Auguste Rodin

popular name: Siné

date_of_death: May 5, 2016

age: 87

cause_of_death: Surgery for lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Siné was a controversial French cartoonist and caricaturist whose early successes in this arena led him into the fields as a book illustrator and designer of posters, stage decors, animated cartoons and publicity films. Siné began his professional career as a retoucher for pornographic magazines and published his first cartoon in France Dimanche in 1952 which won the Black Humour Award for his cartoon collection 'Complainte sans Paroles' in 1955. Siné became especially famous for his wordplay cartoons about cats. Until 1962, he made political cartoons for L'Express, some of which were refused or caused heavy criticism. He subsequently published his anti-colonial, anti-zionist, anti-capitalist and anti-clerical worldviews in his own publication, Siné Massacre. Siné's anarchistic and anti-colonial cartoons have caused controversy on several occasions during his career, especially during the Algerian war. He was fired from Charlie-Hebdo in 2008, following a antisemitic cartoon on Jessica Sebaoun-Darty, the wife of Jean Sarkozy. In August of 2008 he announced his own satirical weekly, called Siné Hebdo, launched with his wife Catherine Sinet and about 15 contributors. The publication ran until April 2010, but was continued as Siné Mensuel in September 2011. Siné has additionally made many drawings for books about jazz music, as well as CD covers.

popular name: Hugo Pratt

date_of_death: August 20, 1995

age: 68

cause_of_death: Bowel cancer

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Hugo Pratt is considered one of the greatest graphic novelists in the world. His strips, graphic works, and watercolors have been exhibited in major museums such as the Grand Palais and Pinacothèque in Paris, the Vittoriano in Rome, and Ca ‘Pesaro in Venice. Pratt was known for combining strong storytelling with extensive historical research on works such as Corto Maltese. From 1970 to 1984 Pratt lived in France where Corto Maltese was immensely popular where his comic book was published by the local publisher, Pif Gadget, and later translated in fifteen different languages. From 1984 to 1995 Pratt lived in Switzerland where the international success that Corto Maltese continued to grow. In France, most of his pre-Corto Maltese works were published in several album editions by publishers such as Casterman, Dargaud, and Humanoides Associés. Often referred to as "The Picasso of Comics" Pratt was inducted into the Will Eisner Award Hall of Fame in 2005.

popular name: George Inness

date_of_death: August 3, 1894

age: 69

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Often called "the father of American landscape painting", George Inness was a prominent American landscape painter during the late 1800s. Although Inness's style evolved through distinct stages over a prolific career that spanned more than forty years and 1,000 paintings, his works consistently earned acclaim for their powerful, coordinated efforts to elicit depth of mood, atmosphere, and emotion. Neither pure realist nor impressionist, Inness was a transitional figure who intended for his works to combine both the earthly and the ethereal in order to capture the complete essence of a locale. A master of light, color, and shadow, he became noted for creating highly ordered and complex scenes that often juxtaposed hazy or blurred elements with sharp and refined details to evoke an interweaving of both the physical and the spiritual nature of experience.