How Well You Know These 18 Artists from Art History?

Manhattan Arts International offers a treasure trove of articles, interviews, art reviews and online exhibitions related to contemporary and legendary artists.  In this quiz you will discover surprising and lesser known facts about famous artists.

See if you can guess which artists the facts are attributed to. The answers are provided at the end with links to more art articles about some of the artists.

Have fun!

#1 Fact: Although he never married he is reported to have had several illegitimate children.

#2 Fact: In 1866, he unabashedly painted a picture of a nude woman which depicted the female genitals, entitled “The Origin of the World”.

#3: At 51 years old, when her career seemed to be waning, she created two paintings for the Hawaiian Pineapple Company (now Dole Food Company) to use in their advertising.

#4: When he was five, his parents took him to his brother’s grave and told him that he was his brother’s reincarnation, an idea which he came to believe for many years.

#5: After high school, she took a clerical job to help support her parents while she took art classes at night. She later attended the Fine Art program at the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (now Moore College of Art & Design).

#6: As a young man he worked as an art dealer, traveled extensively, and then turned to religion, and spent time as a Protestant missionary, before discovering his true calling to become an artist.

#7. Experiencing a creative block while working on a painting to evoke flood, baptism, destruction, and rebirth he began chanting the word uberflut (“deluge” or “flood”). He completed the painting in only 3 days and it turned out to be one of his major works.

#8: She sold few paintings in her lifetime, had only one solo exhibition, and died at the young age of 47.

#9: He studied law and worked as a court administrator. While convalescing after an attack of appendicitis, he started to paint with art supplies his mother bought. He discovered “a kind of paradise” and  gave up his law studies.

#10: A devout Catholic he said he preferred to live a poor man, no matter what riches he acquired. He was indifferent to food and drink and often slept in his clothes and boots.

#11: Although he was renowned for his paintings during the last two years of his life he created constructions of wire, gauze, and plaster. He died at the age of 44 in a car accident while under the influence of alcohol.

#12: She met Diego Rivera in 1933 and worked as his assistant on his mural Man at the Crossroads at Rockefeller Plaza, New York, NY. The couple had an affair although he was married to Frida Kahlo at the time.

#13. He was traumatized when his seven-year-old sister, Conchita, died of diphtheria. Although he was baptized a Catholic, he later became an atheist.

#14: He conceptualized a bobbin winder, flying machines, concentrated solar power, an adding machine, and the double hull.

#15: As a child, this artist suffered from a neuromuscular condition, has dyslexia, and suffers from prosopagnosia, also known as face blindness, in which he is unable to recognize faces.

#16: He attended a matador school for several years in his youth, and then left the bull ring to pursue an artistic career.

#17: The highly controversial artist, accused of having killed painting, is known for saying “I don’t believe in art. I believe in artists.”

#18: In the Navy, he was given the task of painting ships entering the harbor to document their camouflage schemes.

The Answers

#1: Gustav Klimt
#2:Gustave Courbet
#3: Georgia O’Keeffe
#4: Salvador Dalí
#5: Alice Neel
#6: Vincent van Gogh
#7: Wassily Kandinsky
#8: Frida Kahlo
#9: Henri Matisse
#10: Michelangelo
#11: Jackson Pollock
#12: Louise Nevelson
#13: Pablo Picasso
#14: Leonardo da Vinci
#15: Chuck Close
#16: Fernando Botero
#17: Marcel Duchamp
#18: Thomas Hart Benton