Skip to content

P

Proske, Beatrice Irene Gilman

Full Name: Proske, Beatrice Irene Gilman

Other Names:

  • Bea Proske

Gender: female

Date Born: 31 October 1899

Date Died: 02 February 2002

Place Born: Thornton, Grafton, NH, USA

Place Died: Ardsley, West Chester, NY, USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): Romanesque, sculpture (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)

Career(s): curators and researchers

Institution(s): Hispanic Society of America


Overview

Curator of sculpture at the Hispanic Society of America. Proske was born on October 31st, 1899. She was raised by Milan Jeremiah Gilman, a farmer, and Alice May Hazeltine (Gilman). Though initially raised in southern New Hampshire, Proske’s father sought better schooling for his children, and moved the family to Connecticut in 1912. At Gilbert High School, Proske studied German, French, Spanish, and Latin. Subsequently, Proske pursued a B.S. in Library Sciences at Simmons College in Boston, which was conferred in spring of 1920.

Following her studies, Proske worked in various roles at The Hispanic Society of America in New York City over the course of 53 years. Proske was a Research Cataloger for two years before her promotion to Assistant Curator of Sculpture in 1922. Between 1922 and 1929, Proske often traveled with colleagues to England, Spain, Italy, and France to study, catalog, and purchase Hispanic art on behalf of her post. These travels informed much of her work, including her 525-page book, Castilian Sculpture: Gothic to Renaissance, published by the Hispanic Society of America in 1951. For her persistent effort, the Hispanic Society of America awarded her a Sculpture Medal in 1953. In addition to her time there, Proske devoted herself to Brookgreen Gardens, a botanical garden in Georgetown County, South Carolina. Proske’s 1936 publication, a catalog of the Brookgreen Gardens outdoor sculpture collection, titled Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture, first published in 1936 and revised in 1968.

Between November 1968 and November 1969, Proske held the role of Curator of the Museum for the Hispanic Society of America. Proske worked throughout her retirement, advising the Hispanic Society of America, Brookgreen Gardens, and National Sculpture Review. Proske traced the development of the Spanish architecture style in an article she wrote titled SCULPTURE: From the Romanesque to the Twentieth Century, published in 1972 in Apollo. In 1975, Proske wrote on several American women sculptures for the National Sculpture Review.

Brookgreen Gardens named Proske an Honorary Trustee in 1978, and later bestowed her an Inaugural Membership Medal in 1987. On December 4th, 1993, The National Academy of Design in New York, NY, dedicated their American Sculpture Symposium to Proske. Following Proske’s death, Louis Torres, founder of art journal Aristos, and Michelle Marder Kamhi, a co-editor, wrote that Proske “brings to her personal life the same rare mix of qualities she brings to her writing—forthrightness, wit, simplicity, warmth, a respect for tradition and scholarship, and just the right touch of elegance.”


Selected Bibliography

  • “American Women Sculptors.” National Sculpture Review 24 (2–3): 8. 1972.
  • Brookgreen Gardens Sculpture. 1936. Reprint, Brookgreen Gardens, 1968.
  • Castilian Sculpture, Gothic to Renaissance. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1951.
  • Juan Martínez Montañés, Sevillian Sculptor. New York: Hispanic Society of America, 1967.
  • “SCULPTURE: From the Romanesque to the Twentieth Century.” Apollo: The International Magazine of Art & Antiques 95 (April): 283–91. 1972.

Sources

  • Candida Smith, Richard. The Early Years of the Hispanic Society of America. The J. Paul Getty Trust, 1995.
  • Kamhi, Michelle Marder, and Louis Torres. “Beatrice Gilman Proske (1899-2002).” Accessed February 29, 2024. https://www.aristos.org/proske.htm.
  • [transcript] “Beatrice G. Proske.” Interviews with Art Historians, 1991-2002. Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, CA.


Contributors: Zahra Hassan


Citation

Zahra Hassan. "Proske, Beatrice Irene Gilman." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/proske-beatrice-irene-gilman/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Curator of sculpture at the Hispanic Society of America.

Pillsbury, Edmund

Full Name: Pillsbury, Edmund Pennington

Other Names:

  • Edmund P. Pillsbury
  • Ted Pillsbury

Gender: male

Date Born: 28 April 1943

Date Died: 01 April 2010

Place Born: San Francisco, San Francisco, CA, USA

Place Died: Kaufmann, TX USA

Home Country/ies: United States

Subject Area(s): museums (institutions)

Institution(s): Kimball Art Museum


Overview

Director of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, 1980-1998; masterful acquisitions assembler.  Pillsbury’s father was Edmund Pennington Pillsbury (1913-1951) and his mother Priscilla Adele Keator (Pillsbury) (1915-2011).  He was the child of two major American industrial families, great-grandson to  Charles Alfred Pillsbury (1842-1889), founder of the Pillsbury Flour and through his mother the to Deere machinery fortune.  Pillsbury, graduated from Yale University where he was a noted athlete.  He received his M.A., and Ph.D, both from the Courtauld Institute of Art, University of  London and both on the topic of the Renaissance artist Jacopo Zucchi.

Pillsbury was appointed curator of European painting and sculpture at his alma mater, the Yale University Art Gallery.  When Paul Mellon (1907-1999) funded the project for what would become the Yale Center for British Art in 1966, Pillsbury was appointed its first director, beginning 1977.  At the 1980 death of another first director, Richard Brown, of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, TX, Pillsbury became its second.  At the Kimball, he built his own and the Museum’s reputation.  He completed Brown’s negotiations to acquire Georges de La Tour’s Cheat With the Ace of Clubs (late 1620s).  This began his success in buying masterworks for the small museum.  These included On the Pont de l’Europe (1876/1877) by Gustave Caillebotte, then a relatively unknown artist to the public, 1982, The Apostle Saint James Freeing the Magician Hermogenes (1426-29) by Fra Angelico, 1986, The Cardsharps (c.1594) by Caravaggio, 1987, the acquisition for which he is perhaps best known. His skill at acquiring skills were so distinguished that in 1986, the National Gallery in London offered him the director position, the first non-Briton.  It caused a furor in the United Kingdom, Pillsbury declined, and the position was given to Michael Levey..

In 1989, Pillsbury announced a plan to build an addition onto the Louis Kahn museum building with architect Romaldo Giurgola. An international outcry arose–including the architect’s family– and the project was revised to be an adjacent building, this one to be designed by architect Renzo Piano.  By 1998 Pillsbury and the Museum Board found themselves in major disagreements and he resigned. He collaborated with the Dallas branch of the Gerald Peters Gallery, renamed to be Pillsbury & Peters Fine Art.  The partnership dissolved in 2003;  Pillsbury accepted the directorship of the Meadows Art Museum at Southern Methodist University in its new building. In 2005 he declined an offer from the Getty Museum to instead join Heritage Galleries as “consultative director.” There he created a fine arts- and museum services department. At Heritage he expanded their art auctions into a $50 million business. His final position was director of the Bellagio Gallery of Fine Art in Las Vegas.

Pillsbury always remained close to the Kimball; in 2009 he alerted then director Eric Lee (b.1965) to an early Michelangelo painting on the market, The Torment of Saint Anthony (1487), which Lee acquired.  It is the only Michelangelo in the United States.  He died of a heart attack after visiting a client in Kaufman County, TX.

The art historian Richard Brettell described Pillsbury as “one of the latter 20th century’s most important museum directors . . . He was, in some ways, single-handedly responsible for turning the Kimball from an institution with a great building into one whose collection matched its architecture in quality.”  He declined many offers of positions, including editor of the Burlington Magazine.  He published no monographs; the exhibition catalogs he contributed to were always with others.


Selected Bibliography

  • [theses and dissertation:] Jacopo Zucchi: New Paintings and Drawings. M.A., Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1967;
  • Jacopo Zucchi: His Life and Work. PhD, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1973;
  • Drawings by Vasari and Vincenzo Borghini for the Apparato in Florence in 1565.” Master Drawings 5, no. 3 (Autumn, 1967): 281-283, 330-331;
  • “Three Unpublished Paintings by Giorgio Vasari,” Burlington Magazine 112 no .803 (1970): 94–101;
  • “Ammannati and the Villa Medici in Rome: An Unknown Letter.”Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorischen Institutes in Florenz, 19. Bd., H. 2 (1975), pp. 303-306;
  •  

 


Sources

  • [obituaries:] Lee, George T. “In Memoriam: Edmund ‘Ted’ Pennington Pillsbury: 1943–2010, B.A. 1965.”Yale University Art Gallery Bulletin  (2010), pp. 24-25;
  • Nixon, Diane A and Whitney, Wheelock. Master Drawings 48 no. 2 (Summer 2010): 261-262;
  •  Fox,  Margalit.  “Edmund P. Pillsbury, Director at Kimball, Dies at 66”  New York Times March 31, 2010;

 




Citation

"Pillsbury, Edmund." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/pillsburye/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Director of the Kimball Art Museum in Fort Worth, 1980-1998; masterful acquisitions assembler.  Pillsbury’s father was Edmund Pennington Pillsbury (1913-1951) and his mother Priscilla Adele Keator (Pillsbury) (1915-2011).  He was the child of two maj

Puttrich, Ludwig

Full Name: Puttrich, Ludwig

Gender: male

Date Born: 30 April 1783

Date Died: 02 September 1856

Place Born: Dresden, Saxony, Germany

Place Died: Leipzig, Saxony, Germany

Home Country/ies: Germany

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre)


Overview

Early art historian.  His 1852 Denkmale der Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen became the model for many art historians, including Wilhelm Lübke.






Citation

"Puttrich, Ludwig." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/puttrichl/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Early art historian.  His 1852 Denkmale der Baukunst des Mittelalters in Sachsen became the model for many art historians, including Wilhelm Lübke.

Patin, Charlotte Catherine

Full Name: Patin, Charlotte Catherine

Other Names:

  • Caroline Catherine Patin

Gender: female

Date Born: c. 1672

Date Died: c. 1744

Place Born: Paris, Île-de-France, France

Place Died: Padua, Veneto, Italy

Home Country/ies: Italy

Institution(s): Università degli Studi di Padova


Overview

Writer of one of the earliest known examples of art history by a woman author; seventeenth-century femme de lettre. Patin was born in Paris, but spent a majority of her life in Padua, Italy. She came from a family of intellectuals. Her father, Charles Patin, (1633-1693) was a physician and numismatist (whose work helped the art historian Joachim von Sandart. Her grandfather, Guy Patin (1601-1672), also practiced medicine as an eminent French physician. Most distinguished of all, her mother, Magdeleine Homanet, (1640-1682), wrote moral philosophy. In 1679, Patin and her sister reunited with their father in Italy where he had fled, escaping a life sentence for the importation of seditious books. The family settled in Padua.

Patin was raised in a family that advocated for the scholarship of women. During her father’s tenure the University of Padua graduated its first female doctoral candidate, Elena Lucrezia Cornaro Piscopia (1646-1684) in 1678. He strongly encouraged his daughters to further their respective scholarly pursuits and obtain a doctorate. However, the University of Padua decided against awarding additional doctorates to women, thus barring Patin from obtaining her’s. Because of both her own passions for Italian art and her father’s support, she was able to publish her own work and be regarded as a scholar through the Paduan Accademia dei Ricovrati (later the Accademia Galileiana or “Galilean academy”), one of the only academic societies that accepted women during that time period. Patin’s older sister, Gabrielle Patin (1666-1751), was a painter and numismatist.

There, in 1683, she delivered a Latin oration on the relief of Vienna following the siege of the Ottoman Turks. She published that oration alongside a catalogue of Italian works from Titian, Veronese, Bassano, and Tintoretto in Pitture Scelte E Dichiarate, in Italian, and Tabellae Selectae Ac Explicatae, the Latin counterpart. That year, she delivered a lecture in Latin on the siege of Vienna, which she published as Oratio de liberata civitate Vienna. Her sister, Gabrielle Charlotte (b. Paris ca. 1666), and mother, were also members of the society and wrote on theology, literature, and philosophy. Patin likewise published texts on these subjects in Latin, Italian, and French.

Her most well-known work, a critique of 41 Italian Renaissance paintings reproduced by multiple engravers, including the engraver Joseph Juster (active ca. 1690), was published in 1691 in Latin as Tabellæ selectæ ac explicatæ. The corresponding Italian translation, Pitture scelte e dichiarate, was brought out the same year. The volume also includes a print reproduction of the Patin family portrait painted by Noël Jouvenet in the late 1680s (d. 1698). Patin entered a convent in 1697, after which date her presence drops off the historical record. In 1745 a text titled Mitra, ou la Démone mariée: Nouvelle Hébraïque et morale, which she had ostensibly written in 1688, was printed by the fictitious publisher, “Démonopolis.”


Selected Bibliography

  • Oratio de liberata civitate Vienna. Padua, 1683;
  • Tabellæ selectæ ac explicatæ. Padua: Typogr. Seminarii, 1691;
  • Pitture scelte e dichiarate. [Italian translation] Padua: Appresso Pietro Marteau, 1691 1691;
  • “Relatio de literis apologeticis.” In Acta eruditorum 10 (1691): 337-340; 
  • Mitra, ou la Démone mariée: Nouvelle Hébraïque et morale. [1688, Padua]; Démonopolis, 1745;
  •  

Sources

  • Briquet, Marguerite Ursule Fortunée. “Patin, (Charlotte-Catherine, et Gabrielle-Charlotte).” Dictionnaire historique, littéraire et bibliographique des françaises, et des étrangères naturalisées en France. pp. 257-258. Paris: Gillé, 1804;
  • Feller, François-Xavier de. “Patin (Charlotte et Gabrielle).” Biographie universelle, ou Dictionnaire des hommes qui se sont fait un nom. p. 392. New edition, volume 6. Paris: J. Leroux, Jouby, 1849;
  • Hoefer, M. Le Dr. “Patin (Magdeleine Homanet, Dame).” Nouvelle biographie générale : Depuis les temps les plus reculés jusqu’à nos jours. pp. 331-333. Volume 39. Paris: Firmin Didot, 1865;
  • Le Moyne, Nicolas Toussaint. “Patin, (Charlotte et Gabrielle).” Les Siècles littéraires de la France. p. 107. Volume 5. Paris: Auteur, 1801;
  • Moreri, Louis. “Patin. (Charlotte-Catherine, & Gabrielle-Charlotte).” Supplément au grand Dictionnaire historique , généalogique, géographique, &c. de M. Louis Moreri. p. 22. Volume 2. Paris: La Veuve Lemercier, etc., 1735;
  • “Collections Online: British Museum.” Collections Online | British Museum. Accessed October 22, 2020. https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/term/BIOG141799;
  • “Patin, Charlotte Catherine.” Benezit Dictionary of Artists, October 31, 2011. https://www.oxfordartonline.com/benezit/view/10.1093/benz/9780199773787.001.0001/acref-9780199773787-e-00136901?rskey=uAP4rx.


Contributors: Dana Hogan, Yasemin Altun, and Zahra Hassan


Citation

Dana Hogan, Yasemin Altun, and Zahra Hassan. "Patin, Charlotte Catherine." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/patinc/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Writer of one of the earliest known examples of art history by a woman author; seventeenth-century femme de lettre. Patin was born in Paris, but spent a majority of her life in Padua, Italy. She came from a family of intellectuals. Her fa

Pickard, John

Full Name: Pickard, John

Gender: male

Date Born: 1858

Date Died: 1937

Home Country/ies: United States

Institution(s): University of Missouri


Overview

Professor of Art History, University of Missouri, Columbia; founder and first president of the College Art Association. His students included John Shapely.


Selected Bibliography

[dissertation:] Der Standort der Schauspieler und des Chors im griechischen Theater des funften Jahrhunderts. Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, published, Munich: Ackermann, 1892.
  




Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Pickard, John." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/pickardj/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Professor of Art History, University of Missouri, Columbia; founder and first president of the College Art Association. His students included John Shapely.

Polaczek, Ernst

Full Name: Polaczek, Ernst

Gender: male

Date Born: unknown

Date Died: unknown

Home Country/ies: Germany


Overview

Professor of art history and museum director.

Polaczek was born on July 6, 1870 into a family of Jewish manufacturers in the Bohemian Reichenberg, now Liberec. After Gymnasium graduation and brief study at the Handelsakademie in Vienna he graduated secondary school in Prague in 1889. Polaczek studied at the universities of Prague, Munich and Vienna under Professors Riegl, Wickhoff and Wölfflin through 1892. In 1893 he enrolled in the University of Strasbourg in Alsace, studying under Georg Dehio. He received his doctorate in 1894. After military duty 1894-1895 he joined the monument inventory as an assistant to the Provincial Conservator of the Prussian Rhine Province under Paul Clemen. He there wrote his habilitation in Strasbourg in 1899, and the following year joined Professor Dehio as an assistant professor of art history, rising to professor in 1905. In 1913 he became an honorary professor at the University of Strasbourg. In 1907 he directed the Municipal Museum of Decorative Arts and in 1913 the Museum of Fine Arts. The armistice of the First World War resulted in his expulsion from the (now French) Alsace. Polaczek moved to Munich, writing and designing exhibitions. His special commitment was the 1920 founded “Wissenschaftlichen Institut der Elsaß-Lothringer im Reich” (Academic Institute of Alsace-Lorraine in the Reich). In 1928, he was appointed director of the Oberlausitze Gedenkhalle of the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Görlitz, succeeded its first director Professor Ludwig Feyerabend (1855-1927). As museum director he was active in Görlitz from 1928 to 1933. That year the racial laws of the Nazi party forced him to early retirement because he was a Jew. He was succeeded by Otto-Friedrich Gandert (1898-1983). He moved to Freiburg im Breisgau and died on January 26, 1939, perhaps as a result of the pogrom night. He was buried in a cemetery in Strasbourg. His second wife, Friederike Polaczek was deported in 1940.



Sources

“Professor Ernst Polaczek.” https://www.goerlitz.de/Professor_Ernst_Polaczek.html



Contributors: Lee Sorensen


Citation

Lee Sorensen. "Polaczek, Ernst." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/polaczeke/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Professor of art history and museum director.Polaczek was born on July 6, 1870 into a family of Jewish manufacturers in the Bohemian Reichenberg, now Liberec. After Gymnasium graduation and brief study at the Handelsakademie in Vienna he gr

Pontus Hultén, K. G.

Full Name: Pontus Hultén, Karl Gunnar Vougt

Gender: male

Date Born: 1924

Date Died: 2006

Place Born: Stockholm, Sweden

Home Country/ies: Sweden

Subject Area(s): Modern (style or period)

Institution(s): Stockholm Museum for Modern Art


Overview

Director of the Stockholm Museum for Modern Art Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, 1974-1981. He curated the show for the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age in 1968.






Citation

"Pontus Hultén, K. G.." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/pontushultenk/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Director of the Stockholm Museum for Modern Art Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris, 1974-1981. He curated the show for the Museum of Modern Art, NY, The Machine as Seen at the End of the Mechanical Age in 1968.

Popper, Leó

Full Name: Popper, Leo

Gender: male

Date Born: 1886

Date Died: 1911

Place Born: Budapest, Czechoslovakia

Place Died: Gurbersdorf, Germany

Home Country/ies: Hungary

Subject Area(s): art theory, Dutch (culture or style), and Northern Renaissance


Overview

Composer, painter, and art theorist; art historian of Dutch art, particularly Brueghel the Elder. Popper was the son of the cellist David Popper (1843-1913) and Sophie Menter (Popper) (1846–1918), a pianist and pupil of Franz Lizst. After graduating from high school in 1905, he initially attended the Musikakademie and the Akademie der Bildenden Künste. The following year he entered the painting school in Frauenbacher Romania. As a student he joined the artists group the Eight (Die Acht). Popper wrote essays on Paul Cézanne, Vincent van Gogh, Auguste Rodin and Aristide Maillol, and analyses of folk art. However, 16th and 17th-century Dutch painting 16th remained his focus. In 1910 he published the first significant study of Pieter Bruegel the Elder. He contracted tuberculosis and died in 1911.

Popper approached art history through an art theory he devised. His posited notions of a work’s visual center as key to understanding it. Lukács characterized Popper’s philosophy of art as “technology becoming metaphysics…The stone forces the sculptor, who also can not find nature, to the unity of what is created in the block, so that the will to chroma in the works of folk art becomes the mystical perfection of the hidden, lost, yet omnipresent sense.” (Nachruf) Popper never published book, partially because of his early death. He possessed both a command of contemporary Central European art-historical discourse as well as a precocious appreciation for issues of abstraction and mediality. Lukács and de Tolnay also openly acknowledged their debt to him. (Polonyi)


Selected Bibliography

“Peter Brueghel der Ältere 1520? – 1569.” [written, 1910, published]  Acta historiae artium Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae / Magyar Tudományos Akadémia 17 (1971): 6-10;  Schwere und Abstraktion. Brinkmann & Bose, Berlin 1987. (Selected essays)  Philippe Despoix und Lothar Müller, eds.


Sources

Lukács, Georg . “Leo Popper (1886-1911). Ein Nachruf.” Pester Lloyd 58, No 289 (18. December 1911): 5-6. transcription link; Timár, Árpád, “The Young Lukács and the Fine Arts,” Acta Historiae Artium 34 (1989): 29–39; Born, Robert. “Budapest und der sozialgeschichtliche Ansatz in der Kunstgeschichte.” in Dietlind Hüchtker, Alfrun Kliem, eds. Überbringen – Überformen – Überblenden: Theorietransfer im 20. Jahrhundert. Vienna: Böhlau 2011, pp. 94–124;  Eszter Polonyi, personal correspondence, May 2018.




Citation

"Popper, Leó." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/popperl/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Composer, painter, and art theorist; art historian of Dutch art, particularly Brueghel the Elder. Popper was the son of the cellist David Popper (1843-1913) and Sophie Menter (Popper) (1846–1918), a pianist and pupil of Franz Lizst. After graduati

Puig i Cadafalch, Josep

Full Name: Puig i Cadafalch, Josep

Gender: male

Date Born: 17 October 1867

Date Died: 23 December 1957

Place Born: Mataró, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Place Died: Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain

Home Country/ies: Spain

Subject Area(s): architecture (object genre), Romanesque, sculpture (visual works), and Spanish (culture or style)

Institution(s): Escuela Técnica Superior de Arquitectura de Barcelona


Overview

Catalonian architect, architectural historian of the Catalonian romanesque, archeologist, and politician. Puig i Cadafalch was the son of wealthy textile industrialists, Joan Puig i Bruguera and Teresa Cadafalch i Bogunyà. He obtained his bachelors from the Escoles Pies de Santa Anna in 1883. From there, he studied physical sciences and mathematics at the University of Barcelona and earned his doctorate at the University of Madrid in 1888 under mentorship of Lluis Domenech i Montaner (1849-1923). He later joined the Centre Escolar Catalanista where he first met Enric Prat de la Riba i Sarrà (1870-1917). Between 1892 to 1896, Puig i Cadafalch was the municipal architect of Mataró. During his term, he worked on projects including the city’s sewer system and Casa Francesc Martí i Puig, which would eventually house Els Quatre Gats––a popular meeting place for Spanish Modernisme artists. He was later elected to serve as councilor of the Barcelona Town Hall between 1901-1903 where he successfully contributed to a new appraisal of Barcelona’s gothic history. He also lectured at L’Escola d’Arquitectura de Barcelona (School of Architecture in Barcelona). In 1908, he began archaeological excavations in Empúries, which he continued for 15 years. Meanwhile, he served in the parliament for Barcelona in Madrid between 1907-1909 and in the provincial government for Barcelona between 1913-1924. In 1917, he replaced Prat de la Riba as President of the Mancomunitat de Catalunya (Commonwealth of Catalonia). He was re-elected and served three terms in office until 1924. His main efforts were focused on developing industrial infrastructure, establishing medial and social welfare institutions, and fighting for Catalonia’s autonomy. He was awarded an honorary degree by the University of Freiburg in 1923 Between 1925 and 1926, he lectured at the University at Sorbonne, Harvard, and Cornell. Later, in 1930, he taught at d the Institute d’Art et Archeologie in Paris and was also bestowed with an honorary degree from the University of Paris. Between 1930-1936, he primarily focused on his works as an architectural historian publishing La geografia i els origen del primer romànic (1930), La place de la Catalogne dans la géographie et la chronologie du premier art roman (1932), and L’architecture gothique civil en catalogne (1935). However, he was forced into exile in France during the Spanish Civil War between 1936 until 1942. In 1949, he was given another honorary degree from the University of Toulouse, and also published his most important work, L’escultura romànica a Catalunya. In the work, he explored the relationship between the aesthetic language of an architectural style and its geography and culture.

While his work as an architect is often overshadowed by his contemporary Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926), it was pivotal in facilitating a stylistic transition in Catalonia from Modernist to Noucentisme architecture during the turn of the 20th century (Permanyer). On the other hand, his works as an art historian shed light on the importance of architectural historiography. Specifically, he argued that an aesthetic style is both a product and reflection of the identity of the people from which it emerges, and that it is ultimately inseparable from its institutions, customs, and history. As a model, he showed that Romanesque architecture in Catalonia was not introduced as a foreign style, but rather evolved from its own classical architecture. His studies of Romanesque architecture in medieval Catalonia ultimately helped to derive and define a Catalonian cultural identity.


Selected Bibliography

  • La geografia i els origens del primer romanic, 1930;

  • La place de la Catalogne dans la géographie et la chronologie du premier art roman, 1932;

  • L’architecture gothique civil en Catalogne, 1935;

  • L’arquitectura romànica a Catalunya, 1949.

Sources

  • Frank, Grace, Urban T. Holmes, Charles R. D. Miller, Bartlett Jere Whiting, Francis P. Magoun, Kemp Malone, H. M. Smyser, et al. “Memoirs of Fellows and Corresponding Fellows of the Mediaeval Academy of America.” Speculum  34, no. 3 (1959): 530–36;

  • Alexandre, Cirici. “La arquitectura de Puig i Cadafalch.” Cuadernos de arquitectura, 1966, 49–52;

  • Adolf, Florensa i Ferrer. “Puig y Cadafalch, arquitecto, historiador de arte y arqueólogo.” Cuadernos de arquitectura, 1967, 75–78;

  • Guix, Xavier Güell i. “Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Modernist Architect.” Catalònia, 1989, 8–11;

  • Permanyer, Lluís; photographs by Lluis Casals. Josep Puig i Cadafalch. Barcelona: Ediciones Poligrafa,  2001. https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T070036.


Contributors: Denise Shkurovich


Citation

Denise Shkurovich. "Puig i Cadafalch, Josep." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/puigicadafalchj/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Catalonian architect, architectural historian of the Catalonian romanesque, archeologist, and politician. Puig i Cadafalch was the son of wealthy textile industrialists, Joan Puig i Bruguera and Teresa Cadafalch i Bogunyà. He obtained his bachelor

Punin, Nikolay

Full Name: Punin, Nikolay

Gender: male

Date Born: 1888

Date Died: 1953

Place Born: Helsinki, Newland Regin, Finland

Place Died: Abez Camp, near Vorkuta, Komi Republic, Russia

Home Country/ies: Russia

Subject Area(s): art theory and Russian (culture or style)

Career(s): art critics


Overview

Critic, theorist, museum official, and historian of Russian art. Punin studied history at St. Petersburg University. He worked in the Department of Old Russian Painting at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, where he edited the arts articles in several publications, including Severnyye zapiski, and Russkaia ikuna. Punin was one of the first scholars to publish theories on Old Russian painting, serving as the director of the Fine Arts Department of an organization called Narkompros, from 1928-1921. He was appointed commissar at the Hermitage, Svomas, and Russian Museums. Between 1936 and 1921, Punin lectured on the contemporary Western European art at the Institute of Art History. He published articles and monographs on both contemporary and 19th century Russian artists, including Vladamir Tatlin, Pavel Kuznetsov, and Pavel Fedotov. Punin’s research combined historical and stylistic analysis. He was appointed professor of art history at the All-Russian art academy in 1932, and was a professor at Leningrad University from 1944-49, when he died in a concentration camp near the Arctic Circle.



Sources

The Dictionary of Art



Contributors: LaNitra Michele Walker


Citation

LaNitra Michele Walker. "Punin, Nikolay." Dictionary of Art Historians (website). https://arthistorians.info/puninn/.


More Resources

Search for materials by & about this art historian:

Critic, theorist, museum official, and historian of Russian art. Punin studied history at St. Petersburg University. He worked in the Department of Old Russian Painting at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, where he edited the arts articl