Public Figures & Cultural Luminaries

Arts & Music

32

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Asmahan

أسمهان (آمال الأطرش)

Syria

1912 – 1944 (31 years old)

Legendary Syrian-Egyptian singer and actress, sister of Farid al-Atrash, whose soaring, operatic vocal range and glamorous cinema roles made her one of the supreme divas of the Arab Golden Age before her mysterious death at age thirty-one.

Cairo, Egypt

32 Full Record →

Arts & Music

1,296

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Piet Mondrian

Pieter Cornelis Mondriaan

Netherlands

1872 – 1944 (71 years old)

Dutch pioneer of 20th-century abstract art and co-founder of De Stijl, celebrated for his geometric Neoplastic grids.

Brooklyn, New York, United States

1,296 Full Record →

Arts & Music

36

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Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch

Norway

12 December 1863 – 23 January 1944 (80 years old)

Norwegian master painter and printmaker whose psychological series The Frieze of Life—anchored by the immortal, harrowing icon The Scream (1893)—expressed modern humanity's existential dread, alienation, and raw psychological trauma.

Ekely (Oslo), Norway

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Arts & Music

34

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Fats Waller

Thomas Wright Waller

United States

1904 – 1943 (39 years old)

American jazz pianist, organist, and entertainer who perfected Harlem stride piano and composed enduring American standards including 'Ain't Misbehavin'' and 'Honeysuckle Rose'.

Kansas City, United States

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Arts & Music

33

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Maurice Denis

Maurice Denis

France

1870 – 1943 (72 years old)

Theoretician of Les Nabis whose 1890 definition of a painting ('a flat surface covered with colors assembled in a certain order') became the foundation of 20th-century abstract art theory.

Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France

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Arts & Music

3,638

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Camille Claudel

Camille Claudel

France

1864 – 1943 (78 years old)

Brilliant French sculptor whose emotionally powerful bronzes and marbles overcame the shadow of Auguste Rodin.

Montfavet, France

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Arts & Music

3

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Arthur Streeton

Sir Arthur Ernest Streeton

Australia

1867-04-08 – 1943-09-01 (76 years old)

Master landscape painter of the Heidelberg School whose sun-drenched pastoral masterworks, including 'Golden Summer, Eaglemont' and 'The Purple Noon's Transparent Might', defined Australia's visual light.

Upper Ferntree Gully, Melbourne, Australia

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Arts & Music

33

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Chaïm Soutine

Chaïm Soutine

Russia

1893 – 1943 (50 years old)

School of Paris expressionist titan whose feverish, visceral canvases—including 'Carcass of Beef' and distorted portraits—fused Rembrandt's tradition with raw 20th-century angst.

Paris, France

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Arts & Music

39

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Sergei Vasilyevich Rachmaninoff

Сергей Васильевич Рахманинов

Russia

1 April 1873 – 28 March 1943 (69 years old)

Russian composer, legendary virtuoso pianist, and conductor whose lush romanticism, titanic keyboard technique, and sweeping orchestral melodies produced the Second and Third Piano Concertos and the Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini.

Beverly Hills (California), United States

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Arts & Music

7

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Messaoud El Médioni (Saoud l'Oranais)

مسعود المديوني (سعود الوهراني)

Algeria

1886 – 1943 (57 years old)

Legendary Jewish-Algerian master of Oranian Hawzi music, mentor of Reinette l'Oranaise, tragically murdered by the Nazis in the Sobibor death camp in 1943.

Oran (memorial), Algeria

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Arts & Music

35

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Sophie Taeuber-Arp

Sophie Henriette Gertrude Taeuber

Switzerland

1889 – 1943 (53 years old)

Swiss artist, painter, sculptor, and textile designer whose geometric abstractions, marionettes, and stained glass made her a paramount pioneer of Constructivism and Concrete Art.

Zürich, Switzerland

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Arts & Music

32

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Hector Guimard

Hector Germain Guimard

France

1867 – 1942 (75 years old)

French architect and industrial designer celebrated as the premier exponent of French Art Nouveau, world-famous for his sinuous cast-iron Paris Métro station entrances.

New York City, United States

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Arts & Music

1,823

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Grant Wood

Grant DeVolson Wood

United States

1891 – 1942 (50 years old)

American Regionalist painter renowned for his iconic masterpiece American Gothic and stylized Midwestern landscapes.

Anamosa, Iowa, United States

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Arts & Music

33

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El Lissitzky

Lazar Markovich Lissitzky

Russia

1890 – 1941 (51 years old)

Russian avant-garde designer, architect, and typographer whose 'Proun' compositions and revolutionary graphic designs bridged Suprematism, Constructivism, and European modernism.

Moscow, Soviet Union

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Arts & Music

29

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Amrita Sher-Gil

अमृता शेरगिल

Austria

1913 – 1941 (28 years old)

Pioneering Indian-Hungarian painter celebrated as the 'Indian Frida Kahlo', whose sensuous, melancholic oil portraits of rural Indian women revolutionized modern South Asian painting.

Lahore, Pakistan

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Arts & Music

53

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Robert Delaunay

Robert Delaunay

France

1885 – 1941 (56 years old)

French modern painter who co-founded Orphism with Sonia Delaunay, celebrated for his vibrant circular color disks, kaleidoscopic Eiffel Towers, and pioneering abstraction.

Montpellier, France

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Arts & Music

34

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Jelly Roll Morton

Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe

United States

1890 – 1941 (50 years old)

New Orleans pianist, composer, and bandleader who was the first true arranger and theorist of jazz, celebrated for his Red Hot Peppers recordings and Library of Congress oral history.

Los Angeles, United States

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Arts & Music

35

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Alexej von Jawlensky

Alexej Georgewitsch von Jawlensky

Russia

1864 – 1941 (76 years old)

Russian Expressionist painter and key member of Der Blaue Reiter, acclaimed for his mystical portrait heads and meditative, spiritual explorations of the human countenance.

Wiesbaden, Germany

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