Frank Ancona

Orfeo Tamburi was an Italian painter and scenic designer. After moving to Rome, he trained in the Roman School, and from an early age took part in the artistic life of the city, collaborating with articles and drawings in L'Italia Letteraria, Il Selvaggio and other magazines. His artworks were exhibited in Italy - at the Venice Biennale and the Rome Quadrennial - but also abroad. Tamburi's favorite subjects were mainly landscapes, urban views and Roman, Venetian and Parisian portraits. The artist was also active as a draftsman, illustrating old and modern works of poets and writers with etchings, lithographs and drawings. He created fifty drawings for Little Rome, with a poem by Ungaretti (Urbinati, 1944), Cineraccio by Leonardo Sinisgalli (Cento Amici del Book, 1966) and many others. In 1979, the Editions Denoël of Paris and Il Cigno Stamperia d'Arte in Rome published a precious three-volume work entitled Paris 20 + 1 with texts by Nino Frank, Georges Pillement and Paul Guth. For this edition, Tamburi created 105 drawings in black and 21 etchings in etching and aquatint in many colors. In 1941, the well-known futurist painter Gino Severini dedicated a monograph to the artist published by the publishing house Documento in the first volume of the series Artisti d'’oggi. In 1947, he moved to Paris, which from that moment became his city. Among the numerous awards obtained for his artistic activity, the First Class Gold Medal for the merit of Culture and Art awarded by the President of the Republic is significant.

Used to refer to a time rather than an aesthetic, Contemporary art generally describes pieces created after 1970 or being made by living artists anywhere in the world. This immediacy means it encompasses art responding to the present moment through diverse subjects, media and themes. Contemporary painting, sculpture, photography, performance, digital art, video and more frequently includes work that is attempting to reshape current ideas about what art can be, from Felix Gonzalez-Torres’s use of candy to memorialize a lover he lost to AIDS-related complications to Jenny Holzer’s ongoing “Truisms,” a Conceptual series that sees provocative messages printed on billboards, T-shirts, benches and other public places that exist outside of formal exhibitions and the conventional “white cube” of galleries.

Contemporary art has been pushing the boundaries of creative expression for years. Its disruption of the traditional concepts of art are often aiming to engage viewers in complex questions about identity, society and culture. In the latter part of the 20th century, contemporary movements included Land art, in which artists like Robert Smithson and Michael Heizer create large-scale, site-specific sculptures, installations and other works in soil and bodies of water; Sound art, with artists such as Christian Marclay and Susan Philipsz centering art on sonic experiences; and New Media art, in which mass media and digital culture inform the work of artists such as Nam June Paik and Rafaël Rozendaal.

The first decades of the 21st century have seen the growth of Contemporary African art, the revival of figurative painting, the emergence of street art and the rise of NFTs, unique digital artworks that are powered by blockchain technology.

Major Contemporary artists practicing now include Ai Weiwei, Cecily Brown, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Jeff Koons, Takashi Murakami and Kara Walker.

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Bring energy and an array of welcome colors and textures into your space by decorating with figurative fine-art prints and works on paper.

Figurative art stands in contrast to abstract art, which is more expressive than representational. The oldest-known work of figurative art is a figurative painting — specifically, a rock painting of an animal made over 40,000 years ago in Borneo. This remnant of a remote past has long faded, but its depiction of a cattle-like creature in elegant ocher markings endures.

Since then, figurative art has evolved significantly as it continues to represent the world, including a breadth of works on paper, including printmaking. This includes woodcuts, which are a type of relief print with perennial popularity among collectors. The artist carves into a block and applies ink to the raised surface, which is then pressed onto paper. There are also planographic prints, which use metal plates, stones or other flat surfaces as their base. The artist will often draw on the surface with grease crayon and then apply ink to those markings. Lithographs are a common version of planographic prints.

Figurative art printmaking was especially popular during the height of the Pop art movement, and this kind of work can be seen in artist Andy Warhol’s extensive use of photographic silkscreen printing. Everyday objects, logos and scenes were given a unique twist, whether in the style of a comic strip or in the use of neon colors.

Explore an impressive collection of figurative art prints for sale on 1stDibs and read about how to arrange your wall art.