Albrecht Durer
(May 21, 1471 - April 6, 1528) |
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printmaking Art Work
| Name: |
Albrecht Durer |
| Gender: |
Male |
| Place of Birth: |
Nuremberg, Germany |
| Nationality: |
German (Holy Roman Empire) |
| Birth: |
May 21, 1471 |
| Death: |
April 6, 1528 |
| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
printmaking |
| Medium: |
watercolour, oil painting, woodcut printing |
| Method: |
woodcutting |
| Style: |
Renaissance |
| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painter
Printmaker
Writer |
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Biography
| Considered the most important German artist of all time, Albrecht Durer was not only an immensely talented painter but also an accomplished draftsman, printmaker, and author. He earned the label of "Renaissance man" as he was one of the first artists to self-consciously market himself more as an intellectual than as a craftsman, an attitude visible in the many self-portraits he painted during his lifetime. Durer was born and died in Nuremberg, a center of northern European printmaking, book trade, and humanism. His father, of Hungarian origin, was a goldsmith, but Durer abandoned the family trade to become a painter. He became an apprentice to the painter and book illustrator Michael Wolgemut. Subsequently, as was customary at the time, he worked as a journeyman, or itinerant artist, between 1490 and 1494. Traveling across Germany, the Netherlands, northern France, and Switzerland, Dtirer hoped to work in Colmar with Martin Schongauer–who died before Durer's arrival in the city in 1492. Having returned home to marry, Durer set up a successful studio using his wife's dowry. Soon his yearning for knowledge and new influences led him to travel again, to Italy. Durer was one of the earliest northern European artists to experience the art of Renaissance Italy. He visited Italy in 1494 and in 1505. By this time he had completed some of his most important paintings and had established an international reputation. His status was helped by his vast output of exquisite engravings. These easily distributed and reproducible images show Durer's exemplary talent for delicate hatching and crosshatchings, and textural representation of forms. In images such as Melancholia (1514), he also demonstrated his theoretical approach to art and his ambition to find the governing rules of ideal beauty, harmony, and optics. |
Samples of Work
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