Art Blog: January 2024

01 Work, The art of War, Pieter Paul Rubens' The Battle of the Amazons, with Footnotes

Circle of Pieter Paul Rubens (Siegen1577-Antwerp1640)

The Battle of the Amazons, c. about 1630

Oil on canvas

112 x 158 frame 130 x 176

For sale for 36 000 € in Jan 2024

The tangle of naked bodies, some mutilated, gives the idea of the extreme violence used in battle and the terrified expressions of the horses are of rare intensity. Their anguished gazes are the most exciting moment of the spectacular composition. The author of this great work demonstrates all his pictorial abilities by giving a great sensation of movement and volume to all the protagonists. More on this painting

Born on June 28, 1577, Flemish artist Peter Paul Rubens was one of the most celebrated and prolific artists in Europe during his lifetime as well as the entire Baroque era. His patrons included royalty and churches, and his art depicted subjects from religion, history and mythology. Known for such works as "The Descent from the Cross," "Wolf and Fox Hunt," "Peace and War," "Self-Portrait with Helena and Peter Paul" and "The Garden of Love," Rubens's style combined a knowledge of Renaissance classicism with lush brushwork and a lively realism. He died in 1640. More on Peter Paul Rubens

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01 Work, The art of War, Afshin Pirhashemi's Untitled, with Footnotes

Afshin Pirhashemi (Iranian, b. 1974)

Untitled

Oil on canvas, c. 2015

in four parts, each: 78 ¾ x 31 ½in. (200 x 80cm.)

Private collection

Sold for USD 100,000 in May 2013

Instantly recognisable for their photo-realistic execution and monochromatic palette, Afshin Pirhashemi’s paintings examine the role of women in Iranian society and their relationship to the world around them. Tapping into the psychosocial dimensions of contemporary Iran, the artist explores manifestations of power as they appear or are negotiated through gendered bodies and spaces. Breaking down gender related barriers the artist simultaneously creates scenes rich with sensual, chaotic fantasy in a celebration of female beauty and strength. Pirhashemi’s ability to masterfully capture a subject’s physical features in hyperrealism can be seen at its very best in this striking portrait. Depicting the partially obscured visage of a young woman staring intensely out at the viewer, Pirhashemi’s finite markings alternate with loose brushstrokes, and his skilful use of chiaroscuro lend a dramatic tension to the canvas. More on this painting

Born in 1974 in Urmia, Afshin Pirhashemi now lives and works in Tehran. Pirhashemi studied at the Rome Art Academy and completed his artistic training at Iran’s Azad University. His works are housed in public and private collections throughout the Middle East and Europe and he is the recipient of awards from the 2003 Tehran 6th International Art Biennial, and the 2004 Beijing Art Biennial Award. Solo exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery DIFC, Dubai (2017); Ayyam Gallery, London (2014); Ayyam Gallery, Dubai (2015, 2013); Homa art Gallery, Tehran (2009); Seyhoun Art Gallery, Tehran (2005); and Barg Gallery, Tehran (2005). Group exhibitions include Ayyam Gallery, Al Quoz 1, Dubai (2018, 2016); In & Out, Milan (2009); Tehran Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2006); Museum of Contemporary Art, Tehran (2004, 2003) More on Afshin Pirhashemi

Please visit my other blogs: Art Collector, Mythology, Marine Art, Portrait of a Lady, The Orientalist, Art of the Nude and The Canals of Venice, Middle East Artists, 365 Saints, 365 Days, and Biblical Icons, also visit my Boards on Pinterest

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01 Work, The art of War, Karl Bryullov's The Last Day of Pompeii, with Footnotes

Karl Bryullov (1799–1852)

The Last Day of Pompeii, c. (1830 - 1833)

Oil on canvas

height: 456.5 cm (14.9 ft); width: 651 cm (21.3 ft)

Russian Museum

The destruction of Pompeii, Italy, is one of the most well-preserved catastrophes in human history. But scientists still disagree on how exactly thousands of Roman people died during those two fateful days in 79 C.E. For decades, many experts thought they asphyxiated amid the massive clouds of ash belched from the volcanic eruption of Mount Vesuvius. More recently, researchers have put forth a different idea: The victims perished instantaneously, when burning hot gas vaporized their body fluids. More on The destruction of Pompeii

Briullov visited Pompeii in 1828 and made sketches depicting the AD 79 Vesuvius eruption. The painting received rapturous reviews at its exhibition in Rome and brought Briullov more acclaim than any other work during his lifetime. The first Russian artwork to cause such an interest abroad, it inspired an anthologic poem by Alexander Pushkin, and the novel The Last Days of Pompeii by Edward Bulwer-Lytton. It depicts a classical topic but exhibits characteristics of Romanticism as manifested in Russian art, including drama, realism tempered with idealism, interest in nature, and a fondness for historical subjects. A self portrait is in the upper left corner of the painting, under the steeple, but not easy to identify. More on this painting

Karl Pavlovich Bryullov (born Dec. 12 [Dec. 23, 1799, St. Petersburg, Russia—died June 11, 1852, Marsciano, near Rome, Papal States [Italy]) Russian painter who combined technical proficiency and classical academic training with a Romantic spontaneity to produce some of the liveliest examples of Russian art of the period.

Bryullov was descended from French Huguenots, and his father was a sculptor. (The family name was Russified in 1821.) Bryullov was educated at the St. Petersburg Academy of Fine Arts (1809–21). He studied in Italy from 1823, painting his best-known work, the monumental “Last Day of Pompeii” (1830–33), while there; it brought him an international reputation. Though he painted other large canvases with historical subjects, none was as successful as “Pompeii.” Much of his continuing reputation rests on his more intimate portraits and his watercolours and travel sketches. More on Karl Pavlovich Bryullov

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01 Work, The Art of War, Léon Cogniet's Scène du Massacre des Innocents/ Massacre of the Innocents, with footnotes

Léon Cogniet (1794–1880)

Scène du Massacre des Innocents/ Massacre of the Innocents, c. 1824

Oil on canvas

height: 261.3 cm (102.8 in); width: 228.3 cm (89.8 in)

Museum of Fine Arts of Rennes

The Massacre of the Innocents is the biblical narrative of infanticide by Herod the Great, the Roman-appointed King of the Jews. According to the Gospel of Matthew, Herod ordered the execution of all young male children in the vicinity of Bethlehem, so as to avoid the loss of his throne to a newborn King of the Jews whose birth had been announced to him by the Magi. In typical Matthean style, it is understood as the fulfillment of an Old Testament prophecy: "Then was fulfilled that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet, saying, 'A voice is heard in Ramah, mourning and great weeping, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because her children are no more.'" The number of infants killed is not stated. The Holy Innocents have been claimed as martyrs for Christianity. More on The Massacre of the Innocents

It is generally the scene of the massacre of children (the Innocents) that artists choose to represent in large compositions with numerous characters. Cogniet takes a more original route here by focusing the gaze on the expression of a mother, whose face expresses both fear and dread. This option responds to the ideal that drives the new generation of romantic artists. The human drama then takes precedence over a more general vision of History. The mother, hidden under a staircase, tries to save her child by stifling his cries. Another mother takes the steps to escape an executioner in the background. The latter sees her fleeing and prepares to pursue her. More on this painting

Léon Cogniet (29 August 1794 – 20 November 1880) was a French history and portrait painter. He is probably best remembered as a teacher, with over one hundred well-known students.

He was born in Paris. His father was a painter and wallpaper designer. In 1812, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-arts, where he studied with Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. He also worked in the studios of Jean-Victor Bertin. After failing an attempt to win the Prix de Rome in 1816, he won the following year with his depiction of "Helen Rescued by Castor and Pollux" and received a stipend to study at the French Academy in Rome until 1822. Before leaving, he had his first exhibition at the Salon.

In 1827, he created a series of murals on the life of Saint Stephen for the church of Saint-Nicholas-des-Champs. From 1833 to 1835, he painted a scene from Napoleon's expedition to Egypt on one of the ceilings at the Louvre. Between 1840 and 1860, he operated a popular painting workshop for women, directed by his sister Marie Amélie and one of his students, Catherine Caroline Thévenin (1813–1892), who later became his wife. After 1843, he concentrated almost entirely on teaching, with an occasional portrait. After 1855, he essentially gave up painting.

After 1831, he taught design at the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. He also taught at the École polytechnique from 1847 to 1861. In 1851, he was appointed a Professor at the École des Beaux-arts, a position he held until 1863, when he retired, slowly giving up his private students and becoming more reclusive .

He died forgotten in the 10th arrondissement of Paris in 1880 and is interred at Père-Lachaise. More on Léon Cogniet

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01 Work, The Art of War, Bogdan Willewalde's the battle of Fère-Champenoise, with footnotes

Bogdan Willewalde (1818–1903)

Russian Life-Guards Horse-Regiment at the battle of Fère-Champenoise 13 (25) in March 1814, c. 1891

Oil on canvas

height: 61 cm (24 in); width: 84 cm (33 in)

Central Armed Forces Museum, Moskow

The Battle of Fère-Champenoise (25 March 1814) was fought between two Imperial French corps led by Marshals Auguste de Marmont and Édouard Mortier, duc de Trévise and a larger Coalition force composed of cavalry from the Austrian Empire, Kingdom of Prussia, Kingdom of Württemberg, and Russian Empire.

Caught by surprise by Field Marshal Karl Philipp, Prince of Schwarzenberg's main Coalition army, the forces under Marmont and Mortier were steadily driven back and finally completely routed by aggressive Allied horsemen and gunners, suffering heavy casualties and the loss of most of their artillery. Two divisions of French National Guards under Michel-Marie Pacthod escorting a nearby convoy were also attacked and wiped out in the Battle of Bannes. The battleground was near the town Fère-Champenoise located 40 kilometres (25 mi) southwest of Châlons-en-Champagne. More on this painting

Bogdan Pavlovich Willewalde (German: Gottfried Willewalde; January 12, 1819, Pavlovsk, Saint Petersburg - March 24, 1903, Dresden) was a Russian artist, academic, emeritus Professor of military art, and a fellow of the Imperial Academy of Arts.

Willewalde was born in a noble family of Bavarian origin. From childhood, he was acquainted with and a playmate of the Russian Grand Dukes and intimately connected to the Imperial family and its official hierarchy.

His initial art studies were with Jungstedt, following which he was admitted to the St Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts in 1838. He studied under Karl Bryullov and Alexander Sauerweid. In the 1840s, having achieved success in his academic studies, he was despatched abroad - to Dresden - to train in art of the war of 1813. In 1844, he was recalled to St Petersburg upon the death of Sauerweid, to finish the latter's cycle of the Russian war against Napoleon. In 1848, he was appointed as professor in the Imperial Academy of Arts, and chair of the military arts section.

Willewalde is one of the main representatives of the dominant type of battle painting of the 19th century, combining its strengths and weaknesses. He remained dependent on the academy which at the time supported and maintained the genre of military art. There were stringent requirements of the portrayer of war, given the development of realism in art in general: accurate representation especially in the form and presentation of the participating troops; it was to reflect the official position on that war, remaining reliant on the official dispatches. Willewalde's entire oeuvre was circumscribed by these demands: accuracy, depicting the truth as represented by the Russian authorities, finely finished, but never causing worry. More on Bogdan Pavlovich Willewalde

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05 works, the art of war, pharaoh Thutmose III in Ghaza, with footnotes

Armies of chariots and 10,000 foot soldiers under the pharaoh Thutmose III thundered through Gaza and defeated a coalition of Canaanite chiefdoms at Megiddo; situated in northern Israel, about 30 kilometres (19 mi) south-east of Haifa.

Megiddo is known for its historical, geographical, and theological importance, especially under its Greek name Armageddon. During the Bronze Age, Megiddo was an important Canaanite city-state and during the Iron Age, a royal city in the Kingdom of Israel.

A fragment of a painted limestone relief dating to about 1400 B.C. from Thebes in Egypt depicts defeated Canaanites

Sandstone, paint

H. 61.5 × W. 115 × Th. 21 cm, 306.2 kg (24 3/16 × 45 1/4 × 8 1/4 in.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art

His march to Gaza to conquer the city of Megiddo was marked by an unexpected decision to take a treacherous and unlikely approach through a narrow path over the mountains. The city of Megiddo was defeated. The taking of Megiddo was important for Egypt’s economy. Without Megiddo’s open trade routes, Egypt could not flourish. The great king’s army of about 15,000 men stopped the uprising in this area and expanded Egypt to an extent it had never known before.

Wall relief from Egypt reveals an image of an ancient Canaanite

Part of the Ancient Egyptian region of Canaan, Gaza was best known in ancient times for its strategic location as an important trading center for Asian, European and North African markets.

As with many colonial ventures before and since, military conquest led to a new cultural order in the occupied lands. Across Israel, archaeologists have found evidence that Canaanites took to Egyptian customs. They created items worthy of tombs on the Nile, including clay coffins modeled with human faces and burial goods such as faience necklaces and decorated pots. More on these works

Egypt’s presence in Canaan ended sooner than the pharaohs might have expected. With Canaan under assault from seaborne invaders and hit by drought so severe it caused food shortages, Egypt’s colonial rule began to crumble around 1200 B.C.

The region of Gaza, a 25-mile long, 7-mile wide finger of land along the Mediterranean at the border between Israel and Egypt, has been at the center of geopolitical tug-of-wars for its entire existence.

Polychrome relief of the warrior king Thutmose III (1479-1425 BC) wearing the Atef crown and false beard, from Deir el-Bahari. Now in the Luxor Museum.

The desirability of the territory resulted in frequent battles for its control. Gaza was conquered by the Philistines in the 13th century B.C., razed by the Hasmonean Kingdom and suffered incursions from the likes of Napoleon and Alexander the Great, whose army put the entire male population to death for refusing to surrender. More on Ghaza

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01 Work, The Art of War, Frank Brangwyn's Mater Dolorosa Belgica (Our Lady of Sorrows), with footnotes

Frank Brangwyn (1867–1956)

Mater Dolorosa Belgica (Our Lady of Sorrows), c. 1915

Oil on canvas

H 159 x W 234 cm

William Morris Gallery

Painted in 1915, Mater Dolorosa Belgica (Our Lady of Sorrows) conveys Brangwyn's deep concern for Belgium in the midst of war. The cathedral is on fire, smoke rising from its roof. On the left are a group of refugees, and on the right a row of soldiers marching on. In the centre of the composition the Virgin Mary holds the dead body of Christ. It is a symbol of both sorrow and hope of resurrection.

Brangwyn poured his considerable energies into the war effort. He was driven by his personal loyalty to Belgium and a deep empathy for the fate of ordinary people. He designed 80 posters, which have become synonymous with First World War propaganda, as well as supporting refugee artists and contributing to fundraising exhibitions. More on this painting

Sir Frank William Brangwyn RA RWS RBA (12 May 1867 – 11 June 1956) was a Welsh artist, painter, watercolourist, printmaker, illustrator, and designer.

Brangwyn worked in a wide range of artistic fields. As well as paintings and drawings, he produced designs for stained glass, furniture, ceramics, glass tableware, mosaics, buildings and interiors, was a lithographer and woodcutter and was a book illustrator. It has been estimated that during his lifetime Brangwyn produced over 12,000 works. His mural commissions would cover over 22,000 sq ft (2,000 m2) of canvas, he painted over 1,000 oils, over 660 mixed media works (watercolours, gouache), over 500 etchings, about 400 wood-engravings and woodcuts, 280 lithographs, 40 architectural and interior designs, 230 designs for items of furniture and 20 stained glass panels and windows.

Brangwyn received some artistic training, probably from his father, and later from Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo and in the workshops of William Morris, but he was largely an autodidact without a formal artistic education. When, at the age of seventeen, one of his paintings was accepted at the Royal Academy Summer Exhibition, he was strengthened in his conviction to become an artist. Initially, he painted traditional subjects about the sea and life on the seas. His 1890 canvas, Funeral At Sea won a medal of the third class at the 1891 Paris Salon. The murals for which Brangwyn was famous, and during his lifetime he was very famous indeed, were brightly coloured and crowded with details of plants and animals, although they became flatter and less flamboyant later in his life. More on Sir Frank William Brangwyn

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01 Work, The Art of War, Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson's Ypres after the First Bombardment, with footnotes

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (1889–1946)

Ypres after the First Bombardment, c. 1916

Oil on canvas

H 99.1 x W 124.8 cm

Sheffield Museums

Nevinson depicts a desolate scene of the smoking, burning carcass of the Belgian city of Ypres after it was first bombed in 1914. Nevinson would have witnessed the scarred remains of the city while enlisted with the Friends’ Ambulance Unit as a driver on the Western Front. The skeleton of the once magnificent city, with its empty windows, blown off roofs and exposed inner walls is depicted from a disturbing aerial perspective, as if we were following the path of the falling shells. More on this painting

Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson (b London, 13 Aug. 1889; d London, 7 Oct. 1946) was a British painter and printmaker. As a student at the Académie Julian, Paris, in 1912–13 Nevinson met several of the Futurists and he became the outstanding British exponent of their style. His work included landscapes, urban scenes, figure compositions, and flowers, but he found his ideal subjects during the First World War. He served in France with the Red Cross and the Royal Army Medical Corps, 1914–16, before being invalided out, and his harsh, steely images of life and death in the trenches received great acclaim when he held a one-man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries, London, in 1916. Stylistically they drew on certain Cubist as well as Futurist ideas, but they are closer to the work of the Vorticists (with whom he had exhibited in 1915).

In 1917 Nevinson returned to France as an Official War Artist, and he was the first to make drawings from the air. Some of his work was considered too unpleasant for public viewing and was censored, but a second one-man exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in 1918 was another triumph. At the end of the war Nevinson renounced Futurism and his later, more conventional paintings are generally regarded as an anticlimax: an example is Twentieth Century (1932–5, Laing AG, Newcastle upon Tyne), an ambitious but rather turgid attempt to portray a world on the brink of catastrophe. More on Christopher Richard Wynne Nevinson

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01 Work, The Art of War, Eugenio Álvarez Dumont's Malasaña and his daughter fight against the French, with footnotes

Álvarez Dumont, Eugenio

Malasaña and his daughter fight against the French in one of the streets leading down from the park to San Bernardo. The Second of May 1808, c. 1887

Oil on canvas

Height: 365 cm; Width: 267 cm

Museo del Prado

The painting illustrates the moment when the guerrilla Juan Manuel Malasaña Pérez (1759–1808) kills the French dragoon who has just murdered his daughter, the embroiderer Manuela Malasaña Oñoro (1793– 1808), who was supplying her father with rifle cartridges to fight the French troops from her house during the assault on Monteleón Park. The scene takes place on the corner of the current Calle Daoíz and Calle San Bernardo, in front of the church of Montserrat. More on this painting

Eugenio Álvarez Dumont (1864, Tunis - 1927, Buenos Aires) was a Spanish painter; primarily of Orientalist and costumbrista scenes, although he is best remembered as a battle painter, for his scenes from the Peninsular War.

He received his first artistic training at the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Fernando in Madrid, then at the Academia de España and the Accademia Chigi in Rome. He received an honorary mention there for one of his first sketches; The Death of Churruca.

In 1898, he travelled through North Africa with his brother, producing Orientalist scenes. Later, he moved to Paris then, finally to Madrid, where he dedicated himself to teaching, at the Escuela de Artes e Industrias, and painting costumbrista scenes. He was awarded medals at the National Exhibition of Fine Arts in 1887 and 1892.

Toward the end of his life, he settled in Buenos Aires, where he did decorative paintings as well as canvases, and provided illustrations for Argentine books and magazines. More on Eugenio Álvarez Dumont

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01 Work, The Art of War, Iythar Ghurab's Fighter, with footnotes

Iythar Ghurab

Fighter

Acrylic on Paper

8.3 W x 11.7 H x 0.8 D in

Private collection

For sale at C$1,320 in Jan 2024

"This painting is inspired by the unbelievable injustice, genocide, massacres and 75 year long crimes committed against the Palestinian people, by the Israeli occupiers, bombing civilians, women and children, bombing hospitals, shelters and schools and all exit routes, flattening their homes, ruining their fields and stealing their land, putting their children in prison for decades, with the sickening enabling from the powerful countries in the world, echoing what the European settlers did to the native Americans and the Australian aboriginals. It's on us to say no to the blood shed, the injustice, the oppression and to help give the land back to its real owners. The world has suffered enough." Iythar Ghurab

"I'm a British/Egyptian artist residing in the UK, I like to explore Surrealist, abstract and conceptual painting approaches, I also have a passion for painting portraits. I don’t restrict myself to any particular medium or method of painting. Throughout my work I try to bring forth stories, moments in time, to capture a memory or feeling. I’m also noted for my portraiture work and have received several commissions. My work can be found in private and public collections throughout Egypt, Austria, USA, Canada, Australia, UAE Saudi Arabia and the UK." Iythar Ghurab

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01 Work, The Art of War, Diego Rivera's The Uprising, 1931, with footnotes

Diego Rivera

The Uprising, c. 1931

Fresco

74 x 93 3/4" (188 x 238.1 cm)

Vicky and Marcos Micha Levy, Mexico

You see the men wearing workers’ overalls and the women wearing modern day short dresses and short hair cuts and even earrings. It’s an urban industrial scene, and it’s a workers’ demonstration.

In the very center of the composition is a woman actively asserting herself against the forces of oppression. She is pushing back the soldier’s arm as he holds a sword out, protecting her baby, but also her family. She becomes, in this picture, an emblem for the collective force of workers asserting themselves.

The red flags in the background are a key signal of Rivera's own Communist background. He joined the Mexican Communist Party in 1922, when it was still very small. And he was even a member of its Executive Committee for a number of years, until he was expelled in 1929, in part because of his criticism of the party’s Stalinist orthodoxy. More on this painting

Diego Rivera (December 8, 1886 – November 24, 1957), was a prominent Mexican painter. His large frescoes helped establish the mural movement in Mexican and international art.

Between 1922 and 1953, Rivera painted murals in, among other places, Mexico City, Chapingo, and Cuernavaca, Mexico; and San Francisco, Detroit, and New York City, United States. In 1931, a retrospective exhibition of his works was held at the Museum of Modern Art in New York; this was before he completed his 27-mural series known as Detroit Industry Murals.

Rivera had four wives and numerous children, including at least one natural (illegitimate) daughter. His first child and only son died at the age of two. His third wife was fellow Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, with whom he had a volatile relationship that continued until her death. His fourth and final wife was his agent.

Due to his importance in the country's art history, the government of Mexico declared Rivera's works as monumentos históricos. As of 2018, Rivera holds the record for highest price at auction for a work by a Latin American artist. The 1931 painting The Rivals, part of the record-setting Collection of Peggy Rockefeller and David Rockefeller, sold for US$9.76 million. More on Diego Rivera

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01 Work, The Art of War, Jack Kevorkian's The muse of genocide, with footnotes

Jack Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011)

1915 Genocide, 1945 Series, The muse of genocide

Mixed media

Armenian Library and Museum of America, in Watertown, Massachusetts.

“Go ahead, destroy this race! Destroy Armenia; see if you can do it. Send them from their homes into the desert. Let them have neither bread nor water. Burn their homes and churches. Then see if they will not laugh again; see if they will not sing and pray again. For when two of them meet anywhere in the world, see if they will not create a new Armenia.” The words belong to the bard of Fresno and apostle of Armenian-American letters, William Saroyan

This image strongly demonstrates that genocide subordinates human life in favor of an ideology. The woman’s head is being displayed as a prize. It is a prize because it is symbolic of what those who commit genocide revile, and, therefore, a symbol of victory. The act of mass killing becomes victory of a cause. It’s also important that Kevorkian used a woman’s head in the painting, because this further demonstrates that genocide is not an act between soldiers. Genocide indiscriminately targets those who are “other,” because it is an attempt to eliminate an entire group of human beings. More on this painting

Jack Kevorkian (May 26, 1928 – June 3, 2011) was an American pathologist and euthanasia proponent. He publicly championed a terminal patient's right to die by physician-assisted suicide, embodied in his quote, "Dying is not a crime". Kevorkian said that he assisted at least 130 patients to that end. He was convicted of murder in 1999 and was often portrayed in the media with the name of "Dr. Death".

In 1998, Kevorkian was arrested and tried for his role in the voluntary euthanasia of a man named Thomas Youk who had Lou Gehrig's disease, or ALS. He was convicted of second-degree murder and served eight years of a 10-to-25-year prison sentence. He was released on parole on June 1, 2007, on condition he would not offer advice about, participate in, or be present at the act of any type of euthanasia to any other person, nor that he promote or talk about the procedure of assisted suicide.

Kevorkian was also an oil painter. His work tended toward the grotesque and surreal, and he had created pieces of symbolic art. The original oil prints are not for release. More on Jack Kevorkian

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