Which Artist? Part Two Quiz

Question: What painter did Pablo Picasso describe as “the father of us all”?

Answer: Paul Cézanne is recognized as the most significant precursor of 20th-century formal abstraction in painting, as he developed a purely pictorial language that balanced analysis with emotion and structure with lyricism. Pablo Picasso offered the most succinct assessment of Cézanne’s role for subsequent generations of artists, declaring that he was “the father of us all.”

Question: Who painted Guernica?

Answer: Pablo Picasso’s mural painting Guernica (named for the Basque town bombed in 1937 by the Fascists) was commissioned by the Republican government for the Spanish pavilion at the 1937 World’s Fair in Paris. Its imagery was employed to condemn the useless destruction of life, while at the same time representing the hope of overcoming the unseen aggressor, fascism.

Question: Which of these painters, suffering from arthritis, continued to paint by attaching the paintbrush to his hand?

Answer: The French painter Pierre-Auguste Renoir had his first attack of rheumatism in 1894, and the attacks became more and more frequent. By 1910 he was no longer able to walk. Although his infirmity became more and more constraining, he never ceased to paint; when his fingers were no longer supple, he continued by binding his paintbrush to his hand.

Question: Which of these French artists died in the Franco-German War?

Answer: Frédéric Bazille was an unenthusiastic medical student before his wealthy parents permitted him to study painting. While a student in Paris, he met Claude Monet and Pierre-Auguste Renoir, with whom he worked, traveled, and shared his studio when they could not afford their own. He seemed destined to occupy a prominent place among the Impressionists but was killed in the Franco-German War.

Question: Which Spanish artist is usually classed among the Mannerists?

Answer: El Greco’s Mannerist method of composition is nowhere more clearly expressed than in his masterpiece, The Burial of the Count de Orgaz (1586-88; Santo Tomé, Toledo).

Question: What American cartoonist satirized the American preoccupation with technology?

Answer: American cartoonist Rube Goldberg satirized the American preoccupation with technology. His name became synonymous with any simple process made outlandishly complicated.

Question: Which artist is known for abstract bronze and stone sculptures?

Answer: Henry Moore’s organically shaped, abstract bronze and stone figures constitute the major 20th-century manifestation of the humanist tradition in sculpture. Much of this English sculptor’s work is monumental, and he was particularly well known for a series of reclining nudes.