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Pablo Picasso
Biography
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), and the anti-war painting Guernica (1937), a dramatic portrayal of the bombing of Guernica by German and Italian air forces during the Spanish Civil War.
Picasso demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. During the first decade of the 20th century, his style changed as he experimented with different theories, techniques, and ideas. After 1906, the Fauvist work of the older artist Henri Matisse motivated Picasso to explore more radical styles, beginning a fruitful rivalry between the two artists, who subsequently were often paired by critics as the leaders of modern art.
Picasso's work is often categorized into periods. While the names of many of his later periods are debated, the most commonly accepted periods in his work are the Blue Period (1901–1904), the Rose Period (1904–1906), the African-influenced Period (1907–1909), Analytic Cubism (1909–1912), and Synthetic Cubism (1912–1919), also referred to as the Crystal period. Much of Picasso's work of the late 1910s and early 1920s is in a neoclassical style, and his work in the mid-1920s often has characteristics of Surrealism. His later work often combines elements of his earlier styles.
Exceptionally prolific throughout the course of his long life, Picasso achieved universal renown and immense fortune for his revolutionary artistic accomplishments, and became one of the best-known figures in 20th-century art.
Picasso was born at 23:15 on 25 October 1881, in the city of Málaga, Andalusia, in southern Spain. He was the first child of Don José Ruiz y Blasco (1838–1913) and María Picasso y López. Picasso's family was of middle-class background. His father was a painter who specialized in naturalistic depictions of birds and other game. For most of his life, Ruiz was a professor of art at the School of Crafts and a curator of a local museum. Ruiz's ancestors were minor aristocrats.
Picasso's birth certificate and the record of his baptism include very long names, combining those of various saints and relatives. Ruiz y Picasso were his paternal and maternal surnames, respectively, per Spanish custom. The surname "Picasso" comes from Liguria, a coastal region of north-western Italy. Pablo's maternal great-grandfather, Tommaso Picasso, moved to Spain around 1807. ...
Source: Article "Pablo Picasso" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
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Susan Collins
Biography
Susan Margaret Collins (born December 7, 1952) is an American politician serving as the senior United States senator from Maine. A member of the Republican Party, she has held her seat since 1997 and is Maine's longest-serving senator.
Born in Caribou, Maine, Collins is a graduate of St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York. Beginning her career as a staff assistant for Senator William Cohen in 1975, she became staff director of the Oversight of Government Management Subcommittee of the Committee on Governmental Affairs (which later became the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs) in 1981. Governor John R. McKernan Jr. then appointed her commissioner of the Maine Department of Professional and Financial Regulation in 1987. In 1992 President George H. W. Bush appointed her director of the Small Business Administration's regional office in Boston. Collins became a deputy state treasurer in the office of the Treasurer and Receiver-General of Massachusetts in 1993. After moving back to Maine in 1994, she became the Republican nominee for governor of Maine in the 1994 general election. She was the first female major-party nominee for the post, finishing third in a four-way race with 23% of the vote. After her bid for governor in 1994, she became the founding director of the Center for Family Business at Husson University in Bangor, Maine.
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Ken Eklof
Biography
Ken Eklof was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah. He has one sister, Annebel Meredith, who has worked with him on several, if not all of the Liken movies. He served an honorable full time mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to the Stockholm, Sweden Mission, which is where both of his parents were from, so he already knew the language. He has, as Dennis Agle put it, "A mad scientist thing about him. When Ken mentions a gag, you do it." He's been in the LDS pageant in Nauvoo two years in a row now, playing Brigham Young. He's been in numerous shows around the country. Ken is also a family man in a major way. He has 7 children, who are all just as crazy as he is, if not more so.
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Catherine Keener
Biography
Catherine Ann Keener (born March 26, 1959) is an American actress. Considered one of the independent film industry's most reliable performers, Keener is known for portraying disgruntled and melancholic yet sympathetic women in independent films, as well as supporting roles in studio films. She has been twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Being John Malkovich (1999) and for her portrayal of author Harper Lee in Capote (2005).
Keener also appeared in the films The 40-Year-Old Virgin (2005), Into the Wild (2007), Synecdoche, New York (2008), and Get Out (2017), which were all well received by critics. Keener is the muse of director Nicole Holofcener, having appeared in each of Holofcener's first five films. She also appeared in each of director Tom DiCillo's first four films, and three films directed by Spike Jonze. From 2018 to 2020, she starred in the Showtime dramedy series Kidding.
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Grace Junot
Biography
Grace Junot is a Thai-American actress, born in Bangkok, Thailand, to an American father of French descent and a Thai mother. Her parents met during the Vietnam War. Her family eventually relocated to the United States and settled in New Jersey. Her feature film credits include The Idea of You (2024), Harold and the Purple Crayon (2024), Sextuplets (2019), and Antebellum (2020). On television, Junot has appeared in recurring and guest roles on series such as Dynasty, Sweet Magnolias, The Crossover, and Gotham Knights, in which she portrays Dr. Chase Meridian. The character, originally portrayed by Nicole Kidman in the 1995 film Batman Forever, is reimagined in Gotham Knights as a trusted psychologist who helps Harvey Dent (Misha Collins) confront personal struggles. Junot also appears in the sci-fi comedy Demascus, a limited series created by Tearrance Arvelle Chisholm and executive produced by Mark Johnson (Breaking Bad, Better Call Saul). The show has received praised for its originality, sharp writing, and emotional depth.
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William A. Wellman
Biography
William Augustus Wellman was an American film director. Although Wellman began his film career as an actor, he worked on over 80 films, as director, producer and consultant but most often as a director, notable for his work in crime, adventure and action genre films, often focusing on aviation themes, a particular passion. He also directed several well regarded satirical comedies.
Wellman directed the 1927 film Wings, which became the first film to win an Academy Award for Best Picture at the 1st Academy Awards ceremony.
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Fola Evans-Akingbola
Biography
Fola Evans-Akingbola is a British actress and model. She portrays Maddie Bishop in Freeform's TV series, Siren. She was born in London and grew up in Bermondsey and Honor Oak Park. Her parents are British or Nigerian. She majored in her philosophy studies but left in favor of her modeling career. She attended, according to her own statement "just for fun", the National Youth Theatre and the Identity School of Acting. Fola is a London-based actress. She trained at the National Youth Theatre of Great Britain, Identity Drama School and the Actors' Temple in London. Since entering into the industry in 2014, Fola has gone on to work on internationally acclaimed shows such as Game of Thrones (HBO) and Death in Paradise (BBC). February 2017 saw Fola perform at the Southwark Playhouse in the theatre production School Play written by Alex MacKeith. Her latest on-screen project VS. is a British film produced in association with BBC films, Wildgaze and Silvertown Films, which is out in 2018. She is filming SIREN - a new TV show for Freeform/Disney ABC which premieres summer 2018. She is represented by IAG in London, William Morris Endeavour (WME) and Luber Roklin Entertainment in Los Angeles.
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Harry L. Fraser
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Harry L. Fraser (31 March 1889 - 8 April 1974) was an American film director. He directed over 80 films between 1925 and 1951, including the 1934 John Wayne film Randy Rides Alone and the Frank Buck cliffhanger serial Jungle Menace (1937). He had a small acting role in the John Wayne film 'Neath the Arizona Skies. He also wrote screenplays, including Chick Carter, Detective (1946).
In his autobiography, Fraser described filming the scene in Jungle Menace during which a boa constrictor attacks the heroine Dorothy (Charlotte Henry). The villain has tied Dorothy hand and foot and she thrashes about wildly, terrified when she suddenly sees the huge snake:
"The snake was in no hurry. Slowly he slithered across the girl's body, while she screamed and struggled. He turned, looking for a spot to slip under her to make his first wrap. I motioned to the reptile crew to get ready, and a split-second later gave them the signal to move in. But now, the maddened snake fought them and did its best to coil around one of the men. Before that happened, however, I had cut, and we had a good cliff-hanger with our terror-stricken heroine to close the episode."
Description above from the Wikipedia article Harry L. Fraser, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Edith Fellows
Biography
Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At age four, Edith entered Henderson's School of Dance, where she was spotted by a man claiming to be a talent scout, who told her grandmother that he could get Edith into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the money, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they discovered that the address the man had given them did not exist, and they realized he was a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began doing housework to earn a living. While she worked, she left Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day Edith was taken along when the neighbor's son had an audition for the film Movie Night (1929), and she ended up getting the part. Although she never become a child star, Edith appeared in many popular films of the 1930s, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1936). She also proved herself to be a very versatile actress, playing roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl, as in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942), to a poor orphan girl, as in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she made four of the Pepper films (the first was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) in two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in some fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short 4' 10" stature. But her career suddenly slowed down in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, she appeared in only one film, Lilith (1964), in which she had a bit part. During this time, Edith chose to focus on her family life; she had married producer Freddie Fields in 1946, and their only child, daughter Kathy, was born in 1947. But Edith and Fields divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, coupled with other factors, caused Edith to have a nervous breakdown. She recovered, and in 1981, she returned to acting in numerous supporting roles on television. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to make a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never happened.
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Rhiana Griffith
Biography
Rhiana Jade Griffith was born in the Hunter Region of New South Wales, Australia. She began modelling as a child, doing runway work and catalogue ads, and progressed from there to television commercials.
From there, she got her first guest-starring role on the Australian medical drama Children's Hospital, and won her first film role, as Mercia in the 1998 film 15 Amore. Shortly thereafter, she won ModelQuest98's Grand Final for the 12-to-15 division, and was cast as "Jack" in the science fiction film Pitch Black.
2004 also saw Griffith embark upon her art career in earnest, with two major solo gallery showings. Her first, Chrysalis, was held at the Tighes Hill Gallery in Newcastle, Australia in January 2004. Her second, A Month in Kaos, was held at the Surry Hills Cafe 249 art gallery in Sydney, Australia in May 2004. Griffith also acted in another short film, A Whole New You, and guest-starred in an episode of the hit Australian medical drama All Saints. As the year came to a close, Griffith portrayed Barbarella in print and television ads promoting the Flickerfest film festival.
In 2005, Griffith held her third art exhibition, a collaboration with her brother, poet Damien Griffith, called Sibling Revelry. In conjunction with the art show, they released a limited-edition book of their work, pairing her paintings with his poems. Griffith also contributed to a Wearable Art Festival, and will launch a line of clothing later in 2005. She is working on her second book, a children's book, for release in late 2005, and portrayed the starring role of Clare Newell in a short film, Wrong Answer, which will be continued in the psychological thriller called Volunteer, to be directed by JD Cohen. Description above from the Wikipedia article Rhiana Griffith, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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