Where famous artists grew up and lived

Albert Namatjira1902–1959

📍 Hermannsburg (Ntaria), Northern Territory 0872, Australia

I was born at Hermannsburg, the Lutheran mission on the Finke River in the Western Arrernte country of central Australia, in 1902. The missionaries baptised me Albert, and I grew up between…

Albrecht Dürer1509–1528

📍 Albrecht-Dürer-Straße 39, 90403 Nuremberg, Germany

I was the son of a goldsmith in Nuremberg, one of eighteen children, and at thirteen I drew my own face from a mirror in silverpoint — my first self-portrait. I trained in my father's…

Amedeo Modigliani1884–1902

📍 Via Roma 38, 57126 Livorno, Italy

I was born in this house in Livorno, the Tuscan port city, in July 1884, just as bailiffs were carrying off my family's possessions. My father's business had failed, but an old law said…

Andy Warhol1928–1949

📍 3252 Dawson Street, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

I was born Andrew Warhola on the 6th of August 1928 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Ruthenian immigrants. The Pittsburgh of my childhood was a steel city — dark with smoke…

Beatrix Potter1905–1943

📍 Hill Top, Near Sawrey, Ambleside LA22 0LF, UK

I grew up in a big, quiet house in South Kensington, educated by governesses and kept company by rabbits, mice, a hedgehog and a bat that I smuggled into the schoolroom and drew from life…

Bob Ross1942–1961

📍 Orlando, Florida, USA

I was born in Daytona Beach, Florida, in October 1942, and I grew up in Orlando, back when it was still a quiet town of orange groves, lakes and swamps, long before the theme parks came. My…

Caravaggio1604–1605

📍 Vicolo del Divino Amore 19, 00186 Rome, Italy

I was born Michelangelo Merisi and grew up in Milan and the small town of Caravaggio nearby; plague took my father when I was a child, and my mother died when I was a young man. I came to…

Charles M. Schulz1922–1943

📍 Snelling and Selby Avenues, St Paul, MN 55104, USA

I was born in Minneapolis in November 1922, but I grew up in St Paul, Minnesota. My father, Carl, was the son of German immigrants and had very little schooling, but he earned a barber's…

Claude Monet1883–1926

📍 84 Rue Claude Monet, 27620 Giverny, Normandy, France

I spent the last thirty years of my life at Giverny — the house with its pink walls and green shutters, the walled garden, and the water garden I created by diverting the River Epte. The…

Colin McCahon1953–1960

📍 McCahon House, 67 Otitori Bay Road, Titirangi, Auckland 0604, New Zealand

I grew up in Dunedin, and as a boy I watched a sign-writer painting letters on a shop window and was entranced by the shapes of words; that sight, and the light over the Otago hills, stayed…

Diego Rivera1934–1957

📍 Casa Estudio Diego Rivera y Frida Kahlo, Avenida Altavista, San Ángel, 01060 Mexico City, Mexico

I was born in Guanajuato, a silver-mining town, and as a small child I drew on every wall of our home until my father covered them with canvas and chalkboards for me. I studied in Europe…

Dr. Seuss1906–1925

📍 74 Fairfield Street, Springfield, MA 01108, USA

I was Ted Geisel, and I grew up in this house on Fairfield Street in Springfield, Massachusetts, with my parents and my older sister, Marnie. My grandfather and father ran the family…

Edgar Degas1890–1912

📍 37 Rue Victor-Massé, 75009 Paris, France

I was born into a wealthy banking family in Paris, and my father, who loved music and art, let me give up the law to paint. I spent nearly all my life at the foot of Montmartre and around…

Edvard Munch1863–1944

📍 Hoffsveien 48, 0275 Oslo, Norway

I was born Edvard Munch on the 12th of December 1863 in Løten but grew up in Oslo — then Christiania. My mother died of tuberculosis when I was five. My father was a military doctor of…

Edward Hopper1882–1910

📍 82 North Broadway, Nyack, NY 10960, USA

I was born in 1882 in this house on North Broadway in Nyack, a Hudson River village of shipyards and boatbuilders, which my maternal grandfather, John Smith, had built in 1858. My father…

Egon Schiele1911

📍 Široká 71, 381 01 Český Krumlov, Czech Republic

I grew up in Tulln, on the Danube, where my father was the stationmaster; I drew trains endlessly as a boy. He became ill and died when I was fourteen. Český Krumlov, the old Bohemian town…

Francisco Goya1746–1828

📍 Calle de Zuloaga 3, 50142 Fuendetodos, Zaragoza, Spain

I was born Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes on the 30th of March 1746 in Fuendetodos, a small village in Aragon. I went to Zaragoza to study and then to Madrid, and by my late thirties I…

Frida Kahlo1907–1954

📍 Londres 247, Col. Del Carmen, Coyoacán, 04100 Mexico City, Mexico

I was born in La Casa Azul and I will die here — this was both prophecy and fact. My father was a photographer and taught me to see. At eighteen a bus accident shattered my spine and my…

Georgia O'Keeffe1945–1984

📍 Abiquiú, Rio Arriba County, NM 87510, USA

I grew up on a dairy farm in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, and knew by twelve that I would be an artist. In New York I painted giant flowers and skyscrapers and married Alfred Stieglitz, but it…

Gustav Klimt1862–1918

📍 Baumgarten, 1140 Vienna, Austria

I was born Gustav Klimt on the 14th of July 1862 in Baumgarten, a suburb of Vienna, the son of Ernst Klimt, a gold engraver. My father's craft — the precise working of precious metal …

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec1864–1872

📍 Hôtel du Bosc, 14 Rue Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, 81000 Albi, France

I was born in 1864 in the Hôtel du Bosc, my family's town house in Albi, into an old aristocratic family where my parents were first cousins. My father, Count Alphonse, cared for hunting…

Henri Matisse1869–1954

📍 Le Cateau-Cambrésis, 59360 Nord, France

I was born Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse on the 31st of December 1869 in Le Cateau-Cambrésis, a textile town in northern France. My father was a grain merchant and my mother painted ceramics…

J.M.W. Turner1775–1851

📍 21 Maiden Lane, London WC2E 7NA, England

I was born Joseph Mallord William Turner on the 23rd of April 1775 in Covent Garden, London, the son of a barber. The Covent Garden of the 1770s was a working neighbourhood of market…

Jackson Pollock1912–1956

📍 Cody, Wyoming, WY 82414, USA

I was born Paul Jackson Pollock on the 28th of January 1912 in Cody, Wyoming, the youngest of five sons of a farmer. The Wyoming landscape of my earliest years — vast, uncontained…

Jean-Michel Basquiat1983–1988

📍 57 Great Jones Street, New York, NY 10012, USA

I was born in Brooklyn in 1960 to a Haitian father, Gerard, an accountant, and a Puerto Rican mother, Matilde, who took me to the Brooklyn Museum and the Museum of Modern Art from the age…

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe1749–1775

📍 Großer Hirschgraben 23–25, 60311 Frankfurt am Main, Germany

The house on Großer Hirschgraben was rebuilt entirely by my father in the year of my birth — he spent three years on the renovation as if preparing a stage for my arrival. My bedroom on the…

Johannes Vermeer

📍 Oude Langendijk, Delft, Netherlands

I spent nearly all of my forty-three years within these streets of Delft, and I would not have had it otherwise. My home and studio on the Oude Langendijk was my entire world — the…

John Constable1776–1837

📍 Church Street, East Bergholt, Suffolk CO7 6TJ, England

I was born John Constable on the 11th of June 1776 in East Bergholt, a village in the Stour Valley in Suffolk, the son of a prosperous miller. The Stour Valley — the flat water meadows, the…

Jony Ive1967–1992

📍 Chingford, London, United Kingdom

Jonathan Paul Ive was born in Chingford, on the edge of Epping Forest in north-east London, in February 1967. His father, Mike Ive, was a silversmith who taught design and technology and…

Katsushika Hokusai1760–1849

📍 Honjo District, Edo (now Sumida, Tokyo), Japan

I was born Katsushika Hokusai around 1760 in the Honjo district of Edo. I changed my name at least thirty times during my career, which lasted over seventy years. I was apprenticed to a…

Keith Haring1958–1976

📍 Kutztown, PA 19530, USA

I grew up in Kutztown, a small Pennsylvania Dutch town of farms, churches and a college, the eldest of four children and the only boy. My father, Allen, was an engineer, but his hobby was…

Marc Chagall1966–1985

📍 Saint-Paul-de-Vence, Alpes-Maritimes, France

I grew up in Vitebsk, in a poor Jewish family in the Russian Empire; my father hauled barrels of herring and my mother kept a little grocery shop. All my life I painted Vitebsk from memory…

Mark Rothko1913–1921

📍 South Portland, Portland, OR 97201, USA

I was born Marcus Rothkowitz in 1903 in Dvinsk, in the Russian Empire, the youngest of four children of a pharmacist; as Jews we lived in fear of pogroms, and my father sent my older…

Mary Cassatt1844–1926

📍 Allegheny (North Side), Pittsburgh, PA 15212, USA

I was born Mary Stevenson Cassatt on the 22nd of May 1844 in Allegheny City, now part of Pittsburgh, into a prosperous family that travelled extensively in Europe during my childhood. I…

Michelangelo1475–1488

📍 Caprese Michelangelo, AR 52033, Tuscany, Italy

I was born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni on the 6th of March 1475 in Caprese, a small Tuscan village near Arezzo. My mother died when I was six and I was raised by a…

Norman Rockwell1953–1978

📍 Main Street, Stockbridge, MA 01262, USA

I grew up in New York City apartments, a skinny, pigeon-toed boy who was no good at sports, and I found that drawing won me friends and respect. Summers in the countryside gave me my ideal…

Oodgeroo Noonuccal1920–1933

📍 One Mile, Dunwich, North Stradbroke Island (Minjerribah), QLD 4183, Australia

I was born Kathleen Ruska at One Mile on Minjerribah — North Stradbroke Island — Noonuccal country in Quandamooka. My father Ted taught us to respect our heritage, to hunt and fish only for…

Pablo Picasso1881–1895

📍 Plaza de la Merced 15, 29012 Málaga, Andalusia, Spain

I was born Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno Crispín Crispiniano María Remedios de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz Picasso on the 25th of October 1881 in Málaga, a port city on…

Paul Cézanne1839–1906

📍 Jas de Bouffan, Route des Milles, 13090 Aix-en-Provence, France

I was born Paul Cézanne on the 19th of January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, the son of a banker. Aix was my home and my subject for life — the Sainte-Victoire mountain that I painted over sixty…

Paul Gauguin1886–1890

📍 Pension Gloanec, Place Paul Gauguin, Pont-Aven, Finistère 29930, France

I spent several transformative years in Pont-Aven during the late 1880s, drawn by the light, the landscape, and the cost of living — Paris had become impossible on what little I had. The…

Pierre-Auguste Renoir1876–1877

📍 12 Rue Cortot, 75018 Paris, France

I grew up in a crowded apartment near the Louvre, the son of a tailor, and at thirteen I was painting flowers on porcelain in a factory, which taught me lightness of touch. In 1875, poor…

Raphael1483–1495

📍 Via Raffaello 57, 61029 Urbino PU, Marche, Italy

I was born Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino on the 6th of April 1483 in Urbino, the capital of a small duchy in central Italy ruled by the Montefeltro family — one of the most cultivated courts…

Rembrandt van Rijn1639–1669

📍 Jodenbreestraat 4, 1011 NK Amsterdam, Netherlands

I bought the house on the Sint Anthonisbreestraat — now the Jodenbreestraat — in Amsterdam's Jewish quarter in 1639, at the height of my success. It was a large house and I filled it with…

René Magritte1930–1954

📍 135 Rue Esseghem, 1090 Jette, Brussels, Belgium

I grew up in the industrial towns of Hainaut — Lessines, Châtelet, Charleroi — and when I was thirteen my mother was found drowned in the River Sambre; it is something I rarely spoke of…

Roy Lichtenstein1923–1940

📍 Upper West Side, Manhattan, New York, NY 10024, USA

I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, the son of a successful real estate broker, Milton, and Beatrice, a homemaker who had trained as a pianist. My sister Renée and I were taken…

Salvador Dalí1930–1982

📍 Port Lligat, 17488 Cadaqués, Catalonia, Spain

I was born Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech on the 11th of May 1904 in Figueres, Catalonia, and spent the most important years of my life in the Costa Brava fishing village…

Sandro Botticelli1445–1510

📍 Borgo Ognissanti, 50123 Florence, Italy

I was born in Florence in the 1440s in a house on Borgo Ognissanti, the street that runs west along the river towards the church of All Saints. My father, Mariano Filipepi, was a tanner…

Stanley Kubrick1928–1946

📍 Grand Concourse, The Bronx, New York, NY 10457, USA

I was born in Manhattan in July 1928 and grew up in the Bronx, first in an apartment on Clinton Avenue and later in buildings off the Grand Concourse, the borough's grand boulevard of Art…

Tim Burton1958–1976

📍 Burbank, California, USA

Tim Burton was born in Burbank, California, in August 1958 and grew up in this sunny, orderly suburb in the San Fernando Valley, home to the Disney, Warner Bros and NBC studios, with neat…

Vincent van Gogh1853–1869

📍 Markt 26, 4880 Zundert, North Brabant, Netherlands

I was born Vincent Willem van Gogh on the 30th of March 1853 in Zundert, a village in the Dutch province of North Brabant, the son of Theodorus van Gogh, a pastor of the Dutch Reformed…

Wassily Kandinsky1909–1914

📍 Münter-Haus, Kottmüllerallee 6, 82418 Murnau am Staffelsee, Germany

I grew up in Moscow and Odessa, and even as a child colours seemed to me to have sounds and feelings. I studied law and economics and taught at Moscow University before deciding at thirty…

William Morris1860–1865

📍 Red House, Red House Lane, Bexleyheath DA6 8JF, UK

I grew up at Woodford Hall on the edge of Epping Forest, riding through the forest in a toy suit of armour, reading medieval romances and exploring old churches. At Oxford I met Edward…

Yayoi Kusama1929–1957

📍 Matsumoto, Nagano, Japan

I was born in 1929 in Matsumoto, a castle town ringed by the mountains of Nagano, the youngest child of a family that ran a plant nursery and seed business. I grew up among fields of…

Zaha Hadid1950–1968

📍 Baghdad, Iraq

I was born in Baghdad in 1950, into a city that felt modern and hopeful. My parents were from Mosul families and were liberal, outward-looking people; my father, Muhammad Hadid, was an…