ultcult.com Leading Artists

LEADING SCULPTORS AND ARTISTS

ultcult.com has assembled many thousands of artworks categorised by artist, art movement and their current whereabouts – but just where do you start?

The ultcult.com editorial team has proposed a top 200 – 150 artists and 50 sculptors and highlighted their key artworks – so perhaps start here Below we provide ready access to these.

SCULPTORS:

Posts S1 to S3 presents our selection of 50 key sculptors operating between 50,000 BCE to 2010 CE.

S1 Sculptors – this focuses on the BCE years – 50,000 to 42 BC – with eighteen selected works of sculpture. Six of the first seven items are unattributed, the other is attributed to ancient Egyptian artist Thutmose (not the Pharaoh). These are the Venus of Tan-Tan, the Lion Man, the Magdalenian Horse, a Jade Dragon, Thutmose’s Nefertiti bust, a Bronze Buffalo and a Zhou Horse and Chariot Grave. The other eleven are each attributable to sculptors, ten are ancient Greeks and one is Chinese. These are Polymedes of Argos, Myron of Eleutherae, Phidias of Athens, Polykleitos of Argos, Praxiteles of Athens, Scopas of Paros (aka Skopas), Gu Kaizhi, Lysippos, Chares of Lindos, Alexandros of Antioch and a joint work by Hagesandrus, Polydorus and Athenodorus. Go to S1-Sculptors	‘Tan-Tan Venus‘ (50,000- 20,000 BCE, unattributed) Nefertiti by Thutmose Kleobis and Biton, two Archaic Greek kouros by Polymedes of Argos. Terracotta horses near Xia China Laocoön and his Sons suggested to be the epitomy of human agony.
S2 Sculptors – examines seventeen sculptors operating between the 7thc and the end of the 19thc. The first is from Korea, the second, a pier relief, is attributed to members of a monastery, the others are all European. Thef irst is Korean Tori Busshi, the second a joint effort by Benedictine monks. Followed by Cimabue (aka Cenni de Pepo), Donatello, Ghiberti, Michelangelo. Giambologna, Cellini, Bernini, Quellinus, Puget, Mazzuoli, Coustou, Pigalle, Canova, Rodin and Carpeaux. Go to S2-Sculptors	Tori Bushi’s Shaka triad (aka Buddha Shaka and Attendant Bodhisattvas) 623 CE. A Byzantine Crucifix, originally designed by Cimabue. Donatello’s David Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne
S3 Sculptors – presents fifteen sculptors operatng in the the 20th and 21st centuries. These are Maillol, Boccioni, Brâncuși, Sir Jacob Epstein, Henry Moore, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Isamu Noguchi, Jeff Koons, Tracey Emin, Louise Bourgeois, Antony Gormley, Eduardo Catalano, Damien Hirst and Anish Kapoor. Go to S3-Sculptors [Painters]	Aristide Maillol’s L’Air Henry Moore’s Reclining Figure Noguchi’s Heimar Anish Kapoor’s Turning the World Upside Down

ARTISTS/PAINTERS

Posts A1 to A6 look at our selection of 150 key painters selected to be representative from 375 CE to today.

Apollo 11 cave West Namibia 23,000 BCE. Lascaux Caves, France 13,000 BCE. Golpayegan caves Iran 5,000 BCE. Akkadian relief 2,250 BCE.	Pre-A1 Artists – of course there were many paintings and other artworks prior to to our periods of review, but these cannot be attributed to a specific artist or sculptor. Those pictured here are evolving cave art and a relief. Go to Pre-A1 artists
Luoshenfu by Gu Kaizhi, dated 344-406. Lorsch Gospels (aka Codex Aureus of Lorsch) is an illuminated Gospel Book (Latin) from 776-820. Ivory relief of the Forty Martyrs of Sebaste, 950. The Game of Cujo by Qian Xuan 钱选, c960 Scholars at an Abbasid library by Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, 1237. Giotto, part of his fresco cycle at the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua, 1304-6.	A1 Artists – This first review period looks across a millennium (from the year 375 to 1399) at those early works that are largely attributable, but of the 23 selections, five do not have an identified artist. We start with three early Chinese and a Korean artist – Gu Kaizhi, Zhan Ziqian, Tori Busshi (aka Kuratsukuri-no-Tori) and Yan Liben (aka Lipen). Then comes a period where attribution is not possible for these noteworthy works – [Gospel Book], [The Cross, Hagia Irene, Istanbul], [Lorsch Gospels], [Book of Kells], [The Forty Martyrs of Sebaste] The other fourteen artists in this post are Li Cheng, Ferdowsi, Fan Kuan, Theotokos of Vladimir, Muhammad al-Idrisi, Master Mateo, Yahya ibn Mahmud al-Wasiti, Rashid al-Din Hamadani, Qian Xuan, Duccio di Buoninsegna, Giotto di Bondone, Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Ni Zan and Wang Meng. Go to A1 artists
The Ghent Altarpiece, a polyptych altarpiece, by Hubert and Jan van Eyck, 1425-1433. Flagellation of Christ by Piero della Francesco, 1455. The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli, 1482-6. Vitruvian Man by Leonardo Da Vinci, c1490. Marriage of the Virgin, by Raphael,1504. Lamentation by Correggio, 1525. Venus of Urbino by Titian, 1538.	A2 Artists – reviews twenty-five artists from the 15th to the middle of the 16thc.  These are Jan Van Eyck, Tommaso di Masaccio, Fra Angelico, Paolo Uccello, Rogier van der Weyden, Piero della Francesca, Andrea Mantegna, Shen Zhou, Leonardo Da Vinci, Sandro Botticelli, Hieronymus Bosch, Kamāl ud-Dīn Behzād, Albrecht Dürer, Michelangelo, Tosa Mitsunobu, Wu Boli, Raphael, Tang Yin (aka Tang Bohu), Titian, Jacopo da Pontormo, Hans Holbein the Younger, Correggio, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Parmigianino and Qiu Ying. Go to A2 artists
The Crucifixion by Jacopo Tintoretto, 1565. The Disrobing of Christ by El Greco, 1577-9.	A3 Artists – this looks at the works of two centuries, from 1550-1760. The artists are Tintoretto, Alessandro Allori, Pieter Brueghel the Younger, El Greco, Annibale Carracci, Caravaggio, Jan Brueghel the Elder, Domenichino, Rubens, Artemisia Gentileschi, Velázquez, Frans Hals, van Dyck, Rembrandt, Nicolas Poussin, Nanha, Vermeer, Jean-Antoine Watteau, Canaletto, Tiepolo, Hogarth, Jean-Marc Nattier, François Boucher, Bernardo Bellotto, Gainsborough, Xu Jang, Yosa Buson and Shen Quan. Go to A3 artists
	A4 Artists – features twenty-three artists active between 1760 and 1870 – Sir Joshua Reynolds, Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Jacques-Louis David, William Blake, Goya, John Sell Cotman, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, Caspar David Friedrich, Théodore Géricault, J M W Turner, John Constable, Eugène Delacroix, Katsushika Hokusai, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot, Friedrich von Amerling, Jean Désiré Gustave Courbet, Jean-François Millet, Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Ilya Yefimovich Repin. Go to A4 artists
	A5 Artists – reviews twenty-eight artists 1871-1919 – James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones, Paul Cézanne, Mary Cassatt, John Singer Sargent, Georges Seurat, Vincent van Gogh, Olga Boznańska, Paul Gauguin, Pablo Picasso, John Henry Twachtman, Edvard Munch, Toulouse-Lautrec, Nampeyo, Gustav Klimt, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, Georges Braque, Vanessa Bell, Giorgio de Chirico, Marcel Duchamp, Marc Chagall, Kazimir Malevich, Modigliani, Paul Klee, Juan Miró, Dmitry Moor and Georgia O’Keeffe. Go to A5 artists
	A6 Artists – these twenty-three artists run from 1920 right up-to-date. The artists are Max Ernst, Salvador Dalí, Edward Hopper, George Grosz, René Magritte, Tamara de Lempicka, Piet Mondrian, Grant Wood, Victor Vasarely, Aleksandr Gerasimov, Frida Kahlo, Jackson Pollock, Francis Bacon, Willem de Kooning, Mark Rothko, Josef Albers, Bridget Riley, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Chuck Close, David Hockney, Stefan Sagmeister and Banksy. Go to A6 artists

QUICK LINKS: Sculptors overview S1 – 50,000 to 42 BCE S2 – 7th to 19th centuries S3 – 20th and 21st centuries [Sculptors]

Painters overview Pre-A1 – unattributed works A1 – 375-1399 A2 – 15th to mid-16th c A3 – 1550-1760 A4 – 1760-1870 A5 – 1871-1919 A6 – 1920 until today

Note that to minimise the entries and the opportunity for confusion, the text and image sources are not shown here – do follow the links to the artist or sculptor or their works and you will find a proper acknowledgement of the sources.

Forward to S1 Sculptors – Back to Art & Sculpture Index