7 films about painters that you should not miss if you like art

Summer is coming and we can finally enjoy our time properly. That is why we dive into the video library to rescue seven films about artists consecrated in History (and one directed by a famous author). From Johannes Vermeer or Van Gogh to Frida Kahlo or Jackson Pollock.

Anyone who is passionate about the world of painting, most likely, also feels a predilection for other visual arts such as sculpture, photography... or cinema. And between the world of brushes and the world of canvases there has always been a special connection, as if being able to see the biographies of painters who impress us in reality also had something poetic inside.

In this report we recommend seven of those many and many tapes that review the life and work, sometimes in surprising ways, of those authors who have supported our love for painting, sometimes discovering that it was precisely their day-to-day life that was the reason for the inspiration that invaded them to create their masterpieces. Also, we added a (fake?) documentary that any Banksy lover should see.

Pollock: The Life of a Creator (Ed Harris, 2000)

Four-time Oscar nominee Ed Harris made his directorial debut with one of his most eagerly awaited projects: recreating what those tragic but brilliant 1940s were like, in which the marriage between a tormented Jackson Pollock and a self-sacrificing Lee Krasner (who would later make amends being one of the great modern painters) saw the painter become one of the most important personal names in the world. Of course, fame would lead to problems with alcohol, violent episodes and philosophical doubts that would be reflected in the artist's large canvases. The tape would take one of the two Academy Awards for which it was nominated: precisely for Marcia Gay Harden, who plays Krasner.

Mr Turner (Mike Leigh, 2014)

Intimate like few others, director Mike Leigh focused on how a reclusive JMW Turner, one of the most internationally recognized British artists, sought peace in a small town by the sea after a family tragedy. The film also plays with enormous sarcasm the way in which Turner, despite leading a life where he hangs out with aristocrats by day and frequents brothels at night, is the victim of gossip and ridicule from both worlds. It was nominated for four Oscars (including Best Cinematography) and Timothy Spall, who plays the maestro, won the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival.

Frida (Julie Taylor, 2002)

The actress Salma Hayek had wanted to carry out this biopic about the famous Mexican painter Frida Kahlo (1907 – 1954) for so long that years later she has publicly admitted that it makes her angry to think of all that she had to give up as a producer so that the other producer, the well-known Harvey Weinstein, be happy. However , the tape reflects not only the colorful atmosphere of his paintings , but also of his life ( as can be seen in the virtual visit to his Casa Azul ), sentimentally speaking multichromatic, since he had his tug-of-war relationship with his husband, Diego Rivera; an affair with the communist politician Leon Trotski; and several women in his bed. He won 2 of his six Oscar nominations.

Girl with a Pearl Earring (Peter Webber, 2003)

For many people, this film was the way to discover two actors who would end up being big stars: Scarlett Johansson, who would also do Lost in Translation that same year, and Cillian Murphy, who had already stood out the year before with 28 Days Later . But neither of them embodied the painter in question, author of the work that gives the film its name: Johannes Vermeer was played by Colin Firth in this story loosely based on the life of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist who continues to be studied by his amazing use of light. His meticulous attention to detail in terms of staging earned him three Oscar nominations (Photography, Costumes and Artistic Direction).

Loving Vincent (Dorota Kobiela, Hugh Welchman, 2017)

Above all, this Polish film (although a small portion of its budget came from the UK) is a milestone: it is the first feature film made up of animated paintings. That is to say, its duration of an hour and a half, in which he narrates how a year after the death (or was it murder, as they have asked his last painting?) of Vincent van Gogh, a postman asks his son to deliver the last letter that the Dutch painter wrote to his brother Theo, his great support ( but not the one who bought him his only painting, as they say ), are made up of about 56,800 hand-painted frames one by one, each and every one of them. They are inspired by the particular style of the masterful artist .

Carrington (Christopher Hampton, 1995)

Set at the dawn of the First World War, the film narrates a moment in the life of the English writer Lytton Strachey, who is known to be homosexual: when he falls in love with the adolescent figure of the painter Dora Carrington. A good friendship will emerge between the two, since they would end up being part of the Bloomsbury Club, a group of intellectuals (among which, for example, there was also Virginia Woolf). Carrington is played by a young Emma Thompson and Strachey by veteran Jonathan Pryce, who would win the Best Actor award at the 1995 Cannes Film Festival.

Exit Through the Gift Shop (Banksy, 2010)

And we end with this documentary, in which it is never easy to guess if what we are seeing is fiction or reality, which narrates how Thierry Guetta, a Frenchman living in California with an obsession with recording everything, ends up becoming one of the most important names in art. urban. Certain similarities with Banksy , who appears in the feature film, which he directs himself, without revealing his identity, and which many have classified as yet another example of his art. When you have just seen it, one can only wonder if every work is a farce, if it is true that the scene is so full of envy or if genius is born or made, but, especially, is someone really good or is the audience incredibly silly?