located in the center of Florence, the birthplace of the15th century Italian Renaissance. Sitting across the cobblestone street with a front-door view of the Duomo, Zecchi’s supplies artists world wide with hard to find paints and traditional materials. With an ancient fresco built into its façade, the shop also serves as an iconic leader in restoration techniques. Dedicated to the application techniques derived from masters who used the materials centuries ago, Zecchi’s fine materials bring life to restoration efforts all over Florence. And similar to the generous traditions of Montmarte’s Tanguy, Zecchi’s occasionally becomes patron subsidizer, helping to create opportunities for new businesses and spread knowledge of old techniques far outside of mother Italy.

No one else knows what the pensioner told the priest about what he got up to when he was a naughty altar boy. But his confession holds out the tantalising possibility that there could be a lost Michelangelo on the wall of a village church in Chianti.

For centuries the inhabitants of Marcialla have handed down the legend that a fresco above the altar was painted by the great Florentine artist in his youth. And the claim has sometimes been referred to in scholarly texts.

The murals Diego Rivera executed for the National Institute of Cardiology in Mexico City (figures 1 and 2) are a testament to his talents as a painter as well as to his prodigious energy. The History of Cardiology consists of two panels of 6 m by 4 m and were completed in time for the inauguration of the new institute building on 18 April 1944.

Rivera is the 20th century's greatest exponent of fresco painting. A bravura example of his virtuosity can be found at the bottom right of the first panel, near where he signed the work. The 16th century anatomist Andreas Vesalius holds in his bloodied hand a human heart, its surface mottled and glistening, having been dissected from the pallid cadaver whose head appears to jut into our space. Confronting the viewer almost at eye level with this gory trompe l'oeil spectacle, Rivera has pulled off a real heart stopper...

Gian Singh Naqqash, who painted the interiors of the Golden Temple, died in poverty but four generations after him have nevertheless devoted themselves to
embellishing Sikh art, writes Varinder Walia

Imagine a revered Sikh naqqash, who painted frescos on the walls of the Harmander Sahib, including the dome of the structure with indigenously prepared colours for more than three decades, died in penury in 1953 at the age of 70. He was then selling clay toys painted with the same brush.

Church fresco concealed beneath layer of plaster
(ANSA) - Venice, October 10 - Art restorers have uncovered a painting by Tiepolo that has been hidden for more than a century inside a Venice church .

The fresco called Faith was discovered in the Church of Santa Maria Maddalena beneath a layer of plaster on a semicircular panel or lunette....

from Ansa.it full article here:
Hidden
Tiepolo found in Venice

by K.J. Wolf - fresco artist
Director, The Fresco School of Los Angeles (East Coast)

Once upon a time about four years ago, when the heat was stifling and I was in a small studio in Los Angeles, sifting sand to make a Fresco, I wondered what I had been dreaming about all the long years in search for just such an experience. Two chimney smoking and energetic guys, one from Russia and the other from the United Kingdom, were speaking and demonstrating at a wizard speed the deft and rich art of preparing a surface (like a skin) that would hold a glimmering and shimmering painting in lime plaster, called Fresco.

I had always wanted to paint as the masters of the Renaissance had, and here was my opportunity. I had traveled 3000 miles within the United States to find this experience, as no other was available, not even in the home of Fresco, Italy. The irony that it was, if not in my own backyard, was that it was just on the other side of the country from me.

This is the question that I encounter the most. The story of fresco painting began over 35,000 years ago in the caves of modern France where the Neolithic man applied natural earth pigments to the moist limestone walls of his cave to illustrate his life and beliefs. Of cause Neolithic man did not call his paintings frescoes. So as every civilization there after had own name for the technique used for the magnificent wall paintings found in it's most treasured environments, temples, public spaces and homes - the only technique that allows us to see those masterpieces thousands of years after they were created. Through the years this technique has been refined and now we know it as Buon (true) Fresco.

This interior of a public library balances the law library by Harris at far left. Like other artists, Zakheim peopled his scene (public library reading and periodical rooms) with portraits, including his young daughter Ruth (in a blue and white middy blouse) and a self portrait reading the Tenach, the Old Testament in Hebrew.

Mexican artist Ramos Martinez (1872-1946) studied art at the San Carlos Academy in Mexico City, then spent 14 years in Paris. In 1913 he became director of the San Carlos Academy of Art (now called the National Academy of Fine Arts). He almost immediately founded the first of his Schools of Open Air Painting, which encouraged students to work outdoors in order to more closely observe nature. Muralist David Alfaro Siquieros was one of his first students. The serious bone disease of his only child brought Ramos Martinez and his family to Los Angeles in 1930 in search of specialized medical treatment. He exhibited his paintings in local museums and galleries, and received residential mural commissions from such Hollywood celebrities as screenwriter Jo Swerling, designer Edith Head, and director Alfred Hitchcock. In 1934 he did a set of murals for the chapel of Santa Barbara Cemetery. In 1937 he painted a fresco over the main portal of the Church of Mary, Star of the Sea in La Jolla (in San Diego County). The last project with which he was involved was a panel fresco at the Margaret Fowler Memorial Garden at Scripps College in Claremont, California. Only two of the nine panels were completed before Martinez died in 1946.