Artists with special features who could not paint, but managed to create and became famous

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

It is easy to imagine a disabled artist. For example, in a wheelchair, one-ear or numb. It is much more difficult to imagine how you can become an artist with visual impairments, coordination of movements or with a crippled hand. But there were also enough of them, and they became famous!

Color vision disorders

With age or after illness, the sense of color often changes a person. At least two famous Russian artists suffered from this: Savrasov (complication after illness) and Repin (age-related changes). The first one got out, drawing "from memory". And with the second there was an incident.

Even during his lifetime, his canvas was damaged, known as "Ivan the Terrible kills his son." The artist was invited to restore the places cut by the person who attacked the painting. Repin worked all night; the artist Igor Grabar, who came in the morning, who was then the trustee of the Tretyakov Gallery, did not know what to say. Repin painted the head of Ivan the Terrible in some strange purple shades incongruous with the rest of the canvas. Fresh strokes were urgently removed and, as a result of damage, they were recorded in watercolors, focusing on the photographs of the painting. Naturally, Repin continued to paint new paintings, although no one would have invited the old ones to save him.

Some artists were naturally color blind. This violation of color perception is so called from the fact that it was first described by the scientist John Dalton. He found that he could more or less clearly distinguish only shades of blue and yellow. Most often, color-blind artists turn to black and white graphics or draw simple illustrations that are easy to color by asking someone for help with choosing a color - for example, Viktor Chizhikov, beloved by many generations of Soviet children, turned to his wife for such help.

Nowadays, based on the color preferences of artists with color blindness (yellow and blue, black and white, fewer shades of red), biographers suggest color blindness in such famous artists as Vincent Van Gogh and Mikhail Vrubel.

The famous neuropsychologist Oliver Sachs told in his books about the artist who painted abstract paintings all his life, in which the main character was color. Suddenly, the artist lost all sense of color. All colors, except for pure black and pure white, seemed to him simultaneously gray and something dirty. He had to develop a two-color abstractionist style, where the main role was no longer played by color, but by composition, form and contrast.

Does an artist need hands

Repin was not only a gifted artist himself, but also gave a start in life to many talented painters. Among them was Marianna Verevkina. Her early and mature styles of work are radically different. The thing is that in the course of an accident (some said that they were hunting, while others said that when they tried to commit suicide), Verevkina shot herself several fingers of her working right hand. Alas, she was not one of those who can retrain on the left hand, as the famous Kiev woman Tatyana Yablonskaya did after a stroke. She was faced with a choice - to give up painting altogether or learn to hold the brush with those fingers that were left and choose a new style for herself.

Writing pictures with a brush sandwiched between the middle and ring fingers of her hand, Marianne not only made a career for herself - went down in history as one of the brightest painters of the twentieth century and as one of the most famous Swiss artists. The fact is that after the revolution, Marianne lived in Switzerland and spent most of her life there, so most of her fame went to her new homeland.

Researchers at the Chinese artist and calligrapher Lin Sanzhi also note a style change after he injured his arm at seventy-two. The changes are especially noticeable in calligraphy - from writing, which can be called harsh (it was even compared to iron wire), the artist switched to his special smooth and transparent outline of hieroglyphs. Interestingly, as a young man he studied martial arts at a Shaolin monastery. Perhaps it was there that he was taught not to give up, but to look for ways to complete the task.

There are also famous artists who have lived all their lives without hands at all and, moreover, have made a name for themselves in art. These are the Russian icon painter Grigory Zhuravlev, who held his brushes with his teeth, and the English landscape painter Peter Longstaff, who preferred to use his toes. Zhuravlev could not use this method for two reasons: it is inappropriate to draw icons with his feet, and, strictly speaking, Zhuravlev had no legs. His limbs were seriously underdeveloped. The painter in the genre of socialist realism Leonid Ptitsyn lost his hands after the war, when he returned to the village with his family and neighbors. Everything around was mined, but somehow it was necessary to live. The mines were trying to neutralize the teenagers. During one of these operations, fifteen-year-old Lyonya lost his arms. He could even die from terrible wounds, but he was hastily taken to the hospital. Miraculously, they made it. While working on the paintings, Ptitsyn held the brush with the stumps of both hands.

Neurological problems

Disorders of coordination or trembling hands are two problems with which it is not advised to go to painting. But what if they overpower an already established painter? The answer to this question is provided by the later works of Nicolas Poussin, a French painter of the seventeenth century. Contemporaries noted that his manner changed due to trembling in his hands. But his style did not deteriorate - he found his own special way of working with the brushstroke, making it smoother, and modern art critics value his later paintings even more than those painted before the problem with fingers.

And the cycle of self-portraits by the artist William Uthermolen, created at a later age, is entirely devoted to capturing how his writing style changes along with the progress of Alzheimer's disease. The artist learned the diagnosis in 1995, died in 2007, but his last self-portrait dates back to 2000. After that year, he couldn't draw.

Not only health affects the life and work of artists. What Claude Monet did with chestnuts, and Frida Kahlo did with strawberries: 5 original recipes from famous artists.

Text: Lilith Mazikina.