12 Artists Who Only Got Fame After They Died

If today we were told that these artists did not achieve fame while they were alive, we would think that this is impossible. How is it possible that celebrities like Van Gogh or Franz Kafka were not considered geniuses in life? The mentalities and beliefs of the different periods, the low importance of art in all its variants and the rejection of the new made these artists not successful while they lived.

O awesome.club wants to show you some artists who only achieved success posthumously, and the reasons why.

Paul Gauguin was born in 1848 in Paris, where he worked at a stockbroker and later as a painter. Despite organizing exhibitions to show his works to the world while he lived, the artist did not gain critical recognition until his death. The subsequent international success is believed to be largely due to the multiple exhibitions organized by the art dealer Ambroise Vollard. His works were of great inspiration to artists of the stature of Pablo Picasso and Henri Matisse.

This Dutch self-taught painter was born in 1853. Despite producing around 900 paintings and over 1,500 drawings, it is believed that he only sold three paintings while he was still alive. After his death, his brother’s wife held an exhibition of these works and was responsible for promoting his creations. This catapulted him to fame, making him one of the most important figures in Post-Impressionism. His art was of great influence to pictorial trends such as German Expressionism and Fauvism.

Stieg Larsson was born in Sweden in 1954, where he was a journalist and writer. In 2001, he started writing detective novels for fun and ended up creating the series millennium🇧🇷 His fame did not come until after his death, and he was unable to see his great work published because he suffered a heart attack shortly after handing over the third part of the saga to the publisher. It was so successful that it was eventually adapted for film and television.

Born in 1833 in Austria, Franz Kafka did not want his manuscripts to come to light. Until Max Brod (friend and executor of the writer) did not publish his works, he only exhibited a small part. Kafka even asked Max to destroy his writings after his death, but Max ended up publishing most of them. In this way, the author of great texts such as the metamorphosisis considered one of the most influential writers, and has inspired great literary artists such as Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges.

Although it enjoyed some fame thanks to its masterpiece Frankenstein (despite publishing it anonymously), Mary Shelley hadn’t really been valued until a few decades ago, when her novels, studies, and articles were analyzed. She was more concerned about her husband achieving a reputation as a poet than she was, and so she went out of her way to present his works. Even after her death, she was mostly remembered as the wife of Percy Shelley, not a successful writer.

Galileo Galilei was a “Renaissance man”. This versatile artist was interested in the world of physics, mathematics and astronomy, which led society to reject him. Due to the religious beliefs of his time, Galileo’s theories and discoveries led to his death, having been judged as a heretic. Currently, it is considered one of the fundamental pillars of modern science.

Musician Nicholas Rodney Drake was born in Burma in 1948, and despite dedicating his life to music, he didn’t get much recognition until his untimely death at age 26. He is said to have refused to perform live and give interviews due to the depression he suffered. He is currently considered a cult artist, having influenced the work of famous musicians such as Peter Buck (REM) and Robert Smith (The Cure).

Augusta Ada King was born in 1815 in London, where she was a writer and mathematician. Her gift for the world of calculation and analysis led her to be the first person to invent a programming language. Her work and notes have been of vital importance to the development of computers and the computing world in general. Although she didn’t enjoy the fame she deserved during her short life, her legacy is now so important that Ada was honored with a programming language named after her, and even has a party in mid-October,
Ada Lovelace”.

Philosopher, poet, writer, composer and university professor… Friedrich Nietzsche is considered today one of the most influential thinkers of the 19th century. But it was not always like that, because in life the artist could not enjoy fame and success. It is believed that his greatest recognition comes from the fact that the Nazis saw in this writer’s work thoughts that were related (wrongly) to his supremacist ideas. Some of his writings were studied in German colleges and universities at the time, and over time they gained importance and notoriety in the rest of the world.

Emily Dickinson was born in 1830 in Massachusetts. The writer has lived most of her secluded life at home, even in recent years she has refused to leave her room. Of her 1,800 poems, she is believed to have published only 12, and it was not until her death that the others came to light, when her younger sister began to publish all the works she found in her house. Today, she is considered almost all over the world to be one of the most important poets in history.

Born in 1884, this Italian painter and sculptor suffered a sudden death at the age of 35. While in life he could not enjoy his fame, he is currently considered one of the most important artists of the 20th century. He was only able to exhibit his works once, and not very successfully, as the exhibition was closed on public scandal charges due to some nudes.

Although Bécquer was known in life for his work as a writer, it was not until after his death that he acquired the great fame that his figure now possesses. His most famous work is Rhymes and Legends, and that’s what catapulted it to success when it was published by Augusto Ferrán. He was named responsible for publishing the works that did not come to light by the artist himself, once Bécquer died. And so Ferran did.

While all of these cases were unfair, in your opinion, which one deserved more success? Tell us in the comments!