Research Guides: Art: Artist Biographies

Online Resources

AskART
Online database containing over 200,000 artists. From its inception the focus was on American artists from the early 16th-Century through the present. In January of 2007 the database expanded to include international artists' auction records.

Library Catalog

Google Books

Search for the artist in the fulltext of books in Google Books, which provides snippets or previews of content and includes fulltext if a book is not under copyright protection. See also Advanced Search.

Check the Library Catalog to see if UHCL owns a desired book.

Hardcopy Sources

Concise Oxford Dictionary of Art and Artists
Call Number: REF N33 .C59 1996
ISBN: 0192800485
Includes short biographical information for Western and Western-inspired painters, sculptors, and graphic artists. No artist born after 1945 is included.
Contemporary Artists
Call Number: REF N6490 .C6567 1996
Profiles of 800 artists from painting, graphics, sculpture, mixed media, and performance. No artist who died before 1965. Each entry includes biographical info, exhibitions, public collections, bibliographies, some artist statements and some critical essays.
Index to artistic biography by Patricia Pate Havlice
Call Number: REF N40 .H38 1973
Each short entry includes the name, birth and death dates, nationality, media, and abbreviations referring to books that contain biographical information.
World Artists, 1950-1980: an H.W. Wilson biographical dictionary by Claude Marks
Call Number: REF N6489 .M37 1984
Biography, exhibitions, collections, and bibliography for 312 artists influential in graphic media, painting and sculpture.
World Artists, 1980-1990 : an H.W. Wilson biographical dictionary by Claude Marks
Call Number: REF N6489 .W67 1991
Biography, exhibitions, collections, and bibliography for artists influential in graphic media, painting and sculpture.