Emil Nolde was a German Expressionist known for his paintings and prints of flowers, landscapes, and folklore. The vibrancy of color and rough-hewn mark-making Nolde used in works such as Stormy Sea (1930), bore the influence of Vincent van Gogh. “There is silver blue, sky blue, and thunder blue. Every color holds within it a soul, which makes me happy or repels me, and which acts as a stimulus,” the artist once mused. Born Emil Hansen on August 7, 1867 in Nolde, Germany (present-day Germany), he was raised in a family of farmers in a rural area by the sea. Expected to join the family farm, Nolde instead pursued a career in furniture carving before beginning to paint. In 1906, while in Berlin he briefly joined the Die Brücke Expressionist group, which included his friend Karl Schmidt-Rottluff. He would go on to exhibit with both the Berlin Secession and Wassily Kandinsky’s Der Blaue Reiter group. During World War II, the Nazi regime, of which Nolde was an outspoken supporter, categorized him as a “degenerate” artist, though he continued to paint throughout the war unfazed. The artist died on April 15, 1956 in Seebüll, Germany at the age of 88. His works are presently held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Kunstmuseum Basel, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the Albertina in Vienna.

Tomma Abts is a German-born visual artist known for her abstract oil paintings. Abts won the Turner Prize in 2006. She currently lives and works in London, England. Wikipedia

Born: December 26, 1967 (age 52 years), Kiel, Germany

On view: San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Education: Berlin University of the Arts

Known for: Painting

Awards: Turner Prize

Based in New York City, McCagg achieved a BFA degree from Boston University. In addition to several teaching opportunities, McCagg has also enjoyed numerous fellowships and residencies, including those at the American Academy in Rome, Italy, and at C.A.M.A.C in Marnay Sur Seine, France. Recent exhibitions of her work include those at Muse Gallery in Hilton Head, South Carolina (2015); The Painting Center, New York City (2016); and Hostetler Gallery in Nantucket, Massachusetts (2017).

Claude Garache (born 1929 or 1930) is a French artist. He has worked in painting, sculpture, illustration and engraving. His principal subject is the female nude. Much of his work uses a single colour on a monochrome background, very often blood-red on white.

Bernice Bing, or “Bingo,” was, in many ways, an artist’s artist. She was a well-respected figure in the San Francisco arts community during the 1950s and ’60s, but her Abstract Expressionist paintings have largely been left out of the movement’s subsequent history. It is, of course, unsurprising that the works of a Chinese-American and lesbian artist would fall through the cracks of art history—and in her painting Blue Light (1961), she grappled with this very issue. The red ideogram meaning “humanity” in Chinese and the heart symbolism show Bing’s attempt to find a place in American society through abstract, spiritual imagery. “Both symbols—humanity and heart—reflect Bing,” Flo Wong, an artist and close friend of Bing’s, once said.

Günther Förg was part of the post-war generation of German popular artists who reacted against Modernism, and was one of the pioneers in exhibiting multi-disciplinary works. Förg’s modern art paintings are often concerned with the political climate of his era in Germany, and are known for their brightly saturated solid colours. He was considered to be one of the most interesting creators of contemporary art of his time.

Born in 1957 in Felanitx on the island of Mallorca, Barceló was introduced to art through his mother, who was a painter. ... In the early 1980s, Barceló earned international renown as one the foremost Spanish painters, rising to fame after representing Spain at the Documenta exhibition in Kassel in 1982.

Séraphine Louis, known as Séraphine de Senlis, was a French painter in the naïve style. Self-taught, she was inspired by her religious faith and by stained-glass church windows and other religious art.