Painter biography movies list imdb

Painters have long made excellent subjects for films, as they themselves were proto-filmmakers in a way, using the pictorial space without the aid of motion, but still participating in a version of storytelling. Add to that the fact that painters like Pablo Picasso and Salvador Dalí have long used the medium of film to further their artwork, and the two artforms have been naturally cross-pollinating for over 100 years.

Throughout the many eras of Modern Art, filmmakers have sought to capture the lives of icons who used paint brushes as their tool for war. Whether made as actual biopics or simply films that inhabit the fertile environs of painters, movies have long benefited from examinations of these disrupters, who often have life stories that bred their sharpened creative talent. Some painters, like Julian Schnabel, have even matriculated into film careers, with Schnabel directing some amazing films about painters, himself. When a well-cast actor settles into one of these historical roles and the writing and direction are up to snuff, we are treated to some of the great historical dramas.

The following are the most unforgettable movies about painters.

12 Frida

Salma Hayek examined the life of painter Frida Kahlo in Frida, an illuminating portrait of an artist known more for self-portraits than biography. The film shows the many facets of Kahlo's life, from communist rebellion in Mexico to her turbulent marriage to Diego Rivera, another Mexican painting luminary. Hayek captured Kahlo's visceral exposure of her emotions in her work, and the ways a traumatizing bus accident led her to change her art completely and join the Mexican Communist Party. The tension created when Kahlo threatens Rivera's supremacy in Mexican lore is the film's most enduring legacy, touching on a point in history when art found its greatest heights from a feminist perspective.

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11 Surviving Picasso

Surviving Picasso diagrammed the creative genius and prolific output of Pablo Picasso, while exposing the less flattering elements of his personal life and marriages that made the artist a polarizing figure. The film starts in Nazi-occupied France, as Picasso (Anthony Hopkins) woos his bride to be, François Gilot, as he becomes the world's most famous living painter. The film deals more in understanding Picasso's tremendous ego than his paintings, but does show the importance of his painting Guernica in 1937, a rare political statement from an artist more interested in love and sex.

10 Factory Girl

Factory Girl examined the life of Edie Sedgewick (Sienna Miller) — actress, 'it' girl, and Andy Warhol muse. The film chronicles Warhol's discovery of Sedgewick, molding her into a star of his films, paintings and prints, as the young heiress ascends Downtown Manhattan's social scene. Warhol's taste-making ability comes at a cost, as when Sedgewick loses his attention, he quickly turns elsewhere, as the insecure Sedgewick (mother of actress Kyra Sedgewick) slowly drifts out of the spotlight. Sienna Miller gives stirring monologues as Sedgewick, recalling her youth and relationship to Pop Art's greatest icon with bittersweet sentimentality.

9 The Girl with the Pearl Earring

The Girl with a Pearl Earring sought to unravel the story of Dutch Master Johannes Vermeer's greatest subject, from his painting of the same name. Vermeer is one of the most revered Old Masters for incredible approach to painting light, aided by his technological breakthrough by using lenses and camera obscura. Elements of the story were certainly embellished, but there's little one could do to get a more historically accurate portrait of 17th Century Holland. Therefore, the film is a successful rumination on the subjects of the world's most famous paintings, which often reach so far back into history that we forget there was a story behind them.

8 Basquiat

Painter Julian Schnabel turned his focus to filmmaking to create a biopic about his late friend Jean-Michel Basquiat in Basquiat. The film examines Basquiat's rise from graffiti artist to blue chip commodity, along the way using Andy Warhol's tutelage and source material from the worlds of hip-hop and history to create striking paintings. Basquiat becomes the toast of New York, but becomes increasingly uncomfortable with fame while building an appetite for heroin. Geoffrey Rush gives an illuminating portrait of the shy but ambitious painter, who rose from a Haitian immigrant upbringing in Brooklyn to become New York's highest selling artist at the height of the yuppie art-buying boom.

Related: Andy Warhol-Fever: Why is Hollywood Obsessed with the Most Awkward Man Who Ever Lived?

7 Midnight in Paris

Woody Allen's 2011 comedy Midnight in Paris toyed with history, transporting Gil Pender (Owen Wilson) to 1920's Paris, where he meets some of his greatest heroes. The most memorable of these characters is none other than Surrealist painter Salvador Dalí, played with zero chill by Adrien Brody. The actor captures Dalí's hallucinogenic persona, as he espouses his Surrealist philosophy to anyone who will listen. It doesn't hurt that Brody is a dead ringer for the Spanish artist, either, as Gil realizes what historic characters he has suddenly befriended. After Picasso's fictional mistress Adriana (Marion Cotillard) takes Gil on a tour of the Belle Epoque and 1920s Paris, the two debate the periods as only time-travelers can.

6 Mr. Turner

J.M.W. Turner is one of England's most beloved painters, played in Mr. Turner by Timothy Spall, who won Best Actor at Cannes for his role in the Mike Leigh film. The film exposes Turner's late period painting, when the artist was descending into existential grief and loosening his brush stroke. During this period, Turner anticipated movements like Expressionism with tremendously groundbreaking work that still fit within the confines of his Aristocratic patronage. Spall encompasses all the uptight, stodgy air of the late painter, who used the people around him to his own ends.

5 At Eternity's Gate

Willem Dafoe plays painter Vincent van Gogh in At Eternity's Gate, a contemplative film also directed by painter Julian Schnabel that ponders Van Gogh's descent into madness. The movie examines Van Gogh's relationship to his art dealer brother Theo (Rupert Friend) and the locals in Arles, France, where the painter begins his hallucinatory stage of painting landscapes, creating his greatest work while suffering his greatest hardships, including the removal of his own ear. The film is quiet, but still garners strong performances from Dafoe and Oscar Isaac as Paul Gauguin, Van Gogh's friend and sometimes adversary.

4 Stolen

Stolen is the complex story of the most valuable art heist in history, as the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston is fleeced of some priceless Vermeers and Rembrandts, some cut right out of their frames. The Museums incredibly low-key security didn't help, but tracking down some of history's most important artworks becomes the mission of conservationists and detectives, as connections to organized crime and the Irish Republican Army quickly are alleged. The filmmakers get close to those with specific intel on the paintings locations and why they were stolen, as the Gardner Museum grapples with its loss, leaving the paintings empty frames on the walls to reflect their absence.

3 Vincent and Theo

Tim Roth continued his amazing '90s run of films with Vincent and Theo, a look at the artist's time in Arles, France as his relationship with his brother Theo (Paul Rhys) falls apart thanks to the artist's mental illness. Robert Altman directed the film, a rare departure from his other more ensemble-based films. The film was originally made as a four-hour miniseries for television, but got a new cut for American distribution in theaters. The film pays the artist credence by being Altman's most visual and poetic, less concerned with dialogue than ambiance.

2 Pollock

Ed Harris played controversial Abstract Expressionist artist Jackson Pollock in the film Pollock, which traced the artist's development of his drip painting technique, his stormy marriage with Lee Krasner (Marcia Gay Harden) and his affairs with millionaire art collector Peggy Guggenheim. "Jack the Dripper" was an infamous drinker and had such an intense relationship with his artwork that it often alienated those around him. Harris imbues the pressures of a man with an unstable life who is suddenly splashed on the cover of Time Magazine, and heralded as avante-garde painting's greatest American star.

1 F is for Fake

F is for Fake is a docudrama that could only have originated in the mind of Orson Welles, the bombastic director, who, in his later years tackled projects like this mockumentary-ish film about Elmyr de Hory's career as the world's most infamous art forger. The nature of de Hory's work is, in effect, doubled by Welles, who takes creative license with the painter's story.

Welles employs his commanding, mid-Atantic narration to blur the line between what is legitimate, and what is not, just as de Hory is found to have his paintings hang in the world's most famous museums, with nobody knowing that they are forgeries. Elmyr, no longer prosecutable for his offenses, cuts a proud figure in the film, and seems to feel his ability to copy the most famous artist's as testament to his own genius.