Edgar Degas
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Edgar Degas was born on July 19th 1934. He’s a French painter, sculptor, engraver and photographer. In 1855, he’s enrolled at Fine Arts and Architecture School.
After a journey in Italia where he has discovered some painters such as Signorelli, Botticelli and Raphael, he painted “Young Spartans training wrestle” in 1860, which was based on neo-classicism.
In 1862, he made his first modern painting: “The Bellelli family”.
Degas met Manet during an avant-garde young artists’ meeting where Degas liked to go. Both of men shared the same interest in Japanese lithographs that had been brought by Braquemond in 1859. At that time, Degas began to defend the “realist movement” he was so deeply attached to.
The explosion of Impressionism takes place at this period. Yet, Degas moves away from this movement and prefers concentrate himself on interiors views with more and more innovative framings: The cotton office at New Orleans, 1873.
Theatre and dance world was a recurrent theme in his paintings (The dance school (1874) before he chose to turn towards female nudity. Some of his paintings received very bad reviews because they were seen as too much vulgar.
Little by little his eyesight was decreasing so, from 1890, Degas devoted himself to sculpture and made a major work which was introduced at the 1881’s Salon: 14 years old dancer.