Jun 02 2026
On June 2, 1904, British painter Frank Runacres was born into a world of art that would change almost beyond recognition during his lifetime. Modernism was already challenging academic traditions, abstraction would soon transform European painting, and British artists would spend much of the 20th century negotiating the space between experiment and observation. Runacres found …
May 31 2026
Born on this day, May 31, 1923, in Newburgh, New York, Ellsworth Kelly became one of the most recognizable abstract artists of the 20th century. His paintings can appear astonishingly simple: a brilliant red curve, a blue rectangle, a green panel, a black form against white, or several colors arranged across a wall. Yet Kelly’s …
May 24 2026
Born on this day, May 24, 1905, in Spokane, Washington, George Katsutoshi Nakashima became one of the most influential American furniture makers and woodworkers of the 20th century. His tables, chairs, benches, cabinets, and architectural spaces are immediately recognizable for their extraordinary respect for the materials from which they were made. A Nakashima table might …
May 22 2026
Born on this day, May 22, 1930, in Paris, María Sol Escobar—known throughout the art world simply as Marisol—became one of the most celebrated and unconventional artists of the 1960s. Her life-size figures, carved from heavy blocks of wood and combined with painting, drawing, plaster casts, photographs, clothing, shoes, handbags, doors, and other found objects, …
May 18 2026
Born on this day, May 18, 1883, in Tokyo, Hasui Kawase became one of the great landscape printmakers of modern Japan. His images are filled with places that seem temporarily removed from noise: a temple gate disappearing behind falling snow, a solitary traveler beneath an umbrella, a boat resting on dark water, a village illuminated …
May 17 2026
Born on this day, May 17, 1898, in Toronto, Alfred Joseph Casson became the youngest member of Canada’s legendary Group of Seven and one of the most distinctive painters of the Ontario landscape. While other members of the group became famous for monumental mountains, northern lakes, rocky wilderness, and windswept forests, Casson often turned his …
May 12 2026
Born on this day, May 12, 1936, in Malden, Massachusetts, Frank Stella entered the New York art world while still in his early twenties and almost immediately challenged assumptions about what a painting should be. His early canvases contained no recognizable figures, dramatic brushwork, landscapes, or visible emotional confessions. Instead, wide black stripes repeated across …
May 11 2026
Born on this day, May 11, 1889, in London, Paul Nash became one of the most distinctive British artists of the 20th century. He was a landscape painter, war artist, printmaker, photographer, illustrator, designer, writer, and important advocate for modern art in Britain, yet nearly all of those roles can be traced back to one …
May 08 2026
Born on this day, May 8, 1951, in Denver, Colorado, ceramic artist and educator Joyce Michaud built a career around an unusually deep understanding of clay—not only as an artistic material, but as a physical structure shaped by force, movement, balance, heat, and touch. Michaud became known for elegant thrown and hand-built ceramic forms, technical …
May 07 2026
Born on this day, May 7, 1932, in Barcelona, Jordi Bonet became one of the most prolific and distinctive public artists working in Canada during the 1960s and 1970s. A painter, draftsman, ceramicist, sculptor, and muralist, Bonet created monumental works for theaters, universities, churches, airports, banks, schools, government buildings, and subway stations across Canada, the …
