The Worst Things That Have Happened to Great Artists

Image via Complex Original

Michelangelo was only 15 when his nose was crushed by fellow art student, Pietro Torrigiano. One day, Michelangelo, sharp-eyed critic that he was, kept pointing out the flaws in other students' frescoes when the frustrated Torrigiano punched him in the face. The blow knocked Michelangelo unconscious and left him with a lifelong facial disfigurement, an incident that colored his adult life with insecurity and depression.

Torrigiano, however, had it worse. A few years later, he was sentenced to death after destroying a painting of a saint. Now his only legacy is as the guy who ruined Michelangelo's face.

Rembrandt and his wife, Saskia, experienced tragedy at the beginning of their marriage, with the deaths of their first three children occurring only days after their births. Finally, their son Titus was born, who would bring Rembrandt joy for years to come. However, the year following Titus' birth, Saskia herself passed away when she was only 30 years old.

Rembrandt, though he had done well for himself as an artist by frequently accepting commissions from wealthy patrons, had poor spending habits and found himself sinking further into debt while grieving his wife. Soon, he had to declare bankruptcy and sell his house and art collection.

The remainder of Rembrandt's life was colored with further tragedies, such as the deaths of his mistress and Titus from the plague. The gauntlet of tragedy that Rembrandt faced throughout his adult life left its mark in his self-portraits, in which he looks increasingly somber and tired as the years progress.

Hundreds of people perished and thousands of homes were destroyed in the earthquake that struck the Picasso family's hometown of Málaga, Spain when Pablo was only three. Luckily no one in their family was harmed, though they could no longer stay in the city. They took refuge at a family friend's and eventually relocated to a new town. Picasso's younger sister, Lola, was born only three days after the massive earthquake.

The trauma of the natural disaster on young Picasso's psyche and his anxiety over his pregnant mother's and unborn sister's health later influenced the chaotic imagery in Guernica, his piece on the Spanish Civil War. 

Historians debate Leonardo da Vinci's sexuality. Though he purportedly was homosexual or bisexual, in reality, he left behind no concrete information about his love life. He never engaged openly in a relationship with a woman, and though he surrounded himself with beautiful male studio assistants and models for his drawings, there is no evidence that he was attracted to them.

Sodomy was illegal in 15th century Italy, though rarely were charges raised for it, and homosexuality wasn't a cultural taboo. Despite all this, da Vinci was charged with sodomy when he was 24, along with four other young men. He spent two months in jail until the charges were dropped due to lack of evidence.

Financial, familial, romantic, mental: it is no small feat to record all of the obstacles that Vincent van Gogh faced in his lifetime. His erratic behavior presents itself perhaps most clearly in his romantic life. As a young man, he fell in love with his first cousin, Kee. To prove his love for his cousin, he held his hand in a kerosene flame. Eventually, he settled down with a prostitute, but this only caused more tension with his family.

Destitute and alienated from society, van Gogh was prone to nervous breakdowns whenever he felt that one of his few important relationships was threatened. One such incident occurred after a nasty argument with his roommate, fellow painter Paul Gauguin, and drove him to cut off his own ear. Eventually, van Gogh's depression led him to commit suicide. Modern day psychologists speculate that van Gogh suffered from bipolar disorder.

Known as the "Picasso of India," M.F. Husain became a controversial figure in the mid-1990s when he depicted Hindu gods and goddesses in the nude. Many people felt that the works were anti-Hindu, and he was charged with hurting the sentiments of the people. Though the Supreme Court of India declared that he could not be punished, he received so many death threats that he fled India altogether.

Husain spent the rest of his life as a citizen of Qatar, continuing to paint, but never returning to his native Indian soil until his death in 2011.

Robert Mapplethorpe rose to prominence on New York's art scene in the 1970s thanks to his incredible photography. Throughout his career, he experimented with a variety of photographic subjects, becoming especially interested in controversial subject matter like pornographic film stars and the S&M underground scene.

In 1986, Mapplethorpe was diagnosed with AIDS. He continued to expand his artistic career despite the illness and in 1988 had his first major American retrospective at the Whitney Museum of Art. In the same year, he founded the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation. In 1989, the iconic American photographer died.

Influential German painter Max Beckmann was respected as one of Germany's foremost Modernist painters when Hitler came into power in 1933. As a result of the Nazi effort to purge the country of any abstract art, all of Beckmann's paintings were removed from museums and galleries, and his once esteemed place in society declined rapidly.

Eventually, when his paintings were included in Hitler's "Degenerate Art" exhibition, Beckmann and his family fled to Amsterdam, where they spent the next decade isolated from the public. During this time, Beckmann painted in an abandoned farm house.

Italian painter Caravaggio was orphaned at the age of 11 when the bubonic plague killed his entire family. As a child, he supported himself by assisting artists in their studios, and he grew up to become a prolific painter himself.

Not without demons, Caravaggio was known for his mood swings, heavy drinking, and violence. In 1606, he killed a pimp in a brawl and spent the next four years, until his death, running from the authorities. He died while he was on his way to beg for the pope's pardon.

Darkness ruled over Munch's artistic endeavors in the same way that coal fuels a locomotive and tracks give it direction. He spoke of his inner demons as if they were companions: "Illness, insanity, and death were the black angels that kept watch over my cradle and accompanied me all my life."

A series of family tragedies set the stage of Munch's lifelong depression. When he was only four, his mother died of tuberculosis; a few years later, his sister died; his other sister spent most of her life in an asylum; and his brother died of pneumonia when they were young adults. As an adult, depression, mental illness, and alcoholism challenged Munch's career and health. His most famous painting, The Scream, depicts the infinite anxiety and dread that Munch felt throughout his life.

Owen Maseko is a contemporary Zimbabwean painter who has been persecuted for his art by the country's authoritarian leader, Robert Mugabe. In 2010, Maseko held an exhibition of red-hued, emotive paintings that depicted and reflected upon the Gukurahundi, a period during the 1980s in which the Mugabe regime carried out widespread massacres in the western part of Zimbabwe. Maseko believes that the only way for the nation to move past these atrocities is to talk about them in a forum such as his exhibition; however, Mugabe saw the paintings as a threat to his leadership.

Authorities transported Maseko from his exhibition in shackles, imprisoned him for four days, and interrogated him in 12-hour intervals of time. If convicted of his charges, which include libel against the state, Maseko could face up to 20 years in prison.

As a child in an abusive household, Kurelek began experiencing hallucinations and a phobia of blindness that would haunt him throughout his life. He found comfort in Christianity and began drawing religious scenes to escape from everyday life.

In his mid-20s, Kurelek admitted himself to a psychiatric hospital where he was treated for depression, schizophrenia, and psychosomatic eye pain. While in the hospital, he painted The Maze, his most famous piece. The painting is self-reflective of Kurelek's problems, portrayed as compartments inside his skull. Later in his career, he converted to Roman Catholicism and produced a large body of religious artwork.

René Magritte's mother suffered from depression so severe that for most of his childhood, she lived locked in her room. One night, when Magritte was 14, she escaped from her room and immediately rushed to throw herself into a river that ran behind the property. When her body was found a few days later, her nightgown had become tangled around her head, leaving her corpse exposed.

An acquaintance began the rumor that René was present when his mother was removed from the river. Though this is false, the event did profoundly affect his life and work. Many of his Surrealist paintings depict women with cloth over their faces, faceless figures, or seriously injured women. Two such examples are his paintings The Lovers, in which a couple, each wrapped in their own veil, kiss, and The Menaced Assassin, which depicts the scene of a murder.

Auguste Rodin, the Parisian sculptor, was already married when he began a relationship with Camille Claudel, his studio assistant. The affair was no fling. The duo became artistic equals and serious lovers, though Rodin refused to leave his wife, Rose. Claudel's presence in Rodin's studio forever altered his artistic style. However, Rodin received most of the credit for her work, and she received little respect publicly.

The affair came to destroy every aspect of Claudel's life. The man she loved would never leave his wife, he controlled her art and her career, and her public reputation was in a downward spiral. This led to a nervous breakdown, after which she was diagnosed with schizophrenia and committed to an insane asylum for 30 years. Claudel died in the asylum.

The Armenian Genocide began in Ottoman-Turkey at the beginning of the 20th century, when Arshile Gorky was an infant. Throughout his childhood and as a teenager, Gorky lived as a refugee in Armenian Turkey, witnessing the systematic murder of his people, as well as his mother's death by starvation. Finally, in 1920, two years after the Imperial Government issued orders that all Armenian people be slaughtered, Gorky and his sister, Vartoosh, immigrated to the United States.

Gorky established himself quickly as an artist in New York and became one of the bridging innovators between Surrealism and Abstract Expressionism. Gorky lived a great portion of his adult life uninterrupted by tragedy until a string of unfortunate events, such as trouble in his marriage and a fire in his studio, lead him to commit suicide when he was in his early 40s.

Contemporary artist and anti-authoritarian political activist Ai Weiwei has had altercations with the Chinese government on more than one occasion. In the past, he has been beaten by police, ordered to demolish his studio, and placed under house arrest. In 2011, police searched Weiwei's studio, seized all his digital information on computers and hard drives, and arrested the artist under suspicion of tax evasion. He remained imprisoned for 81 days, during which two of his assistants and his accountant disappeared, one of whom remains missing.

More recently, the authorities have confiscated Weiwei's passport, so he cannot leave China. Currently, Weiwei is planning his largest solo exhibition to date, "Evidence" in Berlin, and he is petitioning for the return of his passport so that he may physically attend.

Feminist writer Valerie Solanas had a small role in some of Warhol's projects, a position she gained purely though her persistence. In 1968, her frustrated efforts to gain the artist's attention inspired her to shoot Warhol and his studio assistant, Mario Amaya. The bullet entered Warhol's abdomen and exited through his back. The surgeons discovered that it pulverized his insides, and they declared Warhol deceased for a minute and a half. A lengthy operation saved his life. Solanas later turned herself in.

When Kahlo was 18 years old, she and her boyfriend were on a bus that collided with a trolley. Many passengers were crushed under the wheels of the trolley, though the couple miraculously survived. A handrail pierced Kahlo's lower abdomen, rendering her bedridden for months and infertile for the rest of her life. While she was healing from the tragedy, she began painting.

The horrific trauma and her many subsequent miscarriages are reflected in her paintings, perhaps most noticeably in Henry Ford Hospital, where she depicts herself laying in a hospital bed surrounded by a miscarried baby and a variety of symbolic objects including a snail, an orchid, and a pelvic bone.