Throughout the history of art, self-portraits have always been a favorite subject of art masters.

Whether it is the Renaissance hundreds of years ago, modernism that breaks through traditional restrictions, or contemporary art that takes concept first, artists will reserve a "private space for creation" for self-portraits.

From the extraordinary realistic style to the absurd deconstruction, the artists use their ingenuity to show their personality and their own vision. In this seemingly "eye-catching" recording method, the unknown secrets deep in the artist's heart are often hidden, which may be the most real desires, pain, loneliness or desire for redemption.

It is not only the inner monologue they have endured throughout their lives, but also a declaration of desire to be known to the world.

Under those unique aesthetic symbols, we can get closer to a more real soul, rather than the glory that is praised by the world.

Today we have compiled the self-portraits of six of the most famous artists in history, and share with you the moments they most wish to be remembered for.

This kind old man with a long white beard is Leonardo da Vinci who can be said to be unprecedented and unprecedented.

Leonardo da Vinci was a genius scientist, inventor, and painter during the European Renaissance. Modern scholars call him "the most perfect spokesman for the Renaissance" and a unique all-rounder in human history. He did not complete many works in his life, but almost all of them are immortal masterpieces, such as "Mona Lisa" and "The Last of Us". "The Dinner" and "The Virgin of the Rocks" are all unique in the history of world art.

This self-portrait was painted around 1513, when Leonardo was nearly 60 years old. Leonardo da Vinci has always been known for his superb sketching skills in painting, which are fully demonstrated in this self-portrait.

The brushstrokes throughout the painting are smooth and refined, with rich and varied lines that combine hardness and softness. In particular, diagonal lines of varying density are used to express subtle changes in light and darkness. The long hair hanging loosely on the painter's face and the long beard under his chin, every stroke allows us to see the thinking power, temperament and his deep and wise eyes of this great master in his later years.

Dürer, known as "the first person of the Northern Renaissance", is also known as the "father of self-portrait".

He painted his first self-portrait in the mirror when he was 13 years old. The image is vivid and realistic. It was published more than 20 years earlier than the self-portrait of Leonardo da Vinci above. It can be said to be the first self-portrait in the West. The earliest painter in the history of painting to record his own appearance realistically.

Dürer was a handsome guy at that time. He was truly "more talented than Song Yu and as handsome as Pan An". Someone at that time described his appearance like this:

Perhaps because he was so satisfied with his good looks, Dürer was always happy to use his extraordinary painting skills to express himself.

And Dürer was not only keen on painting himself, he also often liked to write a sentence beside him: This is my face~

The operation method is the same as that of our friends now It’s exactly the same as posting a selfie with the caption “I feel a little handsome today”.

In this "Self-Portrait" (52 × 41 cm), Dürer dressed up as a handsome and admired young knight. This dress was the most fashionable youth costume in Germany at the time. His long hair was permed into wisps of curly braids and draped over his shoulders. His sparse light brown beard made his face look mature and steady. In fact, he was still a young man in his prime, and the endless mountain peaks outside the window in the background were also It seems to hint at his special experience of crossing the Alps three times to study in Italy.

It’s no wonder that Dürer was so narcissistic. He was only 28 years old when he painted this painting. Judging from his modeling ability and color skills, his talent has already begun to show.

Two years later, he painted himself another "Self-Portrait in Leather Clothes", which completely caused a sensation in the painting world because for the first time he abandoned the tradition of portraits facing the "camera" from the side. , completely letting yourself face the audience head-on.

Some friends may not understand what is so great about this, but at that time, only gods could appear in frontal compositions, and any artist who painted people had to change the angle.

Therefore, some people at the time thought he was painting Jesus, but Dürer said: The uncle painted himself! ~

Moreover, Dürer exquisitely integrated the most advanced painting theories at the time, such as perspective and anatomy, which he traveled to Italy to study, into this painting.

In this painting, Dürer not only embodies the three-dimensional effect, light and shadow effect extremely well, but also draws every tuft of fluff on his brown leather collared jacket in detail, which makes the painting more vivid. People can completely feel its texture, including the right hand that is playing with the fur on the collar. The observation is so detailed that even the trembling of the hand is drawn.

For the rest of his life, Dürer used the rigorous scientific spirit of the northern painting school to combine the beautiful and sublime classical aesthetics of the Italian Renaissance, and single-handedly integrated the previously independent local painting schools. He was the first A master who combines the strengths of both northern and southern painting schools.

Rembrandt, who lived half his life rich and half his life miserable, created nearly a hundred self-portraits throughout his life, which became the most rigorous portrait anatomy of himself in Western art.

He began recording his appearance at the age of 23. Through a calm and objective method, he seemed to be staring at another self in the mirror, watching himself change from youth to adulthood, from prime to decline, and from youth to high-spiritedness. , old and decadent in old age.

Rembrandt was born in 1606 in the Netherlands to a wealthy miller's family. He was well off and talented. At the age of 25, he went to the big city of Amsterdam alone to make a living. Not only did he quickly become famous, he became a portrait painter with constant orders. He also completed a series of operations before the age of 30, buying a big house in the most expensive place in the city center and marrying Bai Fumei. , a true winner in life.

In 1642, the 36-year-old Rembrandt reached the peak of his career. He completed the masterpiece "The Night Watch" that has gone down in history.

But fate will always hit you hard when you least expect it.

In the same year, his beloved wife passed away, and their four children also died. This was undoubtedly a huge blow to the painter's personal emotions.

However, when fate wants to play tricks on you, it has no shortage of tricks.

"The Night Watch", which established Rembrandt's historical status, also made this successful professional painter no one care about him overnight. His works were ahead of his time, and those unconventional creative methods were not accepted by the people of the time and the mainstream painting world.

His art became more profound and persistent, but his situation took a turn for the worse. The people who once praised him turned away from him, and Rembrandt went bankrupt.

As he entered old age, Rembrandt could only live by selling off his properties and borrowing debts. However, when he recorded himself with self-portraits, he did not hide his abjection and ugliness at all.

He observed himself in the mirror absolutely faithfully. Those self-portraits he painted in his later years, with wrinkled faces, looking at the world blankly and hesitantly, seemed to be infinitely sentimental and infinitely compassionate, making the paintings no longer just superficially pleasing to the eye, but also A revelation of deep humanity.

Rembrandt’s later oil paintings have thick textures that look like abstract color blocks and brush strokes when viewed up close, but they can accurately convey the inner spiritual qualities.

Rembrandt, who was in the glitzy Baroque period, got rid of the vanity of religion and court, but used the most profound method to depict the phenomena of life, containing full enthusiasm in his condensed calmness.

From absolutely accurate realistic techniques to rich and hearty, he revolutionized and subverted painting, and also made painting the final salvation of his tragic life.

Apart from Leonardo da Vinci, probably no artist in history is as well-known as Van Gogh. He perfectly interpreted what a crazy genius artist is.

Like Rembrandt, Van Gogh is famous in art history for his self-portraits.

But Rembrandt’s self-portraits spanned his entire life, while most of Van Gogh’s self-portraits were created between 1885 and 1889, and numbered more than forty. He seems to be "writing a diary" in the form of a self-portrait, and frankly exposes himself to the audience, the pain, fear, self-doubt, mental torture and fleeting happiness in life.

Van Gogh himself once said:

Van Gogh often appeared very reserved and serious in his self-portraits, with a focused expression on his face.

Nonetheless, a different personality of Van Gogh can be found in each self-portrait. He described the last self-portrait he painted in Paris as:

This is how he felt: exhausted, both physically and mentally.

On December 23, 1888, Van Gogh cut off his left ear while unconscious. This would be the first of a series of breakdowns for him. He was unwilling to discuss the incident in his letters, but he did "report" it in two self-portraits.

Van Gogh did not portray himself as a sick, broken man for effect or to arouse sympathy. He firmly believed that painting would help him heal. He wrote to Theo:

In July 1890, Van Gogh shot himself at the age of 37. His last self-portrait was a gift to his mother.

Munch, an expressionist artist from Norway, is often called a "fin de siècle" artist by art historians because his works reflect the spiritual life of an entire generation in Europe. In the era when Munch lived, no other art dared to describe the ugliness of human instinct as nakedly as he did, making goodness and sin coexist, and beauty and ugliness emerging. He is known as the "Nietzsche of painting".

This miserable man lost his mother at the age of 5, his sister at the age of 14, and his father who suffered from mental illness at the age of 26. His only surviving sister was also tortured by mental illness and has been living in a mental hospital. Munch himself suffered from tuberculosis since childhood and suffered much from the disease.

Therefore, death and disease have always been constant themes in his works.

Munch was only 31 when he created Self-Portrait with Skeleton Arm, but he painted himself as a ghostly figure, with a floating head that was a familiar feature of early twentieth-century artistic expression. The technique and theme imply the division between the physical world and the spiritual world. The bones at the bottom of the picture are a memorial or reminder of death. There is the artist's name and date at the top of the painting. These details make it look like a tombstone.

He once said:

Picasso can be regarded as the best example of "life is endless, struggle is endless"!

He debuted at the age of 13 and won all the highest awards and honors that traditional academics can get.

He is a restless ultimate explorer who refuses to stop and runs wildly on the road of challenging himself. Moreover, he is long-lived and energetic and incredibly efficient. He never seems to fish in life. **Nearly 37,000 works created!

Starting from the rigorous and realistic academic school, Picasso's artistic career has gone through the melancholy and bleak "Blue Period", the romantic and beautiful "Pink Period", the "African Period" in his prime, and the "Three-dimensional Period". ism period", the later "surrealism period" and "abstract period", etc. When it comes to transformation or even subversion of the style and painting methods of his works, I am afraid that no artist can beat Picasso.

This versatile style is also fully confirmed in the self-portraits throughout his life.

This 15-year-old self-portrait of Picasso clearly shows his extraordinary traditional realism techniques.

After all, his famous quote is:

The period from 1900 to 1903 was the low point of Picasso's life. During this gloomy and dreary period, blue dominated all of his works, so it was also called the "blue period" in his artistic career.

But soon, love came and Picasso settled in Paris. The encounter with the first love in his life - Fernand Olivier - made Picasso sweep away the melancholy and gloomy blue tones in his previous works, and turned 180 degrees to soft and warm pink tones. Picasso officially bid farewell After the "Blue Period", we made great strides into the happy Pink Period.

This self-portrait in 1907 is the most classic because it marks Picasso's gradual transition to the most important period in his life - Cubism. From this moment on, Picasso's painting style began to "fly", deconstructing his self-analysis layer by layer.

Picasso's works, like his life, have no unity, continuity or stability. He has no fixed ideas, and has many different ideas. He may be passionate or manic, amiable or hateful, sincere or pretentious. He is unpredictable and unpredictable, but what he is always loyal to is freedom.

Kahlo is one of the most iconic and legendary artists of the 20th century, and the first Mexican artist to reside in the Louvre.

Polio at the age of 6; suffered a car accident at the age of 18, causing comminuted fractures all over his body; 32 surgeries and 3 miscarriages; married at the age of 22, cheating on each other; divorced at the age of 32, remarried at the age of 33, and died at the age of 47.

This woman's life was fragmented but colorful. She used self-portraits to describe all the pain she suffered in her life: illness, disability, inability to have children due to car accidents, miscarriage, divorce, betrayal... Form is recorded in the canvas.

Fifty-five of her 143 paintings from her lifetime are self-portraits and are unique and unforgettable. The iconic unibrow and thin mustache on the lip make this androgynous face difficult to erase from my mind.

In 1939, Frida divorced her husband Diego Rivera. After the separation, she was often immersed in despair and loneliness.

The famous "Two Fridas" was created at this time. In this painting, this sad woman depicts two sides of herself. Frida on the right is dressed in traditional Mexican indigenous clothing, symbolizing the woman Rivera once loved. The main artery of her heart wraps around her right arm and connects to The portrait of Rivera in her hand is the source and nourishment of her life.

Frida, who is wearing a European dress on the left, is the woman Rivera no longer loves. Her face is pale, her heart has been torn, and her blood vessels have been cut. Even holding surgical forceps cannot stop the blood flow. Leaving it behind, bright red blood dripped drop by drop on the white skirt, as if she was about to bleed to death soon.

In 1940, Rivera proposed remarriage to Frida, and one of Frida's most precious paintings - "Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird" came into being, which is full of symbols. Every element and every detail clearly expresses Frida's heart-wrenching pain and stubbornness.

In this painting, Kahlo sits in the center, gazing fearlessly at the viewer. The necklace of thorns on her neck pierced into her body, causing blood to flow. A spider monkey sat on her right shoulder, playing with the thorny necklace in his hand, but the careless play would cause the thorns on Kahlo's neck to penetrate deeper. A dead hummingbird hung on the pendant of the necklace. , the black panther on the left is approaching eagerly.

In Mexican folklore, the hummingbird represents good luck in falling in love, while the panther symbolizes bad luck and death.

Frida used the dead hummingbird to express her despair for this marriage, and the spider monkey holding the thorn necklace was a gift given to Frida by Rivera. Now, Every time it touches, Frida will be bruised and bleed all over the floor.

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