Cancer Artists & Painters

Rembrandt was a Dutch printmaker, painter, and draughtsman. A master in three major art media, Rembrandt is widely considered the most important visual artist in Dutch art history and one of the greatest of all time. He is also considered the greatest etcher in the history of printmaking. His life and work inspired several films, including the 1936 movie Rembrandt.

Austrian symbolist painter, Gustav Klimt, was one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement. His primary subject was the female body, and he produced numerous paintings, murals, sketches, and other art objects. He was known for his deliberate painting style. He successfully avoided personal scandal despite having an active sex life.

Painter, photographer, printmaker, and stage designer David Hockney is best known for his works such as Portrait of an Artist, which became the most expensive piece of art by a living artist ever auctioned, at $90 million. His works have explored themes such as homosexuality. He has synesthesia, too.

French Impressionist artist Edgar Degas is best remembered for his oil paintings and pastel drawings and for his signature use of dancers and bathing women as themes in his works such as Fin d'Arabesque and Woman in a Tub. He had also experimented with bronze sculptures and called himself a realist.

Russian-French artist Marc Chagall, a key figure of modernism, had explored a wide range of media as an artist, from paintings and drawings to stained glass and ceramics. His major projects included the ceiling of the Paris Opéra, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Jerusalem Windows of Israel.

Amedeo Modigliani was an Italian Jewish painter and sculptor. He is remembered for his surrealist and modern-style depiction of nudes in his portraits. Even though he spent his youth in Italy, he worked mainly in France. He enjoyed little success while he was alive. He died young at the age of 35 and received massive posthumous appreciation for his works.

Camille Pissarro was a Danish-French painter best remembered for his contributions to Impressionism, Neo-Impressionism, and Post-Impressionism. He is credited with establishing a group of 15 aspiring artists, for which he served as a pivotal figure. He was regarded as a father figure to several important painters, including Vincent Willem van Gogh.

Alexander Calder was an American sculptor best remembered for his innovative kinetic sculptures designed to use either motor, air currents, or other forces of nature. A multi-talented personality, Calder was also known for his paintings, miniatures, prints, jewelry design, theater set design, political posters, and tapestries and rugs. In 1977, he was honored with the prestigious Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo, was known for her many portraits and self-portraits. Her work is said to have been inspired by the nature, artifacts and popular culture of Mexico. Her work was not much known until the late 1970s, when it was rediscovered by art historians and political activists. By early 1990s, she became a recognized figure in art history.

Italian artist Giorgio de Chirico, the founder of the scuola metafisica art movement, showed marked influence of his childhood spent in Greece in his work. His metaphysical paintings showcased empty cityscapes, mannequins, trains, and towers. His notable works include The Child's Brain and The Enigma of an Autumn Afternoon.

Edmonia Lewis was an American sculptor who worked in Rome for most of her career. The first African-American sculptor to gain international prominence, Lewis was also the only Black female artist to have participated and recognized by the American artistic mainstream until the end of the 19th century. Molefi Kete Asante included Lewis in his 100 Greatest African Americans list.

French painter Camille Corot is remembered for his landscape paintings that paved the path for the Impressionist movement. Born into a milliner’s family, Corot was a poor student and shunned his family business to learn painting at 25. His works, however, were easy to replicate and led to many forgeries.

Joe Shuster was a comic book artist best remembered for co-creating one of the most popular comic book characters, Superman. Throughout his life, Shuster was involved in several legal battles over the ownership of the character. He was inducted into Will Eisner Comic Book Hall of Fame and the Jack Kirby Hall of Fame in 1992 and 1993 respectively.

Tite Kubo decided to become a manga artist while studying in his elementary school, publishing several one-shot manga before he published his first series, Zombiepowder, at the age of 21. However, it was his second series, Bleach, which made him internationally known. It was also adapted as a successful television series and film.

Noted for series like Weavers’ Revolt and Peasants’ War, sculptor and graphic artist, Käthe Kollwitz, came in contact with the urban poor when she moved into Berlin's working class area. Touched by their plight, she soon started portraying them through her etchings, lithographs, woodcuts, and drawings, quickly becoming a powerful advocate for those suffering from social injustice, war, and inhumanity.

German-American abstract animator, filmmaker, and painter Oskar Fischinger is most-noted for creating abstract musical animation decades before development of computer graphics. Among the 50 short films he made, the short animated film Motion Painting No. 1 is listed on the United States National Film Registry. He also created special effects for the German sci-fi silent film Woman in the Moon.

Peyo was a Belgian artist and comic book writer best remembered for creating popular comics series like Johan and Peewit and The Smurfs. He is also credited with creating several other comics series like Jacky and Célestin and Steven Strong. Peyo also founded his own publishing house called Cartoon Creation.

Italian painter and printmaker Giorgio Morandi is best remembered for his remarkable still life paintings of subjects such as vases, boxes, bottles, and flowers. Though he was hugely inspired by the works of Paul Cézanne, his paintings, known for their gentle, subdued tones, do not fit in any specific school of painting.

Artist Tracey Emin is known for incorporating subjective elements in her artwork. She experiments with media such as drawing, sculpture, and installations. She made headlines with her controversial works such as Everyone I Have Ever Slept With 1963–1995 and My Bed. She has also taught at the Royal Academy.

Arno Breker was a German architect and sculptor who was active during Nazi rule. The authorities endorsed his work as the antithesis of degenerate art. He created the statue Die Partei, representing the spirit of the Nazi Party. Hitler exempted Breker from military service and provided him several amenities for being the Nazi’s official sculptor. 

Best known for his abstract paintings composed of geometrical forms, Irish-born British artist Sean Scully is now based in the US. He worked as a laborer and a truck loader while he trained in art. A former Harvard fellow, he later became the first Western artist to with a career-tracking retrospective in China.

Belgian painter and graphic artist Félicien Rops is best remembered for his association with symbolism and Fin-de Siecle, and for his prints. Part of the Les Vingt group of artists, he created masterpieces such as Absinthe Drinker and Lady with the Puppet. He also experimented with erotic themes.

Part of the German avant-garde movement and a prominent Dadaist, poet and artist Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven is best remembered for her sound poetry and her posthumously published book Body Sweats. It is believed the famous urinal Fountain sculpture thought to be a work of Marcel Duchamp was actually created by Elsa.