Dürer. Beginning. Becoming.

                                                                            

 Let's begin

(warning 18+)

    

Fancy the man? He definitely rings a bell. Pavel Pop always draws someone special to honor. And no, it's not a hare. (Pavel Pop is a Slovakian-Serbian artist who loves to honor famous people by making kinda collages)

    

Today we are talking about Albrecht Dürer from Nürnberg (Germany). And a tad about the Hare. This is 1471-1528 (AD of course). The most German of German artists, who valued everything intriguing. His passion made his wife super mad. Despite a stipend from the emperor, his wife had to go into business. She would go to different fairs and markets and sell her husband's "pictures". She wanted a predictable and financially secure life. In her opinion, Dürer being just an artisan had a slow wit and could hold the life of a respectable burgher. 

    

He could draw everything on everything with everything. He was extremely good at catching the vibe and almost always had orders. His innovative methods and non-traditional composition didn't stop him from becoming famous and rich. Engravings, woodcuts, watercolors, people, horses, plants, animals. And self-portraits. A lot of them. 

   

Let's begin with woodcuts. They were Dürer's beginning of everything, his bread-and-butter.  He is said to have flooded Germany with his woodcuts and engravings. Topics are mostly ecclesiastical thus spine-chilling. Respectful burghers would have a look - and immediately remember about Doomsday, the Apocalypse, corpses, flying horses to name but a few. As what else devoted Christians could've been expecting for in the round year of 1500. 

    

Here's the woodcut piece Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. Very detailed, multi-figured, symbolic, but it's hard to get through the meaning easily. They say that Dürer would leave comments on the back of his works explaining what he had planned to depict.

to be continued