Want to Visit Frida Kahlo’s Avant-Garde Art Studio? Here Are 9 More Historic Artists’ Homes You Can See on Google Street View

Earlier this summer, we began
searching for famous artist’s
studios using Google Maps’s street view
feature, and—spoiler
alert—we’re now hooked.

It’s fascinating to get glimpses
into the environments in which artists worked, from the inspiring
vistas of Alexander Calder’s remote Roxbury estate to the splendid
estate of Max Liebermann. Here are 9 of those famous abodes, which you
can see for yourself on Google.

Max Liebermann’s
Berlin Escape

What: In 1909, the German Jewish painter Max
Liebermann acquired an exquisite plot of lakeside land in Berlin
overlooking Wansee, where he built a summer residence and studio.
It was the most exclusive villa district in the city at the time.
Liebermann died in 1935, and his widow, Martha, was forced to sell
their beloved home to the Nazis in 1940. She died by suicide
shortly before she was due to be taken to a concentration camp in
1943. A year earlier, the Nazis held the notorious Wannsee
Conference
to plan the genocide of Europe’s Jewish population at another villa
nearby. The Liebermann home and its beautiful garden are now a
memorial museum.

Where: Colomierstraße 3, 14109, Berlin,
Germany

Interesting Fact: During World War II, the
Liebermann villa became a hospital, and the artist’s studio was
used as an operating theater.

Diego Rivera and
Frida Kahlo’s Modernist Utopia

What: Diego Rivera lived and worked in the big red house
and Frida Kahlo in the smaller blue one. A roof-top bridge
connected the famous couples’ high Modernist studios, which
were designed by their friend, the architect and painter Juan
O’Gorman, in the early 1930s. The young architect’s own studio was
next door. Together they formed a remarkable compound in a suburb
of Mexico City that is said to be the first example of
functionalist architecture in Latin America. Now a museum, the
artists’ studios are a site of pilgrimage for all Rivera and Kahlo
fans.

Where: Diego Rivera s/n, San Ángel Inn,
01060 Ciudad de México, CDMX, Mexico

Interesting Fact: Rivera asked O’Gorman to make
his studio big enough to house the artist’s “idols”—Rivera’s
collection of pre-Colombian art—which you can still see there
today.

Dora Gordine’s
Eclectic Abode

What: Behind a tall hedge on an ordinary
suburban street in South London stands Dorich House, the
extraordinary home and studio that the sculptor Dora Gordine built
with her second husband. Born in Latvia, Gordine lived in Paris in
the 1920s, moved to East Asia with her first husband in 1930, and
then went to London, where her work was already celebrated. Dorich
House, which Gordine designed herself, combines the the Art Nouveau
elegance of her childhood homes in Tallinn, Estonian, with touches
of Asian architectural influence and a Le Corbusier-style roof
terrace. It is an gem filled with Gordine’s sculpture and fragments
of the collection built by her husband, the scholar Richard
Hare.

Where: Dorich House Museum, 67 Kingston
Vale, London, SW15 3RN

Interesting Fact: Talented, charismatic, and
elusive about her background, Gordine never revealed where nor when
she was born. The child of middle-class Russian Jews, she
reinvented herself in Paris, adding an “e” to her name.

Ben Nicholson’s
Cornwall Retreat

What: Artist Ben Nicholson had a space in the
historic Porthmeor Studios building, which is still a working
studio. The former pilchard fishing building was colonized by
artists from the 1880s. They fell in love with the light in the
north-facing lofts that look out over the sea. Other famous artists
who worked in Porthmeor include Francis Bacon, Patrick Heron, Terry
Frost, and Wilhelmina Barns-Graham. Bacon only spent a winter
in St Ives, but it was here that he produced pieces for his first
show with Marlborough Fine Art in London in 1960.

Where: Back Road West, St Ives, Cornwall,
TR26 1NG

Interesting Fact: The artist Mark Dion’s
installation, The Maritime Artist, can be found in the
pilchard tanks. A tribute to the many artists inspired by the
Cornish coast and its fishing industry, the installation presents a
canvas on an easel surrounded by fishing tackle and boating
equipment.

Barbara Hepworth’s
Cornwall Refuge

What: The sculptor Barbara Hepworth and
her husband Ben Nicholson escaped the Blitz on London by staying in
St Ives. They split after the war but she stayed put. Her
sculpture-filled Trewyn Studio and garden, where she created many
outdoor works, is now preserved by the Tate as a museum. It is
worth peeping in the window of her larger studio across the street,
which is closed to the public. It was the fishing town’s former
dance hall, which she acquired in 1961. She needed a bigger space
to make monumental commissions, such as Single Form for
the United Nations building in New York.

Where: Barnoon Hill, St Ives, Cornwall, England
TR26 1AD

Interesting Fact: When Hepworth and Nicholson
fell in love in 1931, they were both married to other artists. It
was shock to both when they had triplets.

Alexander Calder’s Roxbury
Farmhouse

What: In 1933,
Alexander Calder embarked on a mission to transform a rundown
farmhouse in Roxbury, Connecticut, into a studio and home to share
with his wife, Louisa and their growing family. The house is still
standing today, and it is
still owned by Calder’s family, but it is not open to the public.
There are amazing photographs of the studio in the archives, filled
with Calder’s artistic materials for his mobiles and stabiles. On
street view, you can catch a glimpse of the home, which Calder
painted black, as well as his expansive studio, and a black stabile
in the garden.

Where: 306
Painter Hill Rd Roxbury, CT 06783 USA

Interesting
fact: The house is filled with domestic objects that the
artist hand-crafted, such as a large, boat-shaped “unspillable
ashtray” that he brought out when he used to throw epic, days-long
samba parties.

Jackson Pollock and
Lee Krasner’s East Hampton Hideaway

What: The
artist couple Lee Krasner and Jackson Pollock bought this East
Hampton house in 1945. Krasner used the upstairs bedroom of the
house for a studio, while Pollock repurposed a barn next to the
property for his. 

Where:
830 Springs Fireplace Rd, East
Hampton, NY 11937, USA

Interesting
fact: Peggy Guggenheim gave the couple $2,000 for the down
payment on the $5,000 house in exchange for some
artworks.

Gustav Klimt’s
Vienna Villa

What: Beginning
in the summer of 1911 until his death in 1918, Klimt worked and
sometimes lived in a small laid-back cottage with a wild garden
packed with flowers, fruit trees, and songbirds. In
1923, the small
Biedermeier house was torn down and replaced with a neo-baroque
villa, which is what you see today on the site. The villa is now
open to the public, with part of its ground floor reconstructed to
resemble Klimt’s original studio space.

Where:
Feldmühlgasse 11, 1130 Vienna, Austria

Interesting
Fact: The studio became a meeting place for artists
working in fin-de-siècle Vienna. They included Egon Schiele and
Felix Albrecht Harta. Schiele and Klimt’s partner, the avant-garde
fashion designer Emilie
Flöge, tried in vain to save the studio from being torn
down.

Irma Stern’s Cape
Town Sanctuary

What: The Cape Town home and
studio of the South African Expressionist Irma Stern is full of her
paintings, sculptures, and her eclectic collection of artifacts.
Born in 1894 to German Jewish parents, she became an artist in
Germany. The Die Brucke painter Max Pechstein was quick to spot her
talent. An outsider in conservative Cape Town, she was South
Africa’s most successful artist, representing it at several Venice
Biennales in the 1950s. She traveled extensively throughout her
life, in particular to Zanzibar and what was then the Belgian
Congo, painting vibrant portraits of the inhabitants as well as
colorful landscapes. Her Cape Town home from 1927 until her death
in 1966 is now a museum. 

Where: 25 Cecil
Rd, Rosebank, Cape Town, 7700, South Africa

Interesting Fact: In the 1920s, the African-American writer Alain LeRoy Locke
argued that Stern’s work should be emulated by black artists of the
Harlem Renaissance. 

The post Want to Visit Frida Kahlo’s Avant-Garde Art Studio?
Here Are 9 More Historic Artists’ Homes You Can See on Google
Street View appeared first on artnet News.