Hey dear hive community, I hope you all had a pleasant start to the new year and a day that was full of positive experiences! In this post, I would like to comment a little on art history and hope you are able to expand your knowledge.
Here you can see photos of three different paintings by the artist Otto Hellmeier (1908 - 1996) and all are portrait paintings where it is about painting faces of people. One usually distinguishes from portraits of individuals or groups like families and is also often about to portray oneself and expressing the artist and often a lot of emphasis is placed on the expression of feelings. Already in ancient Egypt, portraits were made and placed in grave chambers or other places of worship and usually portraits depict paintings of real people and in ancient Egypt it was more about painting faces that were based on gods from mythology. In ancient Greece, portraits of heads were mostly depicted on coins and the Romans were concerned with depicting rulers and here, as with the Egyptians, it was about depicting gods and creating a work that ensures that people remember the ruler. In the past, portraits were mostly reserved only for wealthy people such as merchants, traders or nobles and in the Middle Ages it was mainly about depicting rulers and portrait painting reached its heyday in the 15th century where more and more painters began to depict themselves in order to make more a name for themselves. At this time, especially in the Netherlands or Italy, the most important centre was when it came to making portraits and during the high renaissance which was in the 16th Century, the style has also changed and more and more emphasis was placed on the form of expression and facial expressions and various artists such as Albrecht Dürrer, Leonardo da Vinci and many others have strongly influenced this time.
Over the years, the popularity grew more and new techniques and subcategories have emerged which have brought even more momentum and there is also an ever greater change recognisable and from the 19th Century, portraits were made more and more accessible to the masses and it was about painting the portraits more and more realistic and more detailed and it was important to express normal life. In the 20th Century with the invention of photography, the painting of portraits was also greatly changed and replaced over time and the new epochs also had a lot of influence on this direction and there were more and more abstract forms introduced and during this time the topic was already very diverse and it was possible to express feelings, interests, thoughts and much more and as with other epochs, a lot of importance was also placed on the choice of the right colors and it was important to pay attention to the exposure or shadows. During the industrial revolution, more and more economic sectors became aware of it and began to print portraits on packaging in order to increase profit and particularly appealing stylistic devices were used for this purpose, which should give the viewer a positive an impression as possible from a psychological point of view in order to increase the willingness to buy. Even if it is no longer quite as popular as it used to be, the creation of portraits still enjoys great popularity in art circles and here it is of course open to the artist to work as freely as possible and portraits are often created fleetingly, but of course this varies depending on the artist to which styles or epochs he is oriented.
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about art! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!