How to Pronounce the Names of 25 Famous Artists

Mediums: Painting, Sculpture

Born in the Netherlands in 1904, de Kooning was an Abstract Expressionist artist who was part of the New York School, a group of post-World War II era artists that also included Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko.

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Mediums: Painting, Lithography

Born in 1791, Géricault is a French artist best known for his work The Raft of the Medusa (1819) which is an icon of French Romanticism. The life-sized painting depicts a scene from a contemporary shipwreck, in which the captain of the ship left the crew and passengers to die. The painting addresses the Romantic theme of man's relationship with nature.

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Mediums: Painting, Drawing, Photography, Sculpture, Writing, Film

Born in 1904, Dalí is a Spanish surrealist artist who has become reconizable for his bizzare art. Known for his "melting clocks," Dalí became an icon not only for his art, but for his eccentric personna. Later in his career, he moved to focus on film, even working with Alfred Hitchcock to create the dream sequence in Hitchcock's Spellbound.

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Medium: Performance Art

The self-proclaimed "Grandmother of Performance Art," Abramović was born in Belgrade, Socialist Republic of Serbia in 1944. Her work explores the relationship between the audience and the performer and the limits of the body and the mind. She is known to go through extremes for her art. In 1973, as part of her work Rhythm 10, she played the Russian Game, in which one rhythmically stabs in between the fingers of hand, as a result of which she cut herself 20 times.

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Medium: Painting

A New York-based artist originally from Los Angeles, Wiley was born in 1977 to a Nigerian father and African-American father, which explains his exploration of urban African-American and African men in heroic poses. His work addresses the image and status of African-American youth in contemporary society. One of Wiley's most reconizable works Napoleon Leading the Army over the Alps (2005) is based on the 1800 Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David, with a young African man taking the place of Napoleon Bonaparte.

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Mediums: Painting, Sculpture, Ceramics

Born in 1983 in Barcelona, Spain, Miró is perhaps best known for his large-scale sculptures such as Dona i Ocell (1982). Categorized as a surreal artist, Miró's work is regarded as a re-creation of the childlike and a destruction of conventionalism.

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Mediums: Painting, Film, Sculpture

Born in 1960, Ligon is an American conceptual artist whose work explores sexuality, race, language, and identity. He is perhaps best known for his work with neon light. One of his more prominent pieces spells out "negro sunshine" in white neon light, with the front painted over in black paint. In 2009, President Barack Obama added Ligon's painting Black Like Me No. 2 to the White House collection, installed in the President's private quarters.

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Mediums: Painting, Sculpture

Born in Hamburg, Germany in 1936, Hesse is known for her use of innovative materials in her sculpture, such as latex, fiberglass, and plastics. In 1939, Hesse's family fled Germany to New York City, following the Nazi persecution of Jews.

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Mediums: Sculpture, Installation

A Ghanaian sculptor born in 1944, El Anatsui uses clay and wood to create sculptures that explore Ghanaian beliefs and culture. His work has been exhibited at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, National Museum of African Art, Washington D.C., Brooklyn Museum, and other prominent museums around the world.

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Mediums: Sculpture, Installation

Born in 1933, Flavin was an American artist known for his work with fluorescent light. He worked with large spaces, illuminating them with bright fluorescent lighting, exploring light, color, and space. He preferred to tailor his pieces to proposed spaces, rather than studio-produced work.

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Mediums: Painting, Printmaking

Born in 1953 in South Africa, Dumas now lives in Amsterdam. Her work explores the realities of the human body, choosing to paint her subjects either near birth or death with a preference for nudes and funerary portraits. She uses her work to question contemporary ideas of racial, sexual, and social identities.

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Medium: Painting

One of the most iconic American painters of all time, Pollock is almost synonymous with the Abstract Expressionist movement. Known for his drip painting, Pollock lived to be only 44 and died in a single-car crash in 1956.

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Mediums: Sculpture, Architecture, Photography, Film

Born in Beijing, China in 1957, Ai Weiwei is a political activist and dissident, who has openly criticized the Chinese government for their corruption and abuse of human rights. In 2011 he was arrested and detained for almost three months by the Chinese governement with charges of tax evasion. The world art community came to his defense with a large sign displayed by Tate Modern reading "Release Ai Weiwei." He is most wildly recognized for his role as consultant on the design of the Beijing National Stadium for the 2008 Olympics. He is widely regarded as one of the most imporatnt artists of our time, in addition to being one of TIME Magazine's Person of the Year 2011.

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Medium: Painting

An American painter associated with the Pop Art movement, Thiebaud was born in Arizona in 1920. His works often addressed mass culture, featuring subjects such as cakes, pastries, toys, toilets, boots, and Mickey Mouse. He is thought to have influenced the Pop Art movement as the first prominent artist to explore mass culture.

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Medium: Graffiti

The twin brothers from Sao Paulo, Brazil, born in 1974 are known for their depictions of yellow-skinned characters, though their work ranges from tags to large-scale murals. They are perhaps Brazil's most renowned graffiti artists, and their works often address political and social issues in Brazil juxtaposed with Brazilian folklore.

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Medium: Installation

On Kawara is ae Japanese conceptual artist born in 1933. His works focuses on exploring the concepts of time and space. His most renowned work is the Date Paintings (1965), in which he paints in acrylic various dates in typographical letters and numbers.

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Medium: Photography

Born in 1959, Dijkstra is a Dutch photographer best known for her series of portraits of adolescents and soldiers. She is also known for her series of photographs in which she follows various individuals, documenting the evolution of their lives.

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Medium: Photography

Born in 1964 in Munich, Germany, Teller moved to London in 1986 to avoid national military service. Best known for his fashion photography, Teller has shot campaigns for Mark Jacobs, Celine, and Vivienne Westwood.

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Mediums: Painting, LED Signs, Bronze Plaques, Painted Signs, Stickers, Condoms, Photography, Sound, Video, Light Projection

Born in 1950, Holzer is an American conceptual artist whose works comment on violence, oppression, sexuality, feminism, power, war, and death. Her main goal is to illuminate issues through art, explaining her use of large scale public spaces such as billboards and light projections onto buildings.

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Mediums: Performance Art, Sculpture

Inspired by his experiences during World War II, when his plane was (supposedly) shot down during a snowstorm over Crimea, where he was saved by nomadic Tartars, Beuys' work is often considered to be a reflection of his struggles with his participation in the war. During the 1960s, Beuys developed "Social Sculpture," birthed from his belief that art could transform society.

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Medium: Photography

Known for her photgraphy of deviant and marginal people, including giants, dwarfs, and nudists, Arbus strived to show the flaws of life. Her work remains quite controversial, with many calling Arbus "the Photographer of Freaks," a title she had tried to avoid.

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Mediums: Painting, Printmaking

Born in Norway in 1963, Munch is perhaps most known for his 1893 painting The Scream, which represents the anxieties of the modern man. Munch is known for the psychological themes in his art, following the trends of 19th-century Symbolism.

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Medium: Painting

Born in 1879 in Switzerlad, Klee is known for a unique style of painting influenced by Cubism, Expressionism, Surrealism, and Orientalism. His writing on color theory, "Paul Klee Notebooks," is considered to be as influential on modern art as Leonardo da Vinci's "A Treatise on Painting" was on the art of the Renaissance. Klee taught at the Bauhaus school from 1921 to 1931, He is also known for his friendship with the Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky.

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Mediums: Painting, photogorahy

Born in 1895, Moholy-Nagy was a professor at the Bauhaus school from 1923 to 1928. In 1937, he went on to become the director of the New Bauhaus in Chicago, after Bauhaus was shut down in 1933 due to pressure from the Nazi government. As a supporter of the integration of techonology into the arts, Maholy-Nagy is perhaps best known for his Light-Space Modulator (1930), a scultpure with moving parts which projects light.

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Mediums: Painting, printmaking, drawing, photography, film

Ruscha is known for his bold art featuring phrases or words such as "Hollywood is a Verb." In 1962, along with Roy Lichtenstein and Andy Warhol, Ruscha exhibited his work in "New Painting of Common Objects" at the Pasadena Art Museum, which is considered to be the first Pop Art exhibition. Much of his work has been inspired by hitchhiking and living in California, and earlier this year he made TIME's 100 Most Influential People list.

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