Dead Celebrity Alert

February 2, 1921 - May 18, 2008

As Michelangelo was to Pope Julius II, and Bernini to Cardinal Scipione Borghese, so was Pietro Cascella to Silvio Berlusconi. Neither was perhaps in the same league as their predecessors as artist and patron respectively, but despite his many public monuments, notably that at Auschwitz, Cascella is most likely to be remembered for having sculpted the Italian Prime Minister’s colossal private mausoleum. …

The turning point in his career came when he and his brother and the architect Julio Lafuente won a competition in 1957 to build a monument at Auschwitz. …

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1924 - April 8, 2008

Kazuo Shiraga was a distinguished Japanese avant-garde artist noted for his unusual method: using his own body to apply paint to the canvas. Revolutionary in the 1950s, this technique now seems to anticipate later international developments in performance art and conceptual art. …

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Alton Kelley, an artist who helped create the psychedelic style of posters and other art associated with the 1960s San Francisco rock scene, has died. He was 67. …

The pair created dozens of classic rock posters, including the famous Grateful Dead “skull and roses” poster designed for a show at the Avalon Ballroom, as well as posters and album covers for Journey, Steve Miller, Jimi Hendrix and The Beatles. …

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Pop artist Robert Rauschenberg’s mediums knew few bounds.

One of his most famous works or “combines” was “Bed,” created when he woke up in the mood to paint but had no money for a canvas. His solution was to take the quilt off his bed and use paint, toothpaste and fingernail polish for his creation. He was also a sculptor and a choreographer. …

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An Italian woman artist who was hitch-hiking to the Middle East dressed as a bride to promote world peace has been found murdered in Turkey.

The naked body of Giuseppina Pasqualino di Marineo, 33, known as Pippa Bacca, was found in bushes near the city of Gebze on Friday.

She had said she wanted to show that she could put her trust in the kindness of local people. …

Ms di Marineo was hitch-hiking from Milan to Lebanon with a fellow artist on their “Brides on Tour” project. … Read full story

Also:

Police arrested Murat Karatas, who later confessed that he first raped and killed di Marineo. Turkish people condemned the murder as the leading newspaper Hurriyet wrote “We are ashamed” in the headline.

Italian artist, also known as Pippa Bacca, was last seen on March 31. She was raped and then killed on March 31, according to the initial autopsy results, Dogan News Agency (DHA) said. …

Di Marineo’s mother Elena Manzoni told reporters her daughter was trying to prove that people could be reliable. …

Turkish people condemned the murder and expressed their feelings in the internet. Turkey’s leading newspaper Hurriyet said “We are ashamed” in the headline of its internet edition. … Read full story

John Plumb was one of the most notable of the abstract painters to emerge in Britain after the war. His work, though represented in the Tate and other important collections, was never as widely admired as it deserved to be, partly no doubt because of the resurgent interest in figuration that followed the commercial success of Pop Art during the 1960s. …

John Plumb, painter, was born on February 6, 1927. He died on April 6, 2008, aged 81 … Read full obituary

Angus Fairhurst, one of the group of “Young British Artists” who came out of London’s Goldsmiths College, has died at age 41.

Spokeswoman Erica Bolton said Fairhurst committed suicide Saturday during a walk in a remote part of Scotland. … Read full obituary

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) — Writer Hugo Claus — an artist, poet, playwright and novelist whose books painted a scathing picture of repression and hypocrisy in bourgeois Flanders — died Wednesday by euthanasia, his wife said. He was 78. … Read full obituary

LONDON (AP) — Philip Jones Griffiths, a photojournalist who spent years traveling across Vietnam to capture the effects of the war on its people, died Wednesday. He was 72. …

Jones Griffiths was perhaps best known for his book “Vietnam Inc.” … Read full obituary

Wolfgang Sievers, one of Australia’s most accomplished photographers whose work captured the relationship between man and machine, has died aged 93. … Read full obituary

Wallace Seawell, a top Hollywood portrait and glamour photographer during the heyday of movie stars including Sophia Loren, Tony Curtis and Gregory Peck, has died. He was 90. … Read full obituary

Roy DeForest, a nationally renowned artist and professor who was a founding member of what was described as the “California funk” art movement, has died. He was 77. … Read full obituary

HARTFORD, Conn. — Sol LeWitt, an artist known for his dynamic wall paintings and as a founder of minimal and conceptual art styles, died Sunday in New York, according to published reports. … Read full obituary

JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 5 — Vladimir Griegorovich Tretchikoff, an exile from Siberia whose emotional depictions of wilting flowers, dancers and especially the daughter of a San Francisco Chinese merchant earned both global popularity and critics’ scorn, died in Cape Town on Aug. 26. He was 92. … Read full obituary

Joe Rosenthal, Pulitzer prize-winning Associated Press photographer who shot the spontaneous (and ubiquitous) picture of World War II soldiers raising an American flag over Iwo Jima; Sunday, at age 94.

Outback artist Pro Hart has died at his Broken Hill home after battling motor neurone disease.

The 77-year-old was diagnosed with the debilitating disease that causes muscle wastage late last year but his condition began to worsen last week. … Read full obituary

Gordon Parks, who captured the struggles and triumphs of black America as a photographer for Life magazine and then became Hollywood’s first major black director with “The Learning Tree” and the hit “Shaft,” died Tuesday, a family member said. He was 93. … Read full obituary

Jamie Hodgson, the photographer whose haunting images of jazz musicians helped immortalise its greatest stars, has died at the age of 76. … Read full obituary

Al Hirschfeld, whose inimitable caricatures captured the vivid personalities of theater people and their performances for more than 75 years, died at his home in Manhattan yesterday. He was 99. … Read full obituary

Obit to come.

Herb Ritts, the photographer whose glorifying images of the well known helped to further mythologize celebrity in the 1980’s and 90’s, died yesterday in a Los Angeles hospital. He was 50 and lived in Los Angeles. … Read full obituary

Acclaimed outdoors photographer Galen Rowell and his wife, Barbara Rowell, were killed along with two others in a plane crash near the Bishop (Inyo County) airport over the weekend on their way home from a photo workshop class in the Arctic.

Known for his wilderness photography of the Bay Area, the Sierra and across all seven continents, the Berkeley-born Rowell was killed instantly in the crash Sunday morning as the plane approached the airport. He was 61.

Barbara Rowell, 54, who was an accomplished pilot, writer and frequent collaborator with her husband, was not flying the plane when it crashed at around 1:20 a.m., according to Inyo County undersheriff Jack Goodrich. …

Rowell’s death shocked many outdoors people who considered him to be one of the world’s pre-eminent photographers of natural settings and an avid outdoorsman who brought remote areas into the public realm. … Read full obituary

FLAGLER BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Ron Walotsky, a renowned science fiction artist whose work was featured on about 500 book covers, including “Queen of the Damned” by Anne Rice and “Carrie” by Stephen King, died Monday after a brief illness. He was 58.

His work, which often featured aliens and surreal landscapes in vivid colors, has been exhibited in the Museum of Modern Art in New York and the U.S. Embassy in Paris. … Read full obituary

Canadian photographer Yousuf Karsh, whose pictures of British politician Winston Churchill, scientist Albert Einstein and author Ernest Hemingway earned his widespread recognition around the world, died here today at 93, according to a local hospital official. …

In December 1941 he made a portrait of a defiant Churchill, which later became a symbol of Britain’s courage and fighting spirit during World War II and brought Karsh international recognition.

The photograph was taken on short notice, minutes after Churchill delivered a rousing address at the House of Commons.

Karsh asked the British leader to take his trademark cigar out of his mouth and, when he ignored the request, stepped forward and snatched it from Churchill’s mouth.

The picture captured an irate Churchill glowering at the photographer. … Read full obituary

Pop artist Niki de Saint Phalle, best known for her brightly coloured and voluptuous figures of women that gained her a reputation as a leading contemporary artist in France, has died. She was 71.

Saint Phalle died on Tuesday in San Diego, California, after a long illness, according to a statement issued by the city of Hanover, Germany, where the artist was an honorary citizen. It did not elaborate. …

Born in the wealthy Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine on November 29, 1930 as Catherine Marie-Agnes Fal de Saint Phalle, she moved with her parents to New York in 1937, where she grew up visiting the Metropolitan Museum of Art. … Read full obituary