Zahoor ul Akhlaq

Zahoor ul Akhlaq (4 February 1941 – 18 January 1999) was a pioneering artist from Pakistan. He is known for his approach to painting, sculpture, design and architecture, as well as his teaching at the NCA (National College of Arts) in Lahore.
Background and family life.
Born in Delhi, India in 1941, he was the eldest in a family of 11 children. His family moved to Lahore after the independence of Pakistan in 1947, eventually settling in Karachi, Pakistan. Akhlaq attended the Sindh Madrassah (now called Sindh Madressatul Islam University) as a young boy and went to study art in Lahore at the Mayo School of Arts (now called National College of Arts) back in 1958. The well-known Pakistani painter Shakir Ali was teaching art there as a professor back then. Shakir Ali encouraged him greatly in his art studies. Zahoor graduated from this college in 1962 and he then started teaching at the same college in the Fine Arts Department. Shakir Ali heavily influenced him to learn the Cubist style and other modern ideas of that time.
In 1971, he married Sheherezade Alam, a potter, and the couple had two daughters, Jahanara, (1974–1999), Nurjahan (born in 1979).
Death.
Akhlaq along with his elder daughter, Jahanara, was shot dead in their Lahore home on 18 January 1999.
Work and influences.
Akhlaq's painting invoked a dialogue between modernist abstraction and many traditional forms and practices found within South Asia (including Mughal Miniature painting, calligraphy and vernacular architecture). At a time when his contemporaries in South Asia were developing their work within a modernist tradition, or had primitivist leanings, he eschewed both schools by merging his interest in abstractions with traditional and vernacular practices. Although he evaded the label of an abstract artist, his work mostly fits this definition.
Akhlaq's influences are from a vast range of sources, which include painting, literature, philosophy, Sufism, dance, and music. His teaching and practice is considered to have had a significant impact on a generation of Contemporary Pakistani art and artists. Zahoor ul Akhlaq is best known for pioneering the contemporary miniature painting in Pakistan.
Designs.
Zahoor ul Akhlaq played an important role in the establishment of Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture in Karachi.
The logo of the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture was designed by him. In 1981, he designed 2 of a set of 5 stamps issued to mark the Third Islamic Summit Conference at Makkah, Saudi Arabia. Both designs (40 paisas and Re 1) depicted an Afghan refugee girl.
Memorials.
An art gallery at the National College of Arts, Lahore is named in his memory as is the gallery at the Indus Valley School of Art and Architecture, Karachi.
Commemorative postage stamp issued.
On 14 August 2006, Pakistan Post issued a Rs. 40 sheetlet to posthumously honour 10 Pakistani Painters. Besides Zahoor ul Akhlaq, the other 9 painters are: Laila Shahzada, Askari Mian Irani, Sadequain, Ali Imam, Shakir Ali, Anna Molka Ahmed, Zubeida Agha, Ahmed Pervez and Bashir Mirza.


Carlos Cruz-Diez

Carlos Cruz-Diez (17 August 1923 – 27 July 2019) was a Venezuelan artist said by some scholars to have been "one of the greatest artistic innovators of the 20th century."


Ronnie Landfield

Ronnie Landfield (born January 9, 1947) is an American abstract painter. During his early career from the mid-1960s through the 1970s his paintings were associated with Lyrical Abstraction, (related to Postminimalism, Color Field painting, and Abstract expressionism), and he was represented by the David Whitney Gallery and the André Emmerich Gallery.
Landfield is best known for his abstract landscape paintings, and has held more than seventy solo exhibitions and more than two hundred group exhibitions. In 2011 he was described by the LewAllen Gallerie as "at the forefront of contemporary art...one of the best painters in America."
Early career.
Landfield first exhibited in New York in 1962. He continued his study of painting by visiting major museum and gallery exhibitions in New York during the early sixties and by taking painting and drawing classes at the Art Students League of New York and in Woodstock, New York. He graduated from the High School of Art and Design in June 1963. He briefly attending the Kansas City Art Institute before returning to New York in November 1963. At sixteen Landfield rented his first loft at 6 Bleecker Street near The Bowery (sublet with a friend from the figurative painter Leland Bell), during a period when his abstract expressionist oil paintings took on hard-edged and large painterly shapes. In February 1964, Landfield traveled to Los Angeles; and in March he began living in Berkeley where he began painting Hard-edge abstractions primarily painted with acrylic. He briefly attended the University of California, Berkeley and the San Francisco Art Institute before returning to New York in July 1965.
Mid period.
From 1964 to 1966 he experimented with minimal art, sculpture, hard-edge geometric painting, found objects, and finally began a series of 15 - 9' x 6' mystical "border paintings". After a serious setback in February 1966 when his loft at 496 Broadway burned down, he returned to painting in April 1966 by sharing a loft with his friend Dan Christensen at 4 Great Jones Street. "The Border Painting" series was completed in July 1966, and soon after architect Philip Johnson acquired "Tan Painting" for the permanent collection of The Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery in Lincoln, Nebraska.
In late 1966 through 1968 he began exhibiting his paintings and works on paper in leading galleries and museums. Landfield moved into his loft at 94 Bowery in July 1967; there, he continued to experiment with rollers, staining, hard-edge borders, and painted unstretched canvases on the floor for the first time. Briefly in 1967-1968 he worked part-time for Dick Higgins and the Something Else Press.
Landfield was part of a large circle of young artists who had come to Manhattan during the 1960s. Peter Young, Dan Christensen, Peter Reginato, Eva Hesse, Carlos Villa, David R. Prentice, Kenneth Showell, David Novros, Joan Jonas, Michael Steiner, Frosty Myers, Tex Wray, Larry Zox, Larry Poons, Robert Povlich, Neil Williams, Carl Gliko, Billy Hoffman, Lee Lozano, Pat Lipsky, John Griefen, Brice Marden, James Monte, John Chamberlain, Donald Judd, Frank Stella, Carl Andre, Dan Graham, Robert Smithson, Robert Rauschenberg, Andy Warhol, Kenneth Noland, Clement Greenberg, Bob Neuwirth, Joseph Kosuth, Mark di Suvero, Brigid Berlin, Lawrence Weiner, Rosemarie Castoro, Marjorie Strider, Dorothea Rockburne, Leo Valledor, Peter Forakis and Marisol were just a few of the artists and writers he befriended and saw regularly at Max's Kansas City - the favorite place for artists in New York City during the 1960s.
By 1970 Landfield was recognized as one of the first painters to have led the "movement away from the geometric, hard-edge, and minimal, toward more lyrical, sensuous, romantic abstractions in colors which were softer and more vibrant." His paintings were part of the Whitney Museum of American Art's Annual exhibitions in 1967 and 1969, and he was included in the first Whitney Biennial in 1973. During the late 1960s through the early '70s his work was included in group exhibitions at the Park Place Gallery, the Bianchini Gallery, the Bykert Gallery, the Sheldon Memorial Art Gallery, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Baltimore Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, and the Iris & B. Gerald Cantor Center for Visual Arts (formerly Stanford University Museum of Art) amongst other places. In 1967-1968 two drawings were reproduced in "S.M.S. III" by the Letter Edged in Black Press, and he was included in "New York 10" 1969, a portfolio of prints published by Tanglewood Press.
In October 1969 he had his first one-man exhibition at the David Whitney Gallery in NYC, featuring works of that period which were partially inspired by Chinese Landscape painting. His painting "Any Day Now", 1969, 108 x 93 inches was acquired by the Whitney Museum of American Art. His painting "Diamond Lake" 1969, 108 x 168 inches, was acquired from Philip Johnson by the Museum of Modern Art in 1972 and was installed in the lobby of MoMA for several months. His painting "Elijah" 1969, 108 x 55 inches was later exhibited in Beijing, China in the early 1990s; and it is currently on view in Havana, Cuba.
During 1970 Landfield participated in a three-person show in New York City at the David Whitney Gallery and he had solo exhibitions in Cleveland, St. Louis and in Corona Del Mar, California. In 1971 he held his second solo exhibition at the David Whitney Gallery in New York City. From that exhibition his painting "Chinese Winter", 108 x 88 inches was acquired by the Rhode Island School of Design Museum of Art, and his painting "Storm Thread", 108 x 94 inches, was acquired by the Smith College Museum of Art. Landfield joined the Andre Emmerich Gallery in April 1972 one month after the David Whitney Gallery closed in March 1972.
1973 to 1993.
Landfield traveled throughout the southwest in 1973 and again in 1975. With his wife and artist friends Peter Young and Carmen Megeath he camped, lived and painted dozens of paintings on canvas and limestone in the mountains outside Zion National Park in southern Utah. He taught Fine Arts at the School of Visual Arts from 1975 until 1989. For ten years from 1975 until 1984 four of Landfield's paintings from the collection of Philip Johnson were installed in the Four Seasons Restaurant in the Seagram Building on Park Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets in Midtown Manhattan, on the so-called Mark Rothko wall.
Spending the early summer of 1980 on the Caribbean island of St. Barts Landfield produced a series of india ink and acrylic paintings on paper there. Throughout the later 1980s and 1990s he often spent summers in various towns throughout the western Catskill Mountains painting abstractions and abstract landscapes in oil paint and acrylic. During the 1980s and early '90s he showed his paintings with the Charles Cowles Gallery and Stephen Haller Fine Arts in New York City. During this period Landfield exhibited his paintings widely. He had solo exhibitions or was included in group exhibitions in Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, Miami, New Orleans, Paris, San Francisco, Seattle, Washington DC and Zurich, to name a few places.
During the early 1970s to the early 1990s many of Landfield's major paintings entered important public collections. In 1970 his painting "St. Augustine", 1968, 108 x 120 inches was acquired by the Norton Simon Museum in Pasadena; in 1971 "Shenandoah (for Eva Hesse)" 1970, 90 x 113 inches, was acquired by the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis; in 1972, his painting "Rain Dance III," was acquired by the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden in Washington, DC, and his painting "From Portal to Paradise," 1982, 107 x 78 inches, was acquired by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1983, among dozens of others. In 1989-1990 Landfield began correspondence with the late art historian, Professor Daniel Robbins, about the neglected historical understanding of abstract painting in New York since the mid-1960s. Landfield began extensive writing and lecturing about abstract painting from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s.
Recent work.
In 1994 Landfield presided over two public panel discussions at the New York Studio School and the Tenri Institute both in Manhattan called "Cool and Collected or Too Hot to Handle". In 1995 he curated "Seven Painters" at the Nicholas/Alexander Gallery in SoHo, an exhibition that featured seven important abstract painters whose careers began in the mid to late 1960s, some of whom hadn't been shown for many years. In 1996 Landfield had a solo exhibition in Sapporo, Japan and lectured there on American art. In 1997 he aided colleague Ronald Davis's creation of an educational website highlighting abstract art from the 1960s. He was represented by the Salander/O'Reilly Gallery in New York from 1997 until 2007. In October 2005 he had a solo exhibition of his paintings accompanied by a solo show of sculpture by Peter Reginato at the Heidi Cho Gallery in Chelsea.
In 2007 Landfield had a retrospective exhibition "Ronnie Landfield: Paintings From Five Decades," at the Butler Institute of American Art Later that year, he had an exhibition of recent paintings entitled "Toward Monochrome" at the Heidi Cho Gallery in Manhattan. Landfield has exhibited his work in important institutions and galleries for nearly five decades. Currently he lives and works in TriBeCa, and teaches at The Art Students League of New York; during a recent lecture there he said ""It's important for maximum freedom for an artist, to stay under the radar for as long as possible"." From 2007 until 2016, his work has been exhibited at the Stephen Haller Gallery in New York City and LewAllen Galleries in Santa Fe, New Mexico. He currently is represented by the Findlay Galleries in New York and Florida. He draws, paints and writes left-handed. Landfield's two sons are artists who live in New York: Matthew Hart Landfield is an actor, writer and director, and Noah Landfield is a painter and musician.
At the time of his exhibition at the Butler Institute of American Art in 2007, Landfield was referred to as "one of the best painters in America and has been since he first came on the scene in the 1960s." Louis Zona, director of the institute, says "To stand in front of a Landfield painting is to be transported into a world where color feeds upon color and every inch of the canvas is considered ... Ronnie Landfield is, pure and simple, one of the best painters in America."
Landfield's show "Where it All Began" was the debut exhibition at the gallery space of the High School of Art and Design in the fall of 2012. In late October 2012 Landfield's home and studio in Tribeca was adversely affected by Hurricane Sandy. In the fall of 2013 his paintings were included in an exhibition called "Come Together: Surviving Sandy, Year One" curated by Phong Bui and The Daedalus Foundation.
Most recently, he has been under the representation of Findlay Galleries, and has had his work in several group and one-man shows. In January 2018, he participated in a live discussion with Michael Rips, the director of the Art Students League of New York, about his life and his art at Findlay Galleries.


Curse of the Boulder Valley

The Curse of Boulder Valley, also known as Niwot's Curse, is attributed to Chief Niwot, who is said to have first stated it upon meeting the first white gold seekers to visit what is now known as the Boulder Valley in Boulder County, Colorado. According to the chief, the curse of the valley was its breathtaking landscape.
Niwot was the leader of the Southern Arapaho. The visitors were encamped at what the Arapaho considered to be a sacred site, Valmont Butte, some four miles to the north east of what is now central Boulder, Colorado. Niwot and his closest elder braves, Bear Head and Many Whips, rode out to the site where the new arrivals had decided to camp, near the place where Boulder Creek releases from the Front Range onto the Great Plains. Some see the Curse as portentous of the settling of not only the Boulder Valley, but of the entire Western United States.
Europeans come to Boulder Valley.
In fall 1858, led by Captain Thomas Aikins, a group of gold prospectors, part of the Colorado Gold Rush, came from Fort St. Vrain, 30 miles east. As they made camp at the site where Boulder Creek rushes down from Nederland to meet Sunshine Creek and flow onto the Great Plains, Niwot and his braves met them.
They had ridden from Valmont Butte to greet them in peace, and to admonish them to leave.
Chief Niwot, it is said, as eloquent and capable as he was with the English language learned from his brother-in-law, his sister's husband, the trapper John Poisal, told the European erstwhile settlers the area was cursed. He is said to have told them the Curse of Boulder Valley is: "People seeing the beauty of this valley will want to stay, and their staying will be the undoing of the beauty." As the conversation heightened, he proceeded to threaten them with a visitation by War Party if they did not leave.
Battle looms and a dream brings initial peace.
Aikins and his men refused to leave and prepared to do battle against the Arapaho. At some point, Bear Head and Many Whips headed back to the Arapaho encampment to raise a War Party while the Chief lingered.
While they were away, Aikins and his group took steps to avoid hostilities by focusing personal attention on Chief Niwot, plying him with canned beans and salt pork, and getting him drunk. As a result, when Bear Head and Many Whips and the War Party returned, Niwot was advocating peace with the gold seeking Caucasians, yet tension reigned.
After three tense days, the threat of battle remained in the air. Then, abruptly, Niwot rode into Aikins’ camp once more. He had come to tell them one of his Arapaho shamans had received a dream from the Great Spirit the night before. In the dream, a flood covered the earth and swallowed the Arapaho people, while the whites survived. Niwot interpreted this to mean that gold seekers would flood his homeland, and he could do nothing to stop it. Peace with the whites, Niwot realized, was the only way his people would avoid being swept away by the flood.
Starting then, Niwot and his fellow chief Little Raven, who had recently welcomed white settlers to the Denver gold camps, maintained their stance of peaceful coexistence with the newly arrived Europeans, at least for the time being. He was killed shortly thereafter in the notorious Sand Creek massacre.


Maude Kerns

Maude Irvine Kerns (August 1, 1876 – August 19, 1965) was an American artist and art educator, known for her avant-garde paintings. Her works were exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, National Gallery of Art, and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, and earned Kerns considerable notoriety among the abstract art movement in New York. She later taught art at the University of Oregon as well as at high schools in Corvallis and Seattle, Washington before her death in 1965.
Early life and education.
Kerns was born in 1876 in Portland, Oregon. She was raised by her pioneer parents, who had migrated to Oregon in 1852 from Indiana. Her father was Samuel Irvine Kerns, and her mother was Elizabeth Claggett; they were married in 1868. Her father was in the Oregon infantry and fought in three Indian wars in 1856, 1865 and 1866. Her mother was a school teacher. She had an older sister, born in 1874, named Edith (married name Edith Kerns Chambers), and two younger brothers, LeRoy Flemming born in 1884, and Harold Claggett, born in 1890. The family moved to Eugene City, Oregon in 1884.
Kerns enrolled in high school in 1891, at the prep school administered by the University of Oregon. She graduated from the University of Oregon in 1899 in a class of thirty-four seniors, with a Bachelor of Arts. In 1900 she attended the Mark Hopkins Institute (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in San Francisco. She moved to New York City in 1904 to attend Columbia University Teacher College, where she received a diploma in Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Science in Art Education under the guidance of Arthur Wesley Dow. Arthur Wesley Dow described her as "a person of dignity and presence, very quiet in manner, but firm and positive in her opinions".
Career.
Prior to moving to New York for school, Kerns taught in Corvallis, Lebanon, and Eugene, Oregon. Kerns taught art in Seattle high schools for fourteen years, after receiving her degree from Columbia. She studied with William Merritt Chase in 1912. She also spent time traveling through Asia and Europe seeing the works of Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, Paul Klee and others from the avant-garde art movement, as well as a stint with renowned art teacher Hans Hofmann. Kerns returned to teach at the School of Architecture and Allied Arts at the University of Oregon in Eugene. She was the head of the art education program (also called the Normal Arts Department) from 1921 until 1947, her curriculum was inline with the beliefs and practices of William Morris. She remained until her retirement in the 1940s. Many of her early works were destroyed during a fire at the art school. Kerns was a member of the California WC (watercolor) society and the Oregon Society of Artists.
Her first exhibition of paintings was in 1925 at the Seattle Art Museum as part of their Northwest Annual Show. From the 1930s through the 1950s, Kerns made a name for herself in the world of abstract art, painting in what was called at the time the "non-objective" art movement, being widely known for modernist landscapes. She exhibited work at the Museum of Non-Objective Painting in New York. A spiritual woman, she embraced the art-as-spiritual expression philosophy of Wassily Kandinsky. She was also influenced by Asian art. She was an innovative teacher, being a mentor to University of Oregon professors, she would do things like have her class paint to music to try new styles. Working with Arthur Wesley Dow, Alexander Archipenko contributed to her interest in color and shape relationships. She was also an associate to Albert Patecky. Her paintings were recognized and championed by Hilla von Rebay, chief advisor to Solomon R. Guggenheim, who purchased a number of her paintings, along with art from other standouts in the early American abstract art scene, for his Museum of Non-Objective Painting (later renamed Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum) in New York City.
Death and legacy.
Kerns died in 1965, and later The Eugene Art Center (1950), to which she was a major donor and founder of, was renamed The Maude Kerns Art Center in her honor and served to promote her passion for contemporary art. The art center holds a variety of paintings, mixed media, ceramics, and many other modern forms of art.


Harold Zisla

Harold Zisla (June 28, 1925 – March 18, 2016) was an American abstract expressionist painter and art educator. In 1968 he became the founding chair of the Fine Arts Department at Indiana University South Bend, where he taught until his retirement in 1989.
Early life.
Zisla was born in Cleveland, Ohio. During his youth he took art classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art (1932-1937), and he studied with painter Paul B. Travis at Council Educational Alliance (1938–40). In 1940 he won a scholarship to Young Artist Classes at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where he took classes with Milton S. Fox, a painter and art historian who later served as editor-in-chief and vice president of Harry N. Abrams Inc., an art book publisher.
Zisla earned his high school diploma from East Technical High School in Cleveland in 1943. Following high school, he served in the United States Navy until 1946. He graduated from the Cleveland School of Art with a diploma in painting in 1950. The same year, he received his B.S. in art education at Western Reserve University. The following year he earned his M.S. in art education. He moved to South Bend, Indiana, in 1952, where he worked first as an industrial designer at Uniroyal.
Career.
He directed the South Bend Art Center (now the South Bend Museum of Art) from 1957 to 1966, prior to accepting the professorship at what was then called the South Bend-Mishawaka Campus of Indiana University. Four-year degree programs had just been authorized in 1965, and Zisla had the responsibility of hiring new faculty.
Zisla was long active in service to community arts in the Michiana region. Following his tenure as executive director, he served on the South Bend Art Center board of trustees. He also served on the acquisitions committee of Purdue University, the Advisory Board of the Gallery at Saint Mary’s College, and the Mayor’s Committee to Build a Cultural Complex.
Zisla said about painting that it "should be, more than anything else, a liberation into the spirit of the artist, and to have presence, impact, dynamism, freedom from the trite, the contrived, the boringly dead." Paintings, he said, "must be alive.”
Harold Zisla married Doreen on August 13, 1946. They have two children, Paul Zisla and Beverly Welber.
The Harold and Doreen Zisla Art Scholarship has been established at Indiana University South Bend to support graduate and undergraduate students whose work displays an interest in experimental art.


Mundasupatti

Mundasupatti () is a 2014 Indian Tamil-language period comedy film written and directed by Ram Kumar and produced by C. V. Kumar under his banner Thirukumaran Entertainment and Fox Star Studios. It stars Vishnu Vishal and Nandita Swetha, with Kaali Venkat, Ramdoss, and Anandaraj in supporting roles.
The film is set in the 1980s in a fictional village called Mundasupatti, where people believe bad luck will befall them if they are photographed. The story illustrates what happens when two photographers visit the village. It is based on a short film which was directed by Ram Kumar himself in 2011 for the TV show "Naalaya Iyakunar."
Principal photography commenced in August 2013, with Sathyamangalam being served as the primary location for the film. The shoot was completed within 57 days. The film's technical crew includes Sean Roldan as the music director, while cinematography and editing for the film were handled by P. V. Shankar and Leo John Paul respectively.
"Mundasupatti" released on 13 June 2014 to positive critical response and became a hit at the box office.
Plot.
Gopi (Vishnu Vishal), a Sathyamangalam-based photographer, and his assistant Alagumani (Kaali Venkat) arrive at a remote village called Mundasupatti on an assignment. The natives of this village are superstitious; they fear getting photographed, believing it will lead to death.
Production.
Ram Kumar had shot about 10 short films for the TV show, "Naalaya Iyakunar". When "Kadhalil Sodhappuvadhu Yeppadi" (a film developed from a short film) released, he said he was inspired to make his own film. He took a year off to work on the script and to select his actors. He called it a challenge to convert the script for a short film into a full-length one and stated that he had added new characters for the film version.
Vishnu Vishal was cast for the lead role, with the director stating that he wanted "someone who is funny, but very subtly so". Vishnu, who had till then only played characters that were emotional, for the first time attempted a full-length comedy role, who felt it was "very refreshing" and added that "for the first time, I could relate to my character". Nandita Swetha was signed for the lead female role, and Ram said that he wanted "someone who is dusky" for the role of Kalaivaani, adding that he was impressed by her performance in "Attakathi". Kaali Venkat who had been part of the original short film played the assistant to Vishnu's character. Ramdoss, seen in small roles previously, was given the role of an aspiring actor, a "fantastic role", according to him, that, he said, gave him "a lot of scope for acting".
The filming started on 28 August 2013 and was completed by October 2013. The film was shot in 57 days, in Sathyamangalam, which has houses that are over a 100 years old. Vishnu's Hollywood Photo Studio was located at Nirmala Theatre Road, Sathyamangalam.
Soundtrack.
The film's soundtrack was composed by independent musician Sean Roldan. It was the first film project he had signed on, although two of his soundtrack albums got released before the release of "Mundasupatti". Sean Roldan had composed seven tracks for the film, besides singing three of them. The lyrics for the songs were written by Muthamil and GKB. The soundtrack album was launched along with the film's trailer on 9 May 2014 at the Suryan FM 93.5 Radio Station, Chennai.
The songs as well as the score received very positive feedback by critics. Behindwoods gave it 3.25 out of 5 stars and called it "one of the most enterprising albums of this year". Musicaloud.com gave it a score of 8.5 out of 10 and wrote, "There seems to be no stopping Sean Roldan". Rediff wrote, "Sean Roldan's rustic songs and background score are definitely the highlights of the film, especially the folk styled Rasa Maharasa and the beautiful melody Idhu Enna". Deccan Chronicle wrote, "The [other] standout of the film was Sean Roldan's background and music. His catchy but affectionate songs fit very well with the clayey tones of the film – which is to say that they mould and reshape the landscape in lieu with the plot". Milliblog reviewed "Like Santhosh Narayanan, Sean Roldan is truly on a roll with his inventive spin on conventional Tamil film music." The Rare Field reviewed as "Composer Sean Roldan hits the bulls-eye yet again, and with "Mundasupatti", he has a hat-trick on his hands!"
Release.
The satellite rights of the film were sold to STAR Vijay. To promote the film the makers had created an interactive application on the website, www.mymundasupattistyle.com that allowed visitors to create their own avatars akin to characters from Mundasupatti. The idea was well received and had gone viral on the social networking sites.
A special screening of "Mundasupatti" was arranged for distributors and exhibitors couple of days prior to the release. Subsequently, the film opened across nearly 207 screens in Tamil Nadu, which was considered "very high for a Vishnu film". The film released on 13 June 2014 alongside five other Tamil releases, but according to Sify.com, it got "the best of screens and prime shows in multiplexes".
Reception.
Critical reception.
The film received generally positive feedback from critics. "The Times of India" gave 3.5 stars out of 5 and wrote, "Director Ram Kumar, who is the latest promising find from the TV show Naalaya Iyakkunar, certainly knows how to end a joke with a punchline. The film is a tad overlong ... and some of the comedy feels repetitive but Ram Kumar manages to keep things playful and entertaining at all times ... that we look past some of the indulgences". Sify.com wrote, ""Mundasupatti" is a rip-roaring rocker! It is a full length laugh riot which is fresh and entertaining. The wacky story and treatment of debutant director Ram Kumar, makes it tickling and an absolute fun ride". "Deccan Chronicle" gave 3.5 out of 5 and wrote, "They say that a tragedy today is bound to be a comedy tomorrow – an unfortunate incident, a set of beliefs to explain that incident, and the culture of fear and superstition that this broods are all probable misnomers that we all will look back at and have a mighty laugh. Take it a step further by adding situational comedy to an initial tragedy and what we have is a film that succeeds in many levels with the possible muse of timing and pacing". Silverscreen.in wrote, ""Mundasupatti" is set in the 80s. Fascinatingly so. It is perhaps a bizarrely comical version of a Stephen Leacock essay, but fashionably vintage and very Indian". The New Indian Express wrote, "the debutant director has lived up to the expectations, establishing his credentials with his very first effort. The plot is refreshing, the screenplay engaging, the dialogue sparkling with wit and humour. The director moves his narration deftly and with confidence. "Mundasupatti" with no big names to boast of, yet again proves it. It's a film not to be missed".
Baradwaj Rangan wrote, "I wish more had been done with the central conceit. This is not a lazy film by any stretch. But a comedy should be light on its feet. Linger too much, and it can begin to seem out of focus". Behindwoods gave it 3 stars out of 5 and wrote, ""Mundasupatti" could have used some trimming as it gets slightly tedious at times but the feeling while coming out, is one of satisfaction. This debut offering from director Ram Kumar has turned out to be a worthy product from the CV Kumar – Fox Star Studios camp" and concluded that the film is "A feel-good comedy entertainer". Indiaglitz gave 3 out of 5 and wrote, "though being predictable, this one glues you to the seat for an enjoyable two and half hours. Revolving entirely around the sentiments attached to camera, with a young and vibrant crew, the film is a thorough entertainer". Rediff.com gave it 2.5 out of 5 stars and called the film "an entertaining rom-com" and "a decent attempt by debutant D Ram Kumar", but criticized that "the narration is extremely slow paced and the film too long, taking away some of the fun". OneIndia gave 2.5 out of 5 and concluded, ""Mundasupatti" is a fun-filled drama. Entertains at first watch". "The Hindustan Times" gave 2.5 out of 5 and concluded, ""Mundasupatti" has some delightful moments of freshness to offer". Rajasekar S, from Cinemalead called Mundasupatti as a long and tiring ride, rating it at a half baked 2.5 out of 5.
Box office.
"Mundasupatti" collected 3.1 crore in its opening weekend in Tamil Nadu, which was the highest ever opening for a C V Kumar film. The film collected in Chennai in first weekend.


Renata Bernal

Renata Bernal (born February 3, 1937, in Munich, Germany is a contemporary American artist. Her work spans a broad range of media including oil paintings, acrylic paintings, pastel paintings, lithograph, woodcuts, and ink drawings. She has exhibited in New York City, San Francisco, Providence, Rhode Island, and in numerous cities in upstate New York, and her artwork can be seen in permanent collections at the Binghamton University Foundation and the historic Security Mutual Life building in Binghamton, New York.
Life and work.
Renata Bernal was born in Munich, (Germany) in 1937, and came to the United States at the age of 13.
She attended the Cooper Union Art School in New York City and graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the San Francisco Art Institute and a Masters in Art Education from Brown University.
While a student at the San Francisco Art Institute, Bernal had a strong interest in the graphic arts. She studied lithography and etching with Nathan Oliveira between 1956 and 1959. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, she also worked with ink drawing, woodcuts and oil painting.
In the late 1960s Bernal began working with acrylic airbrush ("air gun") on canvas. The airbrush allowed her to produce, with acrylic paint, the same feeling of luminosity that she had grown to love about oil paintings. Over the following decades this was the primary medium that she used for her large abstract pieces, although she continued to work in other media and styles: pastel and charcoal portraits in the 1970s and 1980s, and ink drawings in the 1990s.
Renata has donated a number of her works to benefit local charities and non-profit organizations, such as the Art Mission Project and WSKG Public Broadcasting.
Renata is currently retired in Binghamton in upstate New York, where she continues to enjoy practicing her artwork, writing poetry, and participating in her local Unitarian Universalist congregation.


Natsuko Fujimori

 is a retired Japanese women's professional shogi player ranked 4-dan.
Personal life.
Fujimori's son Tetsuya is also a professional shogi player. The two are the only mother and son to be awarded professional shogi player status.
Promotion history.
Fujimori's promotion history was as follows:
Note: All ranks are women's professional ranks.
Awards and honors.
Fujimori received the Japan Shogi Association's received the "25 Years Service Award" in recognition of being an active professional for twenty-five years in 2003.


Anywoli

Anywoli is a traditional mancala game played by the Anuak people of the Gambela province, in Ethiopia, as well as in the Akobo, Pochalla and Jokau regions of Sudan. The name of the game means "bringing to life" ("giving birth"). Anywoli has similarities to mancalas found in Nigeria and Ghana, such as Ba-awa and Obridjie.
Rules.
The board used to play Anywoli has two rows of twelve holes each. Anuak call these holes "oto" (pl.: "udi"), meaning "house". At game setup, 4 seeds are placed in each hole. Seeds are called "nyibaré", meaning "children (sons) of the board game".
Players take turns; each owns one of the rows.
At his or her turn, the player takes all the seeds from one of his/her holes and relay sows them counterclockwise. The sowing ends when the last seed falls in an empty hole or when a capture occurs.
Capture occurs whenever, during play, a hole holds exactly four seeds: those seeds are removed from the game, and taken by the player who owns the hole. In the special case where the last seed of a sowing is placed in a hole holding three seeds (thus forming a four-seed hole), the captured seeds are taken by the player who is moving, independent of who owns the hole. This also ends the player's turn.
When only 8 seeds are left on a board, the player who moved first at the beginning of the game captures them and the game ends. The winner is the player who captured most seeds.


Declare (typeface)


Shingo Hirafuji

 is a Japanese professional shogi player ranked 7-dan.
Early life.
Hirafuji was born in Toyonaka, Osaka on October 15, 1963. He entered the Japan Shogi Association's apprentice school as student of shogi professional in 1980. He was promoted to 1-dan in 1983 and obtained full professional status and the rank of 4-dan in April 1991.
Promotion history.
Hirafuji's promotion history is as follows:


Wally Hedrick

Wally Bill Hedrick (1928 – December 17, 2003) was a seminal American artist in the 1950s California counterculture, gallerist, and educator who came to prominence in the early 1960s. Hedrick’s contributions to art include pioneering artworks in psychedelic light art, mechanical kinetic sculpture, junk/assemblage sculpture, Pop Art, and (California) Funk Art. Later in his life, he was a recognized forerunner in Happenings, Conceptual Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. Hedrick was also a key figure in the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation when he helped to organize the Six Gallery Reading, and created the first artistic denunciation of American foreign policy in Vietnam. Wally Hedrick was known as an “idea artist” long before the label “conceptual art” entered the art world, and experimented with innovative use of language in art, at times resorting to puns.
1940s.
Wally Hedrick was born in Pasadena, California. He came out of the military and car culture, first glimpsing the liberating promise of San Francisco bohemia in the late 1940s, then moving to the city permanently after seeing combat in the Korean War (1950–1953). Hedrick visited California School of Fine Arts (now the San Francisco Art Institute) in 1946. During this period, he joined Progressive Art Workers with David Simpson, John Stanley and others. The Progressive Art Workers was a social club which also functioned as a co-operative through which the group the members were able to exhibit their works. At this time, too, Vesuvio Cafe in San Francisco's North Beach district hired Hedrick as an action painter to work (i.e. 'make paintings') while a jazz combo performed:
"That was his job. He made these paintings and while he would paint the musicians would play along with him. He would go like this and they would go doodoo doop. It was very popular in North Beach. The guy would make four or five paintings in an evening."
1950s.
Hedrick made an early break with the conventions of art training and art-making. "There were three directions an artist could take at that time," Hedrick says, "Figuration, Abstract-Expressionism. And this third thing, which was out of the surrealist and Dada tradition." Hedrick began "working out a form of personalized Dada", which led "perhaps to his most influential contribution to the course of Bay Area art: an elaborate kind of punning. The puns not only became titles...but appeared in the painting itself."
Hedrick's mature artistic career began with paintings of popular imagery—American flags, radios, television cabinets and refrigerators—years before the rise of New York Pop Art. John Coplans included Hedrick's use of popular imagery in 1951 in his timeline of the antecedents to Pop Art. Hedrick "began painting flags in the 1950s, before New York's Jasper Johns did. Soon after, Hedrick -- ever the anti-careerist -- painted many of those flags black to protest the Vietnam War."
In the early 1950s, Vesuvio Cafe, a popular Beat hangout, employed Hedrick to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped ushered in the Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach "Beat" scene. Hedrick once confided to his student Jerry Garcia that "he and his friends were the "real" Beat Generation."
At the time, Hedrick was one of the first San Francisco artists in the early 1950s to work almost exclusively with metal. He began welding in 1952, and these efforts are considered the first kinetic-junk assemblages. Hedrick made assemblages and sculptures from beer cans, lights, broken radio and television sets, refrigerators, and washing machines he found in junkyards. "What interests me", he said later, is "to take garbage and make it into art, kind of ironic art." He painted over the surfaces with thick layers of impasto and gesso which incorporated the work into the aesthetic of action painting. He was particularly pleased when he could fix an abandoned appliance sufficiently that at least some piece of it would work and he could turn his assemblages into moving sculptures.
"Some of his most memorable sculptures came from crushing and welding beer cans together, or stacking and welding them...In 1956 he made the first light sculpture that I had ever seen; a fixture that responded to sound. Later on he had the piece on at his house during a Christmas celebration for which Wally put on some Miles and Coltrane on and the sculpture went crazy! I also remember his assemblage Xmas Tree Sculpture, that lit up and danced!"
Although using beer cans was popularized in 1960 by Jasper Johns, Hedrick began the practice in art many years earlier, during the early 1950s. One of Hedrick's favorite beer can sculptures "was made up of smashed beer cans in a kind of pyramid, as sort of a mountain, so I called it "American Everest"." The welded beer can sculptures "carried over until -- 1969."
During the 1950s, Hedrick's efforts followed two main paths: painting and sculpture. More specifically, between 1952 and 1958, Hedrick begins his kinetic junk assemblages, beer can sculptures and 'Black Painting' series. Not only do Hedrick's junk kinetic beer can sculptures, now all lost or destroyed, possibly rank as the seminal "kinetic junk sculptures...made before Tinguely", but also, Hedrick is one of the first American artists to oppose US intervention in South Vietnam.
Pre-conceptualist.
Some artists at the time considered Hedrick a 'pre-conceptualist': "Wally's mind, I think... is of primary significance in this way. I think he's much more a preconceptualist than perhaps any of the others... the paintings, and the objects that he created are really more expressions of an idea." Indeed, Marcel Duchamp "was one of Wally's greatest gods, always."
Korean War.
In 1951, during the Korean War, Hedrick was drafted into the United States Army against his will, escorted away by US Army MPs without even having the chance to call his parents. "Wally must have been a problem for them, though, because Wally didn't ever do military things quite the way they intended...you told Wally not to do it, that's what he would do. He was stationed in Korea until 1952. During this time, his paintings and assemblages shifted from neo-cubism to metaphysics to political subjects painted in a cartoonish style and dealing particularly with the escalation of the Vietnam War.
Studio 13 Jazz Band.
Hedrick joined the "Studio 13 Jazz Band" in 1952. The group was founded at the San Francisco Art Institute in the late 1940s by two members of the Bay Area figurative painters David Park and Elmer Bischoff.
"Peace" (1953).
 In 1953, one of the earliest paintings of his career as an artist presented a crumpled American flag defaced with the word 'Peace'. Thomas E. Crow contrasts this work with Jasper Johns’s "anonymous stenciling", drawing attention to the way Hedrick mimics the flamboyant calligraphy found in the decoration of hot-rod cars. Crow sees the work in contrast to Johns’s reticence, as a protest aimed against the waste of lives in Korea, and at Cold War adventurism in general. Additionally, "Peace" (1953), "demonstrates an intuitive understanding of 'language as symbol' which predates the present postmodern use (of language) by twenty years. Hedrick’s pre-pop paintings were included in John Coplan’s historical “Pop Art, USA," the first exhibition to attempt a collective look at the movement in the United States, presented at the Oakland Art Museum during September, 1963. Even after his Pop Art phase, Hedrick continued "his risk-taking forays into regions where, mostly, angels fear to tread".
In the late 1940s he experimented with light. By 1953 he had created a “light machine” that combined keyboard, glass, speakers, and homemade projectors and colored lights that responded to changes in pitch, register, and volume, which was an early precursor of the psychedelic light shows of the '60s—and years before the light shows of Haight-Ashbury.
'A genuine beatnik' who helped usher in the Beat Generation.
Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead studied with Wally Hedrick and Elmer Bischoff at San Francisco Art Institute. It was the only school Garcia would ever be proud of attending. Hedrick served Garcia as a model not only as a painter but as an expositor of a way of life. To Garcia, Hedrick was a genuine beatnik. Hedrick thought Garcia bright and hip, and advised Garcia to attend poetry readings at the North Beach coffee houses, such as the Co-Existence Bagel Shop, the social centre of the Beat community. It was Hedrick who turned the young Garcia on to acoustic blues and Jack Kerouac’s "On the Road" and all its attendant attitudes. "On the Road" changed Garcia’s life forever. “Wally taught me that art is not only something you do, but something you are.”
As "a genuine beatnik" Hedrick was employed at a 'beatnik' bohemian sitting at the bar at Vesuvio Cafe, a famous hangout in San Francisco’s North Beach. Vesuvio Cafe employed Hedrick to sit in the window dressed in full beard, turtleneck, and sandals and create improvisational drawings and paintings. Hedrick's figure, therefore, helped usher in the Beat lifestyle which ballooned in the later 1950s; by 1958 tourists to San Francisco could take bus tours to view the North Beach "Beat" scene.
Although Hedrick once confided to Garcia that "he and his friends were the "real" Beat Generation", the seminal visual artists in the 1950s in San Francisco, including Hedrick, shunned the ‘beatnik’ label. None of them liked being called “Beats” and they especially abhorred the label “Beatniks”, a sobriquet of disparagement coined by San Francisco’s famed columnist Herb Caen. As Bruce Conner stated: “I don’t know any artist that would call himself a beat artist…If somebody did, you’d consider him a fake, a fraud running a scam.”
The Six Gallery, happenings, and funk art.
"The opening night was the big thing in San Francisco. The opening night and all the artists, mainly artists, went out there and those few people that were into socialites or whatever they were, they went out. And then after that, you could go out there during a weekday and there would be nobody in the gallery. Nobody gave a damn." -- John Saccaro
Made from what was known as the King Ubu Gallery ("an all poet thing"), in 1954, Hedrick co-founded The Six Gallery in San Francisco, California with David Simpson, Hayward King, John Allen Ryan, Deborah Remington and Jack Spicer—and by 1955, had "become the official director". Although "the activities of the "6" were poorly documented", the Six Gallery functioned as an underground art gallery for the members and a meeting place for poets and literati alike. "The Six" was a focal point for countercultural activity during a crucial transition point—unconventional artists were deep underground—partly because no audience encouraged them to emerge, partly because it was safer there. "The Six" delighted at the chance to defy authority. As the gallery director, Hedrick organized and participated in the spontaneous exhibition/poetry reading/performance events that were the precursors of the 'Happenings' of the 1960s.
"We didn't think of ourselves as a group. The other groups had a very strong group feeling, and they'd sit around and talk about taking over the world, or at least every art department in the Bay Area."
In the wake of the artist collective galleries such as Ubu and Six came galleries run by professionals.
"Hedrick was instrumental in transforming the cheery satire of Pop Art into the more outrageous bite of funk art." The birth of 'California Funk Art' can be found at the Six Gallery. Robert Arneson, the so-called "Father of the Ceramic Funk Art movement". considered Hedrick, "The Godfather of Funk Art".
Hedrick received his B.F.A. in Art from the San Francisco Art Institute in 1955.
The Six Gallery reading.
"The Six Gallery reading" took place on October 7, 1955, at the Six Gallery, when Allen Ginsberg, at Hedrick's invitation, read "Howl" for the first time. The event has become nearly as much a part of the city's mystique as the 1849 Gold Rush or the 1906 earthquake.
Hedrick approached Ginsberg in mid-1955 and asked him to organize a poetry reading at the Six Gallery. At first, Ginsberg refused, but once he’d written a rough draft of "How", he changed his mind. An account of the night can be found in Jack Kerouac's novel "The Dharma Bums", where he describes collecting change from each audience member to buy jugs of wine with Hedrick.
Hedrick's 'Six Gallery Reading' was the first important public manifestation of the Beat Generation and helped to herald the West Coast artistic revolution that became known as the San Francisco Renaissance.
Jay DeFeo.
In the late 1950s, San Francisco became the beat poetry capital of the universe, but the visual artists who were part of the same epoch are less celebrated. The three-story building at 2322-24 Fillmore, where Hedrick and Jay DeFeo lived and worked was the unofficial center of the small San Francisco art world in 1955–65. Hedrick met artist Jay DeFeo, a student at the University of California, Berkeley, and they married in 1954. Jay DeFeo's best-known painting, "The Rose", was made in their Filmore Street apartment, took almost eight years to create and weighs 2,300 pounds, all paid for by her husband, Wally Hedrick.
Kinetic sculpture.
"When I arrived in San Francisco in 1957, I remember going to "The Place" at North Beach with Michael McClure. There was this assemblage by Wally Hedrick in the window. I think it was part of a stovepipe, there was a doll's head in the vent, and it had wheels; it was like a cart (with a cane on it)." -- Bruce Conner
" 'The Christmas Tree' was supposed to have something to do with playing colors by light, but it was totally random as far as I could tell, just absurd." -- Bruce Conner
In 1958 one of his mechanical assemblages "attacked" a woman at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art's annual Christmas party and holiday exhibition. His "Xmas Tree" was "sort of the pinnacle of the kinetic junk sculptures because I'd never attempted anything so complicated", built out of "two radios, two phonographs, flashing lights, electric fans, saw motor--all controlled by timers, hooked so [they] would cycle all these things." One of the record players played "I Hate to See Christmas Come Around". At the opening, which Hedrick refused to attend, he set a timer so that the piece "suddenly began flashing its lights, honking its horns, and playing its records." One woman who was standing next to the piece when it suddenly turned on found her fur coat tangled in it and then received an electrical shock. "It caused quite a sensation not because of its artistic merit, but because it attacked this lady, which I thought was very nice... I wasn't making it as an art thing. I was more interested in making a "thing", and if it attacked people—well I guess I knew it was going to attack...I knew it would probably attack because I laid the trap. So it entertained me; I thought the evening was a success."
"Sixteen Americans".
In 1955, art curator Dorothy Miller came to the West Coast. She included Hedrick in the 1959 "Sixteen Americans" show at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City, NY. Hedrick, knowing full well the importance of being on hand for the opening, gave his plane ticket for the New York museum exhibition and spectacle to friends, rather than participate. It would be 25 years before Hedrick figured prominently again in New York City, during the Whitney Museum of American Art’s, "Beat Culture and the New America: 1950-1965" exhibition in 1995.
Not only did Hedrick not attend the 1959 "Sixteen Americans" opening at the Museum of Modern Art or even go to see the exhibition, he further distanced himself from the mainstream art world by declaring that artists such as Jackson Pollock, Franz Kline, and Robert Motherwell were too firmly rooted in formal traditions. Instead, Hedrick asserted, “You’ve got to have a deep sense of the human and you have to have a political stance. Painting is not above politics. Anything that has to do with the soul also has to do with the stomach.
In 1959, again recalling his Asian military experience, Hedrick painted "Anger" (or "Madame Nhu’s Bar-B-Q"), the first artistic denunciation of American policy in Vietnam. "Anger", visually equates an act of forceful sexual penetration with corrupt political manipulation. Explosive rage and indignation are symbolized by an atomic cloud serving double duty as the form of male and female genitalia perpetrating the deed."
In 1959, both Hedrick and DeFeo became original members of Bruce Conner's Rat Bastard Protective Association.
1960s.
Hedrick and DeFeo's apartment lease at 2322 Fillmore was suddenly terminated (due in part to DeFeo's excesses) toward the end of 1965. Hedrick and DeFeo divorced in 1969.
The "Black Paintings" were Hedrick's protest against the Vietnam War. Hedrick took "about 50" of his early canvases and painted them black. Hedrick's "Black Paintings" culminate in 1967 with "War Room". This series "was an idiosyncratic protest, but a passionate one."
War Room.
War Room is "a group of four eleven-by-eleven foot black canvases, each filling a wall of the room" then arranged "into a square...in the shape of a room...and a door to go in it." The installation has been described as a significant item of Bay Area art history.
During this time, Hedrick was accused of stealing paintings, including a canvas by Clyfford Still, from the San Francisco Art Institute, where he was teaching, then either painting them black or painting his own iconoclastic pictures over them.
In December 2008, Christopher Miles, art critic for the LA Weekly, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26,) for Best Show of the Year (2008).
Also, in December 2008, Walead Beshty, art critic for Artforum Magazine, nominated the War Room (exhibited at Mara McCarthy's The Box, March 21 - April 26) among the most notable Los Angeles exhibitions in 2008.
1970s (Wally's Fix-It Shop).
In the early 1970s Hedrick was fired from a teaching post at the San Francisco Art Institute, after circulating a petition protesting America's presence in Vietnam.
After the dismissal Hedrick began a period of self-imposed artistic exile, devoting most of his time to operating a home repair business (appropriately named, "Wally's Fix-It Shop") in the town of San Geronimo, California. This is an example of the way Hedrick "operates outside the busy highway of contemporary art". The small repair business proved moderately successful. Hedrick's repair skills were first recognized during the Korean War, when he was given the task of fixing radios.
His paintings of the 1970s were mainly crude black and white renditions of old mail order catalogue illustrations. It was also rumored he was the originator of the tag SKIDS which appeared on road signs in Northern California . He also put that in paintings later .
1980s.
In the 1980s he shifted to large-scale canvases of rough and aggressive imagery, often sexual." From 1988 to his death, Hedrick lived and worked in Bodega Bay, California, with his long-time companion, Catherine Conlin.
1990s.
Hedrick recycled the Black paintings -- recycling being another recurring theme in his work -- during the Persian Gulf War, slathering the older black paintings them with new statements in white acrylic paint like, "So damn, whose sane?".
2000s.
After 25 years, "The War Room" was brought out of storage to be the centerpiece for the 5th Annual San Francisco International Art Fair in 2003, courtesy of Lincart. The work was described as "the most topical thing on view." In 2003, with new American aggression taking place in the Persian Gulf, Hedrick returned to making all-black paintings. On December 17, 2003, Hedrick died of congestive heart failure at his home in Sonoma County at the age of 75.
Commentary and criticism.
"I can remember in about 1959 or '60, the joke going around the art school in the city was, 'A garage man had hauled away Hedrick's paintings and said, 'I don't know what art is.' We'd all laugh like mad, you know, 'cause most of us weren't sympathetic towards Wally Hedrick's art at that time." -- Terry St. John
As early as 1963, John Coplans, the future editor of Artforum Magazine (January 1972–January 1977), would confess the "fashionable world of contemporary painting" (i.e. East Coast) unpleasant reaction to the independent, offensive, 35-year-old Hedrick: "there is little doubt that Hedrick is an original, yet the fashionable world of contemporary painting tends to reject Wally Hedrick's work out of hand." Its no surprise, therefore, “the pathos of Hedrick’s situation was that few not already converted were ever likely to witness Hedrick’s accomplishments."
Art curator Walter Hopps, in his forward to 1985 Hedrick’s Adeline Kent Award exhibition catalogue at the San Francisco Art Institute, stated that Hedrick "decided to ignore the ideal of "career", "fame" and "greatness" to which his peers aspired, and settled for a simpler life, uncomplicated by openings and galleries and cocktail parties."
According to "Artweek", he never ceased to creatively forged ahead, whereas "too many of the other iconoclasts of the same era have themselves become icons, cranking out homages to their own faded talents.
"Hedrick consistently refused to be interested in what he describes as a "high art look," which he then considered a waste of time and energy." Additionally, the subject matter and motifs of his art often included "rough and aggressive imagery, "painted in a fury that gains its edge from the blatant sexual rawness. Thus, Hedrick's "big, tough paintings are strong medicine...and disturbingly enigmatic."
Significance and legacy.
The cultural historian Rebecca Solnit in her 1990 book, "The Secret Exhibition: Six Californian Artists", reasserted Hedrick’s artistic achievements:
 It is now possible to say that Hedrick was ahead of his time: the first American to protest the Vietnam War, the artist to paint flags before Jasper Johns painted flags, who made kinetic junk sculpture before Tinguely did. Hedrick was a forerunner of Pop Art, Bad Painting, Neo-Expressionism, and image appropriation. It might be more useful to view Hedrick as an artist who was of his time in a unique way, a maverick whose responses to the world showed it in a different light.
"Maybe the most important thing about Wally is that he could have been so rich and so successful and so famous," said Professor Rollison, a colleague of Hedrick's at The College of Marin.
He was described as an underground institution. "Wally and Jay's (DeFeo's) house on Fillmore was the unofficial first stop on the art itinerary of anyone important in the art world, national or international." said Carlos Villa.
Career highlights.
Hedrick’s works have been exhibited in galleries and museums including The Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Whitney Museum, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum. His work resides in public collections which include The Smithsonian Institution, The Museum of Modern Art, di Rosa, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and The M. H. de Young Memorial Museum.
Hedrick taught at the San Francisco Art Institute "shortly after graduating (from SFAI). In 1959 he also stopped teaching as a form of protest against the war, and was eventually fired." Later, Hedrick taught at San Francisco Academy of Art, San Francisco State University, University of California at Davis, San Jose State University and INdian Valley College, at the time a separate school then College of Marin but later incorporated into College of Marin, where he held Professor Emeritus status. His students included Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead , William Wiley, Robert H. Hudson, William Allen and Mike Henderson.


Manuel Marin (sculptor)

Manuel Fernandez (1942–2007), otherwise known as Manuel Marin, was an artist and a convicted art forger. After working in the art world for 30 years, he admitted to making and selling millions of dollars of forgeries, mainly copies of works by the American sculptor Alexander Calder. Fernandez and his wife, Monica Savignon, served prison sentences for their crimes. Marin's sculptures created under his own name nevertheless continue to enjoy buoyant international sales through galleries and auction houses in the USA and Europe.
Biography.
Fernandez was born in 1942 in Cieza, Murcia, Spain. Fernandez grew up in Spain, and as a teenager, he trained as a bull fighter.
In his twenties, he moved to London and, then, New York where he made and sold art.
He later settled and continued working in Tenafly, New Jersey with his wife and children. He also owned a home and spent time in Malaga, Spain.
Artnet’s price database shows that since 2007, 417 of his sculptures have come up for sale at auction, selling for thousands of dollars.
Manuel Fernandez died in 2007.
Conviction.
Following an FBI investigation, a federal grand jury indicted Manuel Fernandez and Monica Savignon on fraud and conspiracy charges in 1997. At that time, the couple had been producing and selling forged artworks for over a decade.
The court reported that they had sold over two million dollars of these forged artworks. Fernandez created the works while Savignon acted as art dealer, consigning the works to auction houses and selling them to collectors. Most notably, Fernandez and Savignon sold more than $1.5 million worth of counterfeit Alexander Calder works, often mobiles or standing mobiles, some of which Fernandez signed with CA to mimic Calder’s signature. The couple also made fake copies of works by the artist Romare Bearden.
Their crime was far-reaching; they sold these forged artworks in the United States, Spain, England and France. The couple even convinced Sotheby’s, the auction house, to sell a fake Calder work by providing false provenance history for the sculpture.
Richard Vitrano, another convicted art conman, testified at his April 2000 hearing that "Mr. Marin was probably the most prolific art counterfeiter in the New York City area in the '80s." Vitrano claimed that Marin's crimes went beyond those addressed in the aforementioned case. Vitrano said from Marin "we bought a [Guy Pène] Du Bois, Thomas Hart Benton, a William Aiken Walker, a Warhol, we bought a [Pierre] Lesieur. We bought a Hans Hoffman, which was the larger one. We bought a [A.F.] Tait. We bought a Henry Farney."
In order to protect their identities, the couple operated under different aliases. As mentioned above, Manuel Fernandez usually sold art under the pseudonym Manuel (Manny) Marin, but court records document that he also used the names Giuseppe Marin, Manuel Marcel, and Manuel Cisneros. Monica Savignon went by Franchesca Agnelli, Monica Marcell, Monica Rabassa, Monica Fernandez, Monica Marin, and Monica Cisneros.
In 2000, Manuel Fernandez and Monica Savignon were convicted in federal court on fraud and conspiracy charges. Fernandez and Savignon were sentenced to the maximum prison time for their crimes, 33 months. The court also ordered that the couple pay $2,695,00 in restitution. In their sentencing, Fernandez and Savignon agreed that they would not "in any way, shape or form endeavor to create, consign, transfer or sell any art work made in the likeness of a known work or artist."
Later life.
Having moved home to Spain Marin continued to create sculpture, mostly in the form of mobiles in a style reminiscent of Alexander Calder, though under Marin's own name and using his own studio stamp. These works, typically created in steel and featuring suspended geometric forms painted in strong primary colours, appear frequently on the market at galleries and leading auction houses offered at prices a tiny fraction of what Calder's work can command, which may explain their widespread popularity.


Gordon Snee

Gordon Snee (1931 - 2013) was a British abstract painter who began work in the late 1940s. During his lifetime he rarely exhibited his work. It was only after his death in 2013 that his life's work was revealed.
Snee has been described as an "outstanding talent", "one of the 'lost painters' of the post-war period, and "one of the finest post-war abstract painters".
Biography.
Gordon Snee was born in 1931 in Burnley, Lancashire, into a working-class family who worked in the cotton mills. The family moved to Gainsborough, Lincolnshire when Snee was six. He was the first of his family to be educated beyond the age of thirteen. In 1948 he won an academic scholarship to the Slade School of Art, where he won scholarships for further tuition. Six of his early lithographs are held in the Slade collection. After college, he stayed on in Highgate, London, where his first works were exhibited and sold.
He moved back north in 1956, first to Lincolnshire, and then to Saddleworth in Lancashire. He taught art at Salford Technical College and then at Manchester College of Art.
In 1976, he moved back to Lincolnshire, and set up a studio at his family home in the village of Willingham-by-Stow, near Gainsborough. He commuted by train every week from Gainsborough via Sheffield to his teaching work in Manchester. It is clear from his notebooks that these train journeys were an important time of reflection for him. He recalled them later in the 'Railway Ovals', one of his most successful series of pictures.
In 1983, Snee left teaching and returned to full-time painting. Over the next twenty years he produced his most accomplished work, a substantial body of abstract paintings, mostly in acrylic, that explores his experience of seeing. He also made woodcuts and detailed maquettes for sculptures. None of this work was exhibited in his lifetime. His last studio pictures were completed in 2003, and he continued to draw and sketch until 2013, the year that he died.
The full extent of his work was discovered after his death in 2013. As well as hundreds of paintings, drawings and maquettes he also left a photographic archive of his major pieces, a substantial collection of sketches and work-up drawings, and some seventy notebooks. This legacy was saved from destruction on the day of his funeral by the intervention of his daughter Jo.
Work.
Snee's early work is recognisable as kitchen sink realism. By the 1960s he had moved on to abstract art. He explored colour field, geometric abstraction and hard-edge painting. His mature work draws on the conventions of classical European painting, occupying a mid-ground between figuration and abstraction. Many pictures are recognisable as landscapes, head-and-shoulders portraits, still lifes, and pairs of human figures. His later paintings might be readable as any of these at the same time.
Exhibitions and prizes.
Snee rarely exhibited his work. During his lifetime, his paintings were shown in Liverpool, Lancaster, Nottingham, Gainsborough, Manchester and London. His only solo show was at the Oldham Art Gallery in 1968.
In 1967 his painting 'Malabu Mink' was a cash prize-winner in the John Moores Painting Prize.
A series of 'pop-up' exhibitions were held in Sheffield following his death in 2013 and the discovery of his major work. A Foundation to support his legacy was launched at his first major retrospective, 'The Joy of Seeing', in 2018.


Latvian orthography

Latvian orthography historically used a system based upon German phonetic principles, while the Latgalian dialect was written using Polish orthographic principles. The present-day Latvian orthography was developed by the Knowledge Commission of the Riga Latvian Association in 1908, and was approved the same year by the orthography commission under the leadership of Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Endzelīns. Its basis is the Latin script and it was introduced by law from 1920 to 1922 in the Republic of Latvia. For the most part it is phonetic in that it follows the pronunciation of the language.
Alphabet.
Today, the Latvian standard alphabet consists of 33 letters.
The modern standard Latvian alphabet uses 22 unmodified letters of the Latin alphabet. The Latvian alphabet lacks "Q", "W", "X" and "Y". These letters are not used in Latvian for writing foreign personal and geographical names; instead they are adapted to Latvian phonology, orthography, and morphology, e. g. "Džordžs Volkers Bušs" (George Walker Bush). However, these four letters can be used in mathematics and sometimes in brand names: their names are "kū", "dubult vē", "iks" and "igrek". The Latvian alphabet has a further eleven letters formed by adding diacritic marks to some letters. The vowel letters "A", "E", "I" and "U" can take a macron to show length, unmodified letters being short. The letters "C", "S" and "Z", which in unmodified form are pronounced , and respectively, can be marked with a caron. These marked letters, "Č", "Š" and "Ž" are pronounced , and respectively. The letters "Ģ", "Ķ", "Ļ" and "Ņ" are written with a cedilla or a small comma placed below (or, in the case of the lowercase "g", above). They are modified (palatalized) versions of "G", "K", "L" and "N" and represent the sounds , , and . Non-standard varieties of Latvian add extra letters to this standard set.
The letters F and H appear only in loanwords.
Historically the letters CH, Ō and Ŗ were also used in the Latvian alphabet. The last of these stood for the palatalized dental trill which is still used in some dialects (mainly outside Latvia) but not in the standard language, and hence the letter Ŗ was removed from the alphabet on 5 June 1946, when the Latvian SSR legislature passed a regulation that officially replaced it with R in print. Similar reforms replacing CH with H, and Ō with O, were enacted over the next few years.
The letters CH, Ō and Ŗ continue to be used in print throughout most of the Latvian diaspora communities, whose founding members left their homeland before the post-World War II Soviet-era language reforms. An example of a publication in Latvia today, albeit one aimed at the Latvian diaspora, that uses the older orthography—including the letters CH, Ō and Ŗ—is the weekly newspaper "Brīvā Latvija".
Sound–spelling correspondences.
Latvian has a phonetic spelling. There are only a few exceptions to this:
Latvian orthography also uses digraphs "Dz", "Dž" and "Ie".
Old orthography.
The old orthography was based on that of German and did not represent the Latvian language phonemically. At the beginning it was used to write religious texts for German priests to help them in their work with Latvians. The first writings in Latvian were chaotic: there were as many as twelve variations of writing "Š". In 1631 the German priest Georg Mancelius tried to systematize the writing. He wrote long vowels according to their position in the word — a short vowel followed by "h" for a radical vowel, a short vowel in the suffix and vowel with a diacritic mark in the ending indicating two different accents. Consonants were written following the example of German with multiple letters. The old orthography was used until the 20th century when it was slowly replaced by the modern orthography.
Computer encoding.
Lack of software support of diacritics has caused an unofficial style of orthography, often called "translit", to emerge for use in situations when the user is unable to access Latvian diacritic marks on the computer or using cell phone. It uses only letters of the ISO basic Latin alphabet, and letters not used in standard orthography are usually omitted. In this style, diacritics are replaced by digraphs:
Some people may find it difficult to use such methods and either write without any indication of missing diacritic marks or use digraphs only if the diacritic mark in question would make a semantic difference. There is yet another style, sometimes called "Pokémonism" (In Latvian Internet slang "Pokémon" is derogatory for adolescent), characterised by use of some elements of leet, use of non-Latvian letters (particularly w and x instead of v and ks), use of c instead of ts, use of z in endings, and use of mixed case.
Keyboard.
Standard QWERTY keyboards are used for writing in Latvian; diacritics are entered by using a dead key (usually ', occasionally ~). Some keyboard layouts use a modifier key AltGr (most notable of such is the Windows 2000 and XP built-in layout (Latvian QWERTY)). In the early 1990s, the Latvian ergonomic keyboard layout was developed. Although this layout may be available with language support software, it has not become popular because of a lack of keyboards with such a configuration.


Khachik Dashtents

Khachik Dashtents (; "Khachik Tonoyi Tonoyan", May 25, 1910 – March 9, 1974) was an ethnic Armenian Soviet writer, poet and translator.
Biography.
Khachik Dashtents was born in a shepherd's family on May 25, 1910 in Dashtadem, Sasun, Western Armenia (Turkey today).
After the Armenian Genocide, he moved to Yerevan and graduated from the Yerevan State University in 1932, and later studied at the Moscow State Linguistic University (graduating in 1940).
In 1934 he became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers.
Dashtents is an author of poetry collections ("Songbook", 1932; "Spring Songs", 1934; "Fire", 1936), "Tigran The Great," a historical drama (1947), translations from William Shakespeare, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and William Saroyan. The "Khodedan" (1950) and "Call of Plowmen" (published posthumously, in 1979) novels tell the tragic story of Western Armenians during World War I.
He is the father of filmmaker Tavros Dashtents.
He died in Yerevan, Armenia on March 9, 1974.


El Arnab

El Arnab is a traditional Arab solitaire based on the general equipment and gameplay of mancala games. It is played by the Kababish people of Sudan. The name "El Arnab" means "the rabbit".
Rules.
El Arnab's board is a mancala board comprising 2 rows of 3 pits each, with an additional larger pits ("stores") located at each end of the board. The game setup is as follows:
codice_1
To begin the game, the player takes all the seeds from the pit at the upper left corner of the rows, and relay-sows them counterclockwise. Sowing also includes the stores.
This relay sowing (and thus the game itself) never ends; it is meant to be just a pastime. It happens that every 27 circuits of the board, the board goes back to its initial setup.
In his 1925 article R. Davies stated that the pattern repeats every 26 circuits; but he miscounted. His informant, an elderly Arab, seems to have been aware of this; when Davies said he counted 26 the informant made a joke that apparently went over Davies' head.


Tamil keyboard

Tamil Keyboard is the keyboard layout used in Computers or any mobile devices to input Tamil language scripts.
The keyboard layout approved by Government of Tamil Nadu is Tamil 99. InScript is the Keyboard layout standardized by Government of India for inputting text in languages of India written in Brahmic scripts.
Tamil keyboards are often bilingual keyboards, combined primarily with English Language for ease of access and use.
Tamil 99.
Tamil 99 is a keyboard layout approved by the Tamil Nadu Government. The layout, along with several monolingual and bilingual fonts for use with the Tamil language, was approved by Government order on 13 June 1999.
Designed for use with a normal QWERTY keyboard, typing follows a consonant-vowel pattern. The arrangement of the characters allow for fast and simple typing for users familiar with the script.
InScript.
InScript (Indian Script) is the standard keyboard for Indian scripts. It is a touch typing keyboard layout for computer. This keyboard layout is standardized by Government of India for inputting text in languages of India written in Brahmic scripts, as well as the Santali language, written in the non-Brahmic Ol Chiki script. It was developed by Indian Government and supported by several public and private organisations. This is the standard keyboard for 12 Indian scripts including Bengali, Devanagari, Gujarati, Gurmukhi, Kannada, Malayalam, Oriya, Tamil and Telugu etc.
Usage.
Windows 10.
On Windows 10, Go to Settings.> Time & Language.> Region and Language.> Add new language.> Tamil (India) or Tamil (Sri Lanka) and select install. Then click Tamil (India) or Sri Lanka and select the options. Now select the Keyboard you want (Inscript or Tamil 99). Note: Tamil 99 is only available in Windows 10 April 2018 Update and higher.
iOS.
On iOS, Go to Settings.> General.> Keyboards.> Keyboards.> Add New Keyboard, and select Tamil, Select the required keyboard, such as Tamil99, Anjal or InScript.


Janice Biala

Janice Biala (September 11, 1903 – September 24, 2000) was a Polish-born American artist whose work, spanning seven decades, is well regarded both in France and the United States. Known for her "impeccable taste and remarkable intelligence", as well as her "intuitive feeling for composition and her orchestration of color", she made paintings of intimate interiors, still lifes, portraits of her friends, and cityscapes of the places she traveled. Her work, which defies easy classification, lies between figuration and abstraction. A modernist, she transformed her subjects into shape and color using "unexpected color relationships and a relaxed approach to interpreting realism."
Early life and education.
In 1903 Biala was born in Biała Podlaska, a small city in the Kingdom of Poland with an important Imperial Russian garrison. Her birth name was Schenehaia Tworkovska. She immigrated to New York in 1913, arriving with her mother, Esther, and brother, Yakov (Jacob). Her father, Hyman Tworkovsky, was a tailor who had emigrated New York earlier. Biala's parents changed their surname to Bernstein because a relative whom they listed as sponsor on their immigration documents bore that name. The family also Americanized its forenames. Biala, whose Hebrew name was Schenehaia, became Janice and Yakov became Jack. Jack would later change his surname to a simplified form of the original family name and, using that name, Jack Tworkov, would establish himself as a highly regarded painter of the New York School. Following her brother's lead, Janice Bernstein became Janice Tworkov and, in 1929, was naturalized as a U.S. citizen with that name.
Biala was educated in New York's public school system. At an early age she decided to become a professional artist and, during her high school years, she and friends got together for informal sketching sessions. When she was twenty she enrolled at the National Academy of Design's art course where Charles Hawthorne was teaching a life drawing class. At this time she also met Hawthorne's associate, Edwin Dickinson, who was teaching a class at the Art Students League. and in the summer of 1923 she convinced her brother Jack to accompany her to the artist colony in Provincetown, Massachusetts, in order to study with Hawthorne and Dickinson. During 1924 and 1925 she studied at Manhattan's Art Students League where Hawthorne was then teaching. In 1924 Dickinson made a portrait of her which shows a serious young woman, somberly dressed. Despite differences of medium and treatment, Biala's self-portrait of 1925 shows similarities of style. From Dickinson, Biala learned to focus on the essential elements of a subject, to see these elements as abstract forms on the two-dimensional plane of the canvas, and to select the color values that would become the key to the finished work. Dickinson recognized that color relationships are more important to the artist than single colors in isolation. As he did, she painted figuratively but she believed color harmonies to be more important than accurate representation of a subject. Their compositions tended toward bold, simplified shapes and were more reductively abstract and spatially flat than those of many of their contemporaries.
In 1929 and 1930 Biala participated in group shows at the G.R.D. Salon. G.R.D. was one of a few New York galleries that showed modernist paintings of both women and men. It was a non-profit gallery named in honor of Gladys Roosevelt Dick by her sister, Jean S. Roosevelt. Along with Biala's paintings, the 1929 show included works by E. Madeline Shiff, Virginia Parker, and E. Nottingham. In a review that appeared in "The New York Times", Lloyd Goodrich noted her fine feeling for colors and commented that her work showed similarities to the fauvist paintings of André Derain. This remark shows prescience since it was Derain's fellow fauvist, Henri Matisse, about whom she would later write "I have always had Matisse in my belly." The 1930 show, assembled by Agnes Weinrich, contained works by Provincetown artists, including Charles Demuth, Oliver Chaffee, Karl Knaths, William and Lucy L'Engle, Niles Spencer, Marguerite and William Zorach, as well as ones by Biala and her brother Jack.
During the 1920s Biala had painted using the name Janice Tworkov. Soon after the close of the G.R.D. exhibition in February she changed her name to Biala. She adopted the new name on advice from her friend and fellow Provincetown painter, William Zorach, in order to avoid confusion with her brother Jack. She had been supporting herself with a series of low paying jobs and when the G.R.D. shows had not produced sales of her work she accepted an invitation from her friend, Eileen Lake to accompany her on a trip to Paris. There, on May 1, she met the author, Ford Madox Ford. Although they did not marry, the two became inseparable, living and working together until Ford's death in 1939. Less than half Ford's age, she was vigorous, ambitious, and gradually becoming more confident in her ability as an artist. In contrast, he continued to write prolifically but his best work was behind him and his health was declining. The two of them endured dire financial straits, often raising their own vegetables in a kitchen garden attached to the villa they rented near Toulon. Biala made portraits of Ford and contributed artwork to his books. Ford incorporated versions of Biala in his writings, including a poem, "Coda," a late (1936) addition to the "buckshee" sequence of poems composed in 1932. The poem is addressed to Haïchka, the diminutive form of her Hebrew name, Schenehaia, meaning "pretty creature." It celebrates "all my past and all your promise" and it praises her for possessing a magnetic personality, always unpredictable, and for bringing vitality and productive energy to their relationship. Despite their continual struggle against poverty, they managed to maintain close contacts with writers and artists, including Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, and Constantin Brâncuși.
In 1931 Biala's work appeared in New York at Macy Galleries. In this exhibition of Provincetown artists she was identified, anachronistically, as "J. Tworkov." A year later, as Janice Ford Biala, she contributed paintings to a show called "1940" at Parc des Expositions, Paris. Reporting on this show, a New York critic said "The things and figures in her painting gravely turn about as if in some slow and harmonious joy. Not a hilarious joy nor a country dance. Something much richer and more contemplative than hilarity." At this time she wrote to her brother Jack "For the first time in my life I'm convinced that I am really an artist."
In 1935 Biala was given her first solo exhibition when "Paintings of Provence by Biala" appeared at the Georgette Passedoit Gallery, New York, from April 25 to May 9. The paintings came from illustrations she prepared for Ford's book, "Provence: From Minstrels to the Machine".
Mature style.
Along with Dickinson, Ford helped shape Biala's aesthetic vision by encouraging her spirit of experimentation, devotion to creative freedom, and the seeking of poetic truth in preference to literal facts. From both men she absorbed a passion for eliminating unnecessary detail. Dickinson emphasized areas of color, which he called "spots," as the starting point for a painting. He spoke of "two spots being pulled up together, which is, of course, necessary because there's no such thing as one color. They all exist in harmonious common relationships." In 1937 Biala enlarged upon this thought in a rare public statement on art. She said "The very first spot of paint you put on your canvas sets the note for everything that must follow. Just as in writing a novel ... no word or phrase must be there just because you happen to like it, so each spot of paint in your picture must lead up to some definite movement and must connect with every other spot of paint in the picture. Because red is not red itself, its full quality of redness only becomes apparent when it has green beside it or the full quality of green is brought out only when it has purple beside it and so forth. Then against the color you play your forms, lines, and texture." The occasion for the lecture was a visit to Olivet College in Olivet, Michigan, where Ford had been appointed writer and critic in residence. In January 1937 Biala had exhibited paintings and drawings at the Georgette Passedoit Gallery in New York. In August the show was mounted at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado, and in November she brought it to Olivet when Ford began his residency there.
She and Ford were back in France the following year where Biala was given her first French solo exhibition at Galerie Zack. That gallery presented Biala's paintings in a second one-person show in 1939. Ford died at Deauville, France, in 1939 and Biala became his literary executrix. With the outbreak of World War II she returned to New York where she spent the next five years. In 1943 she married a fellow artist, Daniel Brustlein, an illustrator who, using the pen name "Alain," made covers for the New Yorker magazine.
In successive years between 1941 and 1945 Biala was given solo exhibitions at the Bignou Gallery in New York and by that time there could be little doubt that she had succeeded in establishing herself as a professional artist. In 1947 she and Brustlein returned to live in France where she exhibited regularly at the Galerie Jeanne Bucher. While continuing to live in France she and Brustlein returned periodically to New York. She remained close to her brother Jack and, in consequence, became one of the few female artists associated with the New York School. While not herself an abstract expressionist, Biala fostered the movement, particularly through the support she gave Willem de Kooning. In the early 1940s she convinced her New York dealer to show some of de Kooning's paintings, Biala cared for him when he was ill, and Biala joined him in discussions at the abstract expressionist discussion group called Studio 35. Like Lee Krasner, Louise Bourgeois, Joan Mitchell, and others, Biala was not treated as an equal by the male artists of the New York School or by critics such as Harold Rosenberg. Despite her friendship with abstract expressionist artists, Biala retained a unique approach to her art in which no art movement showed dominance. As one critic put it, "she continued to paint exquisitely crafted canvases in a personal style that, even now, resists classification."
In the 1950s her work appeared frequently in solo and group exhibitions at New York's Stable Gallery and the Galerie Jeanne Bucher in Paris. Regarding a one-person show held in 1953, a critic praised the "harmonies of tone" and quality of draftsmanship in her work and said "the show is one of the most exhilarating and satisfying events of the whole season... Miss Biala's art strikes me as the happiest result of an abstract training governed by a humane concern with the values of the world about us." Describing shows held in 1955 and 1959, critics said her paintings showed a greater freedom than they had before and one said, "Where before Miss Biala constructed with clearly organized planes—using both color and form to create recession—now her brush moves out in freedom, allowing intrinsic rhythms to spring up and subside."
Later life and work.
During the 1960s and for the rest of her life, Biala's work was frequently exhibited in solo and group shows. Through the 1980s many of these shows appeared in Paris at Galerie Jacob and the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, Salles Wilson. Others appeared in New York at the Grüenebaum Gallery. In the 1990s she was given frequent solo exhibitions at the Kouros Gallery and after 2000 at the Tibor de Nagy Gallery, both in New York.
In 1981, after six decades of painting, the quality of her work was as good as ever. A critic said as much regarding her one-person show at the Grüenebaum Gallery that year. He wrote, "The Structure of her pictures often looks quite simple, ... but is not simple at all. The difficulty and complexity have been refined into lean, direct gestures and a lyrical, concentrated economy of form." Of a solo exhibition in 1989, when she was 85 years old, a critic wrote that her work showed the vigor of a person 30 years younger. "Her painting," he wrote, "is a blend of realism and fancy. In her interiors, cityscapes, landscapes and portraits, some colors and shapes hover and run; others asset themselves suddenly and then stay put, fixing space in a way that is reminiscent of Bonnard and Hofmann."
Following Biala's death in 2000, another critic said of her paintings that they "seem touched by a tough ingenuousness — never sentimental or naïve, but slightly nostalgic in their playful intimacy. Suffusing them is the outlook of a painter who has found what she needs and knows what she wants to do. The results glow with a wondrous candor." Finally, in connection with a retrospective exhibition in 2013, the show's curator told an interviewer that "Biala was a painter of impeccable taste and remarkable intelligence, She had an intuitive feeling for composition and her orchestration of color was, at times, breathtaking."
Family life.
In 1903 Biala was born in Biała Podlaska, a small city in eastern Poland located near the border with Russia. At that time Biała Podlaska was within the Russian Empire. Long a trading center, the town's population then numbered about 13,000 people, half of whom—including Biala's family—were Jewish. With one exception resources do not give the month or day of her birth. The exception is the "Biala" web site which gives September 11 but does not indicate the source of this information.
Her father's name was Hyman and her mother's Esther. He was the son of Benjamin Tworkovsky and his wife Celia. In addition to Biala and Jack, their children were Celia, Aaron, Abraham, and Morris.
Hyman Tworkovsky was a tailor who worked for the Russian Army. He emigrated to New York some years before his wife and younger children and he worked in a tailor shop in New York's Lower East Side. The surname was changed to Bernstein to conform with the name of the sponsor. Although Biala and Jack changed their names from Bernstein to Tworkov when they became adults, Hyman and Esther retained the name Bernstein. Jack said his family's sponsor was his father's brother. He did not explain why his brother's surname was Bernstein.
During her life Biala went by quite a few names. Her birth name in Hebrew was Schenehaia Tworkovska. After immigration this became Janice Bernstein. As a young adult she became Janice Tworkov (as mentioned). During the 1920s she painted under this name or J. Tworkov. In the early 1920s she married a friend of Jack's, the painter, Lee Gatch. The marriage, which was not successful, ended in first in separation and, in 1935, divorce. She did not use the names Mrs. Janice Gatch or Mrs. Lee Gatch, and was infrequently called by either name. In 1930, at the suggestion of fellow painter, William Zorach, she chose a new name so as to avoid confusion with her brother, the other J. Tworkov. She chose Biala, the name of her birthplace. In the 1930s, while living with Ford Madox Ford, she was sometimes referred to as Mrs. Ford (though they were not married) or Janice Ford Biala. After her marriage in 1942 to Daniel Brustlein, she retained Biala as her name but was occasionally called Mrs. Brustlein. At least on one occasion she used his professional name, calling herself Janice ("Alain") Biala. In one news account she was called Janice Tworkov Ford Brustlein. She most frequently called herself Janice Biala or simply Biala but was also sometimes referred to as Janice T. Biala.
Until the 1940s Biala did not enjoy a steady income from any source. She worked odd jobs in the 1920s and her life with Ford Madox Ford was hand-to-mouth. After marrying Brustlein, however, his success in selling drawings to the "New Yorker" (for which he frequently produced cover art) and her growing reputation as a painter brought in a gradually increasing funds and by 1953 they were able to buy a small farmhouse in Peapack, New Jersey, for their use on their return to the United States from their residence in Paris. For both of them, Paris was "home." In the 1980s Biala told an interviewer that she fell in love with France when she first travelled there in 1930: "In some ways, it reminded me of the place I was born in. And when I came to France I felt as if I had come home. I smelled the same smells of bread baking and dogs going around in a very busy way, you know, as if they knew what they were about. It really was extraordinarily human." Having been naturalized in 1929, she never gave up her U.S. citizenship and maintained that she did not "have the feeling of nationality or roots," but "always had the feeling that I belong where my easel is."
The "Chronology" section of the Biala web site gives a full chronology of events in Biala's life.
Exhibitions.
This selected list of solo and group exhibitions from 1929 to 1945 comes from news accounts and internet sources.
This list of solo and group exhibitions from 1945 onward comes from the Biala web site.
Books by Biala.
Biala furnished cover art and illustrations for some of Ford's books and, in the 1950s she wrote children's books. This list comes from the WorldCat online catalog, the Library of Congress catalog, and other sources. It is in chronological order.
Further reading.
See the "Publications" section of the Biala web site.