Norman Rockwell

popular name: Albert Frey

date_of_death: November 14, 1998

age: 95

cause_of_death: Natural Causes

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Albert Frey was a Swiss-born architect who established a style of modernist architecture centered on Palm Springs, California, United States, that came to be known as "desert modernism". Some examples of his work include Raymond Loewy House, Palm Springs Aerial Tramway, Tramway Gas Station, and the Villa Hermosa.

popular name: Andy Warhol

date_of_death: February 22, 1987

age: 58

cause_of_death: Post-operative cardiac arrhythmia

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Andy Warhol was an American artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as the Pop Art movement. Like his contemporaries Robert Rauschenberg and Roy Lichtenstein, Warhol wryly responded to the mass media of the 1960s. His silkscreen-printed paintings of cultural and consumer icons, featuring Marilyn Monroe and Elizabeth Taylor, as well as Campbell's Soup cans and Brillo boxes, would make him one of the most famous artists of his generation. Before becoming a pop icon, Warhol graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology in 1949, moving to New York to pursue a career in commercial illustration. Warhol's illustrations for editorials like Vogue and Glamour during the 1950s led him to financial success. In 1964, Warhol rented a studio loft on East 47th Street in Midtown Manhattan, which was later known as the Factory. Quick to realize the cult of celebrity, the Factory acted as a hub for fashionable movie stars, models, and artists who became fodder for his prints and films, as well as a performance venue for The Velvet Underground. The prolific artist worked across painting, sculpture, and new media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.

popular name: Théodore Géricault

date_of_death: January 26, 1824

age: 32

cause_of_death: Complications from a spinal tumor

claim_to_fame: Artists

best_know_for: Théodore Géricault was one of the pioneers of the Romantic movement and his expressive works include portraits and military themes. His best-known painting is The Raft of Medusa which is a dramatic interpretation of the aftermath of a French shipwreck, a contemporary tragedy. born in Rouen, France to an upper middle-class family, Géricault's family moved to Paris in 1797 when he was 5 years old. Though he had shown an early promise in art, his father did not want him to pursue it as a career. After his mother died in 1808, he received an annuity which gave him some form of financial independence. At 17 years old, Géricault started secretly studying art under Carle Vernet. Vernet specialized in military paintings, genre paintings, and equestrian paintings. In 1810, wanting a more formal training, he studied classical figure art under Pierre-Narcisse Guérin. After 11 months, he opted instead to just paint the masters at the Louvre (only to be banned for getting into a heated argument with another artist). In 1819, Géricault completed what would become his most famous painting, “The Raft of the Medusa”. It depicted the harrowing last hours of a recent shipwreck that became a national disaster. In 1819, the painting was exhibited at the annual Paris Salon and, though it was awarded a gold medal, received conflicted reviews for the political undertones. In 1820, Géricault toured the painting through England, where it was a success. Later in his life he traveled to England where visions of the poor and downtrodden greatly impacted his art. Plagued by ill health all his life, Géricault died in 1824 at just 32 years old. Months later, the Louvre purchased “The Raft of Medusa”.