Ah, spring… The season that puts a smile on your face, when nature brings colour back to the landscape, the season that gives off a feeling of renewal… Here it is!
A season symbolising rebirth and fertility, spring marks the renewal of nature, the blossoming of colourful flowers, warmer temperatures and longer days. It’s hardly surprising that this time of year has inspired many painters over the centuries.
An Tchunpi (Fang Junbi, 1898-1986), Peach Blossoms, Beijing, hanging scroll, ink and colours on paper, 59 x 39.5 cm, painted in 1973
With a solid grounding in classical Chinese studies, Fan was admitted to the École nationale supérieure des Beaux-arts de Paris in 1920 by examination and became the first Chinese student ever accepted into the school.
Painted in 1973, Peach Blossoms, Beijing embodies a unison of Chinese and Western philosophies.
As evidenced by her choice of ink as a medium, the artist has gone beyond the limits of oil painting. The blossoming peach blossoms testify to the artist’s love for his homeland, while the tiled roofs of old houses evoke the atmosphere of everyday Chinese life.
In traditional landscape painting, the sky is usually depicted as white. In this painting, the artist draws on the colouring techniques of Western paintings to create delicate, changing textures. The blossoming flowers and courtyard houses of Beijing resonate with a humanist spirit that embraces both Eastern and Western sensibilities.
“With the dawn, comes more colour” 2021, Agra Ritiņa, Latvian born in 1975, oil on canvas
Early Spring (2021) – Anna Berezofskaya (1986 – Russia), oil on canvas.
Born in the town of Yakhroma in the Moscow region, Berezovskaya began her art studies at the private art studio in 2000 and became a student at the Abramtsevsky College of Art and Industry in 2001. She has been a member of the Russian Artists’ Association since 2005.
Her works are easily recognisable by her unique style and technical mastery. Through a signature style she calls poetic realism, Berezovksya brings together influences from realism, abstraction and surrealism.
She uses symbolism to create works on canvas and paper, carefully selecting subjects that transcend time and space to convey her ideas and emotions. In doing so, she is inspired by Russian culture and literature.
An invitation to serenely contemplate the trees in bloom, as the Japanese do every spring.
Cherry Blossom, Damien Hirst, born 1965.
This painting is in line with the pictorial research that Damien Hirst has been carrying out on colour and gesture since the beginning of his career, and the artist presents it in the following terms:
“Cherry Blossom is about beauty, life and death. They [the canvases] are excessive – almost vulgar.
Like Jackson Pollock damaged by love.
They are ornamental but painted from life. They evoke desire and the way we perceive the things around us and what we do with them, but they also show the incredible, ephemeral beauty of a tree in flower against a cloudless sky.
It was a joy to work on these canvases, to lose myself entirely in the colour and material in the studio.
The Cherry Blossoms are flashy, messy and fragile, and thanks to them I’ve moved away from minimalism and returned enthusiastically to the spontaneity of the pictorial gesture.
Cherry blossom, Damien Hirst
Clémentine-Hélène Dufau ( France, 1869-1937), “Spring”.
“Spring in the room”,1904, Emil Nolde
German Expressionist painter and watercolourist (1867-1956).
Considered one of the greatest artists of his time and a leading exponent of German Expressionism, he was very close to the Nazi party, whose theories he supported.
However, his paintings did not please Hitler, as his flamboyant expressionist style did not correspond to the aesthetic canons of the Third Reich.
He was banned from buying paper and brushes and was classed as a “degenerate painter”, the last straw for someone who defended racially pure art.
“Spring”, Véronique Dumont, in terracotta
This poem conveys an intoxication of happiness and tenderness: nature is in unison with Victor Hugo, inviting love and the joy of living. Victor Hugo also makes us perceive the passage of time, the day, the evening, the night, the months that follow one another, as a joy to be savoured.
Here are the long days, light, love, delirium!
Here comes spring! March, April with its sweet smile,
May in bloom, June burning hot, all the beautiful friendly months!
The poplars, on the banks of sleeping rivers,
Bend limply like great palms;
Birds flutter deep in the warm, calm woods;
Everything seems to be laughing, and the green trees
Are happy to be together and say verses to each other.
The day is born crowned with a fresh and tender dawn;
The evening is full of love; at night, you think you hear,
Through the immense shadow and under the blessed sky,
Something happy singing in the infinite.
Victor Hugo, Spring
David Hockney, “The Arrival of Spring in Woldgate”, East Yorkshire in 2011″.
We’re really looking forward to spring. And now it’s spring, with the daisies poking their heads up …….. what a delight!
Paul Éluard wrote “Le Phénix”, which includes “Printemps”, in 1951, a year before his own death. This last collection of the last love is dedicated to Dominique, whom he had met in 1949. In it, he celebrates the Phoenix love that rises from the ashes of despair.
There are puddles on the beach.
In the woods, there are trees full of birds.
The snow melts in the mountains.
The branches of the apple trees shine with so many flowers
That the pale sun recedes.
It’s a winter’s evening,
In a harsh world,
That you live this spring,
By my side, the innocent.
There is no night for us.
Nothing that perishes has any hold on me
But I don’t want to be cold.
Our spring is a spring that is right.
Paul Eluard
Alphonse Mucha, Spring, oil on canvas, 1916 (also used on the cover of ‘Heart’s International’ 1922)
A spring landscape by Viktor Schesnyak , Russian painter .
“The Tulip Gathering”, Frederick Morgan (1847-1927).
Winter has ceased: the light is warm
And dances from the ground to the clear firmament.
The saddest heart must give way
To the immense joy scattered in the air.
Even this sullen and sickly Paris
Seems to welcome the young sun
And, as if in a huge embrace,
Stretches out the thousand arms of its ruddy roofs
For a year now I have had spring in my soul
As a flame surrounds a flame,
Puts the ideal on my ideal.
Painting by Alan Parry.
To the warm rays of your love.
I left my sad winter.
For a sweet blooming spring.
Jules Sandeau
“Woman with flowers”, 1944, Salvador Dali, private collection
Beth Munro (American, born 1965), Spring Birches, 2017, oil on canvas, 101.6 × 101.6 cm, private collection.
Artist statement: “My paintings, whether still life, landscape or abstract, focus on pattern, colour and texture.
I draw inspiration from everything from the impressionist works of Cézanne to the gestural abstract paintings of de Kooning and the historic quilts made by the women of Gees Bend.
Ethnic ceremonial costumes, nineteenth- and twentieth-century stencils and even my daughters’ illustrations continue to inspire me.
I grew up in a family of artists, in which my father, a designer and painter, played an important role in my artistic development. Matisse, Cézanne, Vuillard, Thiebaud and Janet Fish were all dominant sources of inspiration, and as my work has become more abstract, I have been considerably influenced by Diebenkorn, Rothko and Klee”.
Vanessa Cooper, “Sonate du printemps”, oil on wood panel, gold leaf, 90 x 80 cm.
Vanessa Cooper has been painting since she was a teenager. She studied at Portsmouth University, exhibited her work for the first time in 1987 and gradually built up a reputation as a bold and imaginative artist with a deep love of colour.
Claude Monet’s gardens at Giverny, France
“Spring has returned.
The Earth is like a child
who knows poems.”
Spring has returned.
The Earth is like a child
who knows the poems by heart;
so many poems, so many verses,
patient toil winning its prizes at last.
Strict, the old professor.
We loved the whiteness of the old
gentleman’s beard,
his shining snow.
Now, when we ask what is green?
what is blue,
Earth knows the answer,
has learned it.
She knows.
Earth, you’re on holiday,
lucky you: play now!
Play with us kids!
We’ll try to catch up with you.
Happy, happy Earth!
The happiest must win.
Every lesson the old teacher
taught him,
all that is imprinted in the roots
and laborious stems :
now she sings it!
Listen, the Earth sings.
Rainer Maria Rilke
“The inspiration for this sonnet came from
a visit to Ronda, in the south of Spain, in the
winter of 1912-13. Rilke had heard a
group of schoolchildren singing in the Convent
in Santo Domingo, accompanied only by a triangle
triangle and tambourine. He didn’t know what
meant by their song, but light-heartedly
the liveliness of their singing is reflected in the
cadences of the second and third stanzas.”
Embracing Spring de Alejandro Jodorowsky
Harmonia Rosales (American, born 1984), Spring, 2018, oil on linen with gold leaf, 24 x 24 inches, private collection
Harmonia Rosales is an Afro-Cuban American artist, born in Chicago who grew up in Champaign, Illinois. Her first solo exhibition, entitled “Black Imaginary to Counter Hegemony”, was installed at Simard Bilodeau Contemporary in Los Angeles.
Rosales works to reinterpret Renaissance masterpieces by replacing black heroines as the main subject of the painting because she says that “religion and power go hand in hand” and that the colonists had used religion to “manipulate and control”. She explains the idea that a sky dominated by white Eurocentric men is all that people see and it is what everyone grows up to value. This view made her feel excluded from the Eurocentric-dominated art world that helped inspire her paintings. She said she hopes to empower people with art, even if it is a small group of individuals, and give women of colour “works of art that reflect their beauty that has been ignored for so long”.
Paul Signac, “Trees in bloom”, 1896
Here are the long days, light, love, delirium!
Here is spring! March, April with its sweet smile,
blooming May, burning June, all the beautiful friendly months!
.
The poplars, on the banks of sleeping rivers,
Bend softly like great palms;
Birds flutter deep in the warm, calm woods;
Everything seems to be laughing, and the green trees
Are happy to be together and say verses to each other.
The day is born crowned with a fresh and tender dawn;
The evening is full of love; at night, you think you hear,
Through the immense shadow and under the blessed sky,
Something happy singing in the infinite.
Victor Hugo, “Le Printemps”. 1893
Painting by Erik Madigan Heck
We are in the world
and we walk on hell
looking at the flowers
Kobayashi Issa (1763~1828)
“The flower says hello!
The bird says hello!
Hello; it’s spring!
It is the angel of tenderness
Arthur Rimbaud
Animal prints by Ito Jakuchu
A great lover of birds
Here, the artist uses a rare technique of printing coloured stencils on a black background to better represent them.
In the series of Kachozu prints (images of flowers and birds) dated 1771, voluptuous birds stand out against a black background.
It was during regular visits to the Shokoku-ji Zen monastery in Kyoto that Ito Jakuchu, a painter of the mid-Edo period, discovered and studied numerous paintings of flowers and birds, particularly from China during the Song and Ming dynasties.
For this series, the artist chose to use the kappazuri technique, in which a motif is printed in monochrome on a wooden board and then coloured with a stencil.
A contrast that allows the artist to give even greater power to the colours of the birds and plants.
“Spring” by Fernando Andreini, 1843-1922
Spring in New York by Joy Laforme
“The flowers of spring are the dreams of winter told in the morning at the table of angels”.
Khalil Gibran
Springtime of Life, marble, 1876, Antonio Giovanni Lanzirotti, Italian sculptor (1839-1921).
Detail of this splendid marble sculpture of a young woman holding an intertwined bronze butterfly.
Spring by George Barbier, French Art Deco painter, fashion designer and illustrator (1882-1932)
Le Printemps (Istanbul, Turkey), Art-Nouveau style earthenware panels designed by J. A. Arnoux and manufactured by the French earthenware factory, “Hippolyte Boulenger & Cie” in Choisy-le-Roi.
Spring is on the horizon.
Charles Voysey’s textile design, Birds of Many Climes (1914-1918).
It beautifully depicts the imminent change of season
Salvador Dali, First Days of Spring, 1929
Born in Figueres on May 11, 1904, Salvador Dalí showed very early on undeniable artistic gifts and a strong personality.
Supported by his parents and having acquired during his childhood excellent technical bases, he can continue to deepen his knowledge in Madrid from 1921 and to improve but above all he has the opportunity to integrate the most avant-garde intellectual circlesSpanish Conservatives, represented in Spain by people like Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca….
After the First World War, Surrealism became one of the most influential avant-garde currents thanks to its approaches that sought to transform human existence to create a better world.
The work «the first days of Spring» is one of the first surrealist works of Salvador Dalí. From this year 1929, he found his own style by renewing his pictorial inspiration from the themes dear to the surrealists, whether the notion of myth or psychoanalysis.
Inspired by the works of Sigmund Freud or Jacques Lacan, he invented the paranoid-critical method where he combines the dream with the elements of the unconscious, the liberation of fantasies and the pictorial techniques of the great masters.
However, by his refusal of automatism, of collective (especially political) slogans, by his individualistic attitude, he derogates from surrealism which would eventually be the cause of his exclusion from the group led by Breton.
The work «the first days of Spring» is a lyrical evocation of daily scenes of Figueres, his hometown , a journey through his childhood memories and amplified by his feelings and sensations. He is the child in the center and different scenes surround him: lovers on the public bench, an old man resembling Freud, a clock that marks the inexorable passage of time, children playing in the courtyard, … and his father, this sitting man who looks in another direction thus symbolizing the disagreement of the father on the artistic orientation of his son.
But why the spring? This return to the roots is it not an awakening of the child that was Dali, in the spring of his life and above all in the spring of his art ready to hatch.
Sonia Delaunay, Spring, 1971.
The artist. Sonia Delaunay invents with her husband Robert Delaunay a singular aesthetic, where color and abstraction are fundamental.
The work “Spring” is an abstract painting.
The artist mixes bright colors and geometric shapes to symbolize the season.
František Kupka, Printemps cosmique, 1913-1914.
František Kupka is a Czech painter pioneer of abstraction, who lived and worked in Paris from 1896 until his death in 1957.
Convinced of the essential role of colour, František Kupka focuses in Cosmic Spring on its variations.
He illustrates the arrival of spring – the melting of the snow, the blossoming and flowering of plants – by painting abstract patterns and coloured shapes, which give the canvas a certain musicality in a surprising synesthesia.
Paul Gauguin, Printemps Sacré, 1894.
Paul Gauguin is a post-impressionist artist whose works have been influenced by his life, from his friendship with Vincent van Gogh to his stays in Polynesia.
Last December, his painting Te Bourao II (1897) was sold 9.5 million euros by Artcurial in Paris.
With his bright color palette and his singular touch, Paul Gauguin fantasizes a primitive and mystical Polynesia.
In Printemps Sacré, we find several elements of the paintings of his Tahitian period, including the two women seated in the foreground, the cult scene in the background and the representation of a lush nature.
John William Waterhouse (1849-1917), A Song of Springtime, 1913, oil on canvas, 71.5 x 92.4 cm, private collection.
John William Waterhouse was an English painter influenced by the style and subjects of the Pre-Raphaelites. In A Song of Springtime, the choice of subject seems to echo the Pre-Raphaelite preference for red hair, which symbolized passion. The green nature, the presence of children and the nudity of the female figure refer to the vitality and fertility of the spring season.
Sandro Botticelli, Primavera, vers 1480
Sandro Botticelli (1445-1510), Primavera (Spring), circa 1480, tempera on wood, 207 x 319 cm, Uffizi Gallery, Florence.
Undoubtedly one of the most famous paintings by Sandro Botticelli, this allegorical work represents Venus surrounded by Cupid, the Three Graces, Mercury, Zephyr, the nymph Clori and Flora. Dressed in flowers, the deity spreads flowers around her and on the world.
The work gives way to different interpretations, but for many critics, it represents youth, passion, fertility, the age of love and the ephemerality of spring (the Three Graces dancing in this case represent the hours that pass quickly).
Japanese print by Kamisaka Sekka, Yoshino in spring.
A very stylized view of Yoshino, a site perched among the hills in Nara Prefecture, in the flowering period of cherry trees (sakura), distributed in plantations at different altitudes, in order to make them bloom at several different times of spring.
Yoshino is one of the most famous places where Japanese people go to admire cherry blossoms (hanami) and marvel at their beauty. This is an extremely common subject in Japanese art and therefore in prints; from ukiyo-e to the most contemporary prints, cherry trees in spring are an institution in Japan!
Spring, also known as The Return of Spring, is one of William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s best-known works. Made in 1886, it represents a nymph in early spring.
Cherry Blossoms at Omuro Pagoda (Spring), a vertical ōban from 1960, by Asada Benji (麻 田 辨 次, 1899 – 1984), a 20th century Japanese painter and engraver from Kyōto (京 都).
A beautiful spring view of the famous Ninnaji Temple Pagoda (仁 和 寺) in Kyōto, the main temple of the Omura School of Shingon Buddhism.
Located in western Kyoto, Ninnaji was first founded in 888 AD (during the Heian period) by Emperor Uda, and was later rebuilt in the 17th century.
It is part of the historical monuments of ancient Kyoto, a UNESCO World Heritage Site.
Spring, Francis Picabia, 1879-1953, oil on canvas
The spring of Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980), Polish painter, oil on canvas, 1928.
Van Gogh, “Almond Blossom”, exhibited at the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Van Gogh painted this painting in February 1890 in honour of the birth of his brother Theo’s son, whose godfather he was.
To symbolize this new life, Vincent chose to represent the branches of an almond tree in bloom, one of the earliest trees in spring.
To realize this subject, Van Gogh is inspired by the Japanese art of engraving . This can be seen in the accuracy of the lines used and the overall positioning of the shaft.
The flowers represented today have mainly white tones, while originally they were much more pink. They pale under the effect of light and their color has unfortunately lost its strength.
Anita Arbidane (Latvian, born 1983), Prima Vera, 2019, oil on canvas, 100 x 65 cm, private collection.
Anita Arbidane is a very significant representative of a young generation of figurative painters.
Graduated in 2008 from the Latvian Academy of Arts; Anita has participated in exhibitions since 2004. Anita is already recognized in Latvia. She impressed the audience with her work «Renaissance; The portrait of the president with a rabbit», which revealed the president of Latvia, Valdis Zatlers, dressed in a medieval dress with a rabbit on his knees.
The painting, although controversial for some, was greeted with sincere admiration.
Arbidane’s work draws attention with her aristocratic and complex painting style, as well as her sophisticated details and intriguing characters (for example, a woman holding a lobster as gently as a baby).
The artist combines classical painting and historical flair with contemporary details; mixing them so gently that he distorts the boundaries of each era.
Magnifique ❤️
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Merci. Vraiment intéressant et magnifique ! Félicitations
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