title: Lee Krasner

text: By attending a technical art school, Krasner was able to gain an extensive and thorough artistic education as illustrated through her knowledge of the techniques of the Old Masters. She also became highly skilled in portraying anatomically correct figures. There are relatively few works that survive from this time period apart from a few self-portraits and still lifes since most of the works were burned in a fire. One image that still exists from this period is her "Self Portrait" painted in 1930, now at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. She submitted it to the National Academy in order to enroll in a certain class, but the judges could not believe that the young artist produced a self-portrait en plein air. In it, Krasner depicts herself with a defiant expression surrounded by nature. She also briefly enrolled in the Art Students League of New York in 1928. There, she took a class led by George Bridgman who emphasized the human form.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner was highly influenced by the opening of the Museum of Modern Art in 1929. She was very affected by post-impressionism and grew critical of the academic notions of style she had learned at the National Academy. In the 1930s, she began studying modern art through learning the components of composition, technique, and theory. She began taking classes from Hans Hofmann in 1937, which modernized her approach to the nude and still life. He emphasized the two-dimensional nature of the picture plane and usage of color to create spatial illusion that was not representative of reality through his lessons. Throughout her classes with Hofmann, Krasner worked in an advanced style of cubism, also known as neo-cubism. During the class, a human nude or a still life setting would be the model from which Krasner and other students would have to work. She typically created charcoal drawings of the human models and oil on paper color studies of the still life settings. She typically illustrated female nudes in a cubist manner with tension achieved through the fragmentation of forms and the opposition of light and dark colors. The still lifes illustrated her interest in fauvism since she suspended brightly colored pigment on white backgrounds.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Hans Hofmann "was very negative" his former student said "but one day he stood before my easel and he gave me the first praise I had ever received as an artist from him. He said, 'This is so good, you would never know it was done by a woman". She also received praise from Piet Mondrian who once told her "You have a very strong inner rhythm; you must never lose it."


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner supported herself as a waitress during her studies but it eventually became too difficult due to the Great Depression. In order to continue provide for herself, she joined the Works Progress Administration's Federal Art Project in 1935, working in the mural division as an assistant to Max Spivak. Her job was to enlarge other artists' designs for large-scaled public murals. As murals were created to be easily understood and appreciated by the general public, however, the abstract art Krasner produced was undesirable. While happy to be employed, she was dissatisfied since she did not like working with figurative images created by other artists. Throughout the late 1930s and early 1940s, she created gouache sketches in the hopes of one day creating an abstract mural. As soon as one of her proposals for a mural was approved for the WNYC radio station, the Works Progress Administration turned into War Services and all art had to be created for war propaganda. Krasner continued working for War Services by creating collages for the war effort which were displayed in the windows of nineteen department stores in Brooklyn and Manhattan. She was intensively involved with the Artists Union during her employment with the WPA but was one of the first to quit when she realized the communists were taking it over. However, by being part of this organization, she was able to meet more artists in the city and enlarge her network.


title: Lee Krasner

text: After she quit, she joined in 1940 the American Abstract Artists. While a member, she typically exhibited cubist still life in a black-gridded cloisonne style which were highly impastoed and gestural. She met future abstract expressionists Willem de Kooning, Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Adolph Gottlieb, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman, Clyfford Still, and Bradley Walker Tomlin through this organization. She lost interest in their usage of hard-edge geometric style after her relationship with Jackson Pollock began.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner is identified as an abstract expressionist due to her abstract, gestural, and expressive works in painting, collage painting, charcoal drawing, and occasionally mosaics. She would often cut apart her own drawings and paintings to create her collage paintings. She also commonly revised or completely destroyed an entire series of works due to her critical nature; as a result, her surviving body of work is relatively small. Her catalogue raisonné, published in 1995 by Abrams, lists 599 known pieces.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Her changeable nature is reflected throughout her work, which has led critics and scholars to have different conclusions about her and her oeuvre. Krasner's style often alternates between classic structure and baroque action, open form and hard-edge shape, and bright color and monochrome palette. Throughout her career, she refused to adopt a singular, recognizable style and instead embraced change through varying the mood, subject matter, texture, materials, and compositions of her work often. By changing her work style often, she differed from other abstract expressionists since many of them adopted unchanging identities and modes of depiction. Despite these intense variations, her works can typically be recognized through their gestural style, texture, rhythm, and depiction of organic imagery. Krasner's interest in the self, nature, and modern life are themes which commonly surface in her works. She was often reluctant to discuss the iconography of her work and instead emphasized the importance of her biography since she claimed her art was formed through her individual personality and her emotional state.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Throughout the first half of the 1940s, Krasner struggled with creating art that satisfied her critical nature. Throughout the 1930s the New York painting scene consisted of a very intimate group of artists that studied each other's efforts but was not yet shown in galleries. The 1940s marked a transition from an "age of innocence" to a modernist mindset of pure expression. She was highly affected by seeing Pollock's work for the first time in 1942, causing her to reject Hofmann's cubist style which required working from a human or still life model. She called the work produced during this frustrating time her "grey slab paintings." She would create these paintings by working on a canvas for months, overpainting, scraping or rubbing paint off, and adding more pigment until the canvas was nearly monochrome from so much paint buildup. She eventually would destroy these works, which is the reason there is only one painting that exists from this time period. Krasner's extensive knowledge of cubism was the source of her creative problem since she needed her work to be more expressive and gestural to be considered contemporary and relevant. In the fall of 1945, Krasner destroyed many of her cubist works she created during her studies with Hofmann, although the majority of paintings created from 1938 to 1943 survived this reevaluation.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Beginning in 1946, Krasner began working on her "Little Image" series. Commonly categorized as mosaic, webbed, or hieroglyphs depending on the style of the image, these types of paintings, totalling around 40, she created until 1949. The mosaic images were created through the thick buildup of paint while her webbed paintings were made through a drip technique in which the paintbrush was always close to the surface of the canvas. Since Krasner used a drip technique, many critics believed upon seeing this work for the first time that she was reinterpreting Pollock's chaotic paint splatters. Her hieroglyph paintings are gridded and look like an unreadable, personal script of Krasner's creation. These works demonstrate her anti-figurative concerns, allover approach to the canvas, gestural brushwork, and disregard of naturalistic color. They have little variation of hue but are very rich in texture due to the buildup of impasto and also suggest space continuing beyond the canvas. These are considered her first successful images that she created while working from her own imagination rather than a model. The relatively small scale of the images can be attributed to the fact she painted them on an easel in her small studio space in an upstairs bedroom at The Springs.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Many scholars interpret these images as Krasner's reworking of Hebrew script. In an interview later in her career, Krasner admitted to subconsciously working from right to left on her canvases, leading scholars to believe that her ethnic and cultural background affected the rendering of her work. Some scholars have interpreted these paintings to represent the artist's reaction to the tragedy of the Holocaust. Others have claimed that Krasner's work with the War Services project caused her to be interested in text and codes since cryptoanalysis was a main concern for winning the war.


title: Lee Krasner

text: When she completed the "Little Image" series in 1949, Krasner again went through a critical phase with her work. She tried out and rejected many new styles and eventually destroyed most of the work she made in the early 1950s. There is evidence that she began experimenting with automatic painting and created black-and-white, hybridized, monstrous figures on large canvases in 1950. These were the paintings that Betty Parsons saw when she visited The Springs that summer, causing the gallerist to offer Krasner a show in the fall. Between the summer and the fall, Krasner again had shifted her style to color field painting and destroyed the figurative automatic paintings she made. The Betty Parsons show was Krasner's first solo exhibition since 1945. After the exhibition, Krasner used the color field paintings to make her collage paintings.


title: Lee Krasner

text: By 1951, Krasner had started her first series of collage paintings. To create these them, Krasner pasted cut-and-torn shapes onto all but two of the large-scale color field paintings she created for the Betty Parsons exhibition in 1951. This period marks the time when the artist stopped working on an easel since she created these works by lying the support on the floor. To make these images, she would pin the separate pieces to a canvas and modify the composition until she was satisfied. She then would paste the fragments on the canvas and add color with a brush when desired. Most of the collage paintings she created recall plant or organic forms but do not completely resemble a living organism. By using many different materials, she was able to create texture and prevent the image from being entirely flat. The act of tearing and cutting elements for the collage embodies Krasner's expression since these acts are aggressive. She explored contrasts of light and dark colors, hard and soft lines, organic and geometric shapes, and structure and improvisation through this work. These collage paintings represent Krasner's turn away from nonobjective abstraction. From this period onwards, she created metaphorical and content-laden art which alludes to organic figures or landscapes.


title: Lee Krasner

text: From 1951 to 1953, most of her works were made from ripped drawings completed in black ink or wash in a figurative manner. By ripping the paper instead of cutting it, the edges of the figures are much more soft in comparison to the geometric and hard-edged shapes in her previous works. From 1953 to 1954, she created smaller-sized collage paintings that were composed of fragments of undesired works. Some of the discarded works she used were splatter paintings completed by Pollock. Many scholars have expressed different interpretations about why she used her partner's unwanted canvases. Some assert that she simultaneously demonstrated her admiration for his art while also recontextualizing his aggressive physicality through manipulating his images into a collage form. Others believe that she was creating a sense of intimacy between themselves, which was lacking in their actual relationship by this time period, by combining their works together. By 1955, she made collage paintings on a larger scale and varied the material she used for the support, using either masonite, wood, or canvas. These works were first exhibited by Eleanor Ward at the Stable Gallery in 1955 in New York City, but they received little public acclaim apart from a good review from Clement Greenberg.


title: Lee Krasner

text: During the summer of 1956, Krasner started her "Earth Green Series." While she started making this work before Pollock's death, they are considered to reflect her feelings of anger, guilt, pain, and loss she experienced about their relationship before and after he died. The intense emotion she felt during this time caused her art to develop along more liberated lines of her self-expression and pushed the boundaries of conventional, developed concepts of art. Through these large-scale action paintings, Krasner depicts hybridized figures that are made up of organic plant-like forms and anatomical parts, which often allude to both male and female body parts. These forms dominate the canvas, causing it to be crowded and densely-packed with bursting and bulging shapes. The pain she experienced during this period is illustrated through the principal usage of flesh tones with blood-red accents in the figures which suggest wounds. The paint drips on her canvas show her speed and willingness to relinquish absolute control, both necessary for portraying her emotions.


title: Lee Krasner

text: By 1957, Krasner continued to create figurative abstract forms in her work, but they suggest more floral elements rather than anatomical. She used brighter colors which were more vibrant and commonly contrasted other colors in the composition. She also would dilute paint or use a dry brush to make the colors more transparent.


title: Lee Krasner

text: In 1958, Krasner was commissioned to create two abstract murals for an office building on Broadway. She created two collage maquettes which depicted floral motifs for two entryways of the building. These murals were later destroyed in a fire.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner's "Umber Series" paintings were created during a time when the artist was suffering from insomnia. Since she was working during the night, she had to paint with artificial light rather than daylight, causing her palette to shift from bright, vibrant hues to dull, monochrome colors. She also was still dealing with the death of Pollock and the recent death of her mother, which led her to use an aggressive style when creating these images. These mural-sized action paintings contrast dark and light severely since white, grays, black, and brown are the predominant colors used. Evidence of her animated brushwork can be seen through the drips and splatters of paint on the canvas. There is no central spot for the viewer to focus on in these works, making the composition highly dynamic and rhythmic. To paint on such a large scale, Krasner would tack the canvas to a wall. These images no longer implied organic forms but instead are often interpreted as violent and turbulent landscapes.


title: Lee Krasner

text: By 1962, she begins using bright colors and allude to floral and plant-like shapes. These works are compositionally similar to her monochrome images due to their large size and rhythmic nature with no central focal point. Their palettes often contrast with one another and allude to tropical landscapes or plants. She continued working in this style until she suffered an aneurysm, fell, and broke her right wrist in 1963. Since she still wanted to work, she began painting with her left hand. To overcome working with her non-dominant hand, she often would directly apply paint from a tube to the canvas rather than using a brush, causing there to be large patches of white canvas on the surfaces of the images. The gesture and the physicality of these works is more restrained.


title: Lee Krasner

text: After recovering from her broken arm, Krasner began working on bright and decorative allover painting which are less aggressive than her "Earth Green" and Umber Series paintings. Often, these images recall calligraphy or floral ornamentation not blatantly related to Krasner's known emotional state. Floral or calligraphic shapes dominate the canvas, connecting variable brushwork into a single pattern.


title: Lee Krasner

text: By the second half of the 1960s, critics began reassessing Krasner's role in the New York School as a painter and critic who greatly influenced Pollock and Greenberg. Prior to this, her status as an artist was typically overlooked by critics and scholars due to her relationship with Pollock. Since he served as such a large figure in the abstract expressionist movement, it is still often difficult for scholars to discuss her work without mentioning Pollock in some capacity. This reevaluation is reflected in her first retrospective exhibition of her paintings which was held in London at the Whitechapel Gallery in 1965. This exhibition was more well-received by critics in comparison to her previous shows in New York.


title: Lee Krasner

text: In 1969, Krasner mostly concentrated on creating works on paper with gouache. These works were named either "Earth, Water, Seed," or "Hieroglyphics" and often looked similar to a Rorschach test. Some scholars claim that these images were a critique of Greenberg's theory about the importance of the two-dimensional nature of the canvas.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, the painter's work was significantly influenced by postmodern art and emphasized the inherent problems of art as a form of communication.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Starting in 1970, Krasner began making large horizontal paintings made up of hard-edge lines and a palette of a few bright colors that contrasted one another. She painted in this style until about 1973. Three years later, she started working on her second series of collage images. She began working on these after cleaning out her studio and discovered some charcoal drawings mostly of figure studies that she completed from 1937 to 1940. After saving a few, Krasner decided to use the rest in a new series of collages. In this work, the black and gray shapes of the figure studies are juxtaposed against the blank canvas or the addition of brightly colored paint. The hard-edged shapes of the cut drawings are reconstructed into curvilinear shapes that recall floral patterns. Texture is induced through the contrast of the smooth paper and rough canvas. Since the figure studies are cut up and rearranged without consideration of their original intention or message, the differences between the old drawings and new structures are highly exaggerated. All of the collages' titles from this series are different verb tenses interpreted as a critique of Greenberg's and Michael Fried's insistence on the presentness of modern art. This series was very well received by a large audience when they were exhibited in 1977 at the Pace Gallery. It is also considered a statement about how artists need to reexamine and rework their style in order to stay relevant as they grow older.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Although many people believe that Krasner stopped working in the 1940s in order to nurture Pollock's home life and career, she never in fact stopped creating art. While their relationship developed, she shifted her focus from her own to Pollock's art in order to help him gain more recognition due to the fact that she believed that he had "much more to give with his art than she had with hers".


title: Lee Krasner

text: Throughout her career, Krasner went through periods of struggle where she would experiment with new styles that would satisfy her means for expression and harshly critique, revise, or destroy the work she would produce. Because of this self-criticism, there are periods of time where little to none of her work exists, specifically the late 1940s and early 1950s.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner and Pollock both had an immense effect on each other's artistic styles and careers. Since Krasner had learned from Hans Hofmann while Pollock received training from Thomas Hart Benton, each took different approaches to their work. Krasner learned from Hofmann the importance of the abstracting from nature and emphasizing the flat nature of the canvas while Pollock's training highlighted the importance of complex design from automatic drawing. Krasner's extensive knowledge of modern art helped Pollock since she brought him up to date with what contemporary art should be. He was therefore able to make works that were more organized and cosmopolitan. Additionally, Krasner was responsible for introducing Pollock to many artists, collectors, and critics who appreciated abstract art such as Willem de Kooning, Peggy Guggenheim, and Clement Greenberg. Pollock helped Krasner become less restrained when making her work. He inspired her to stop painting from human and still life models in order to free her interior emotions and become more spontaneous and gestural through her work.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner struggled with the public's reception of her identity, both as a woman and as Pollock's wife. When they both exhibited in a show called "Artists: Man and Wife" in 1949, an "ARTnews" reviewer stated: "There is a tendency among some of these wives to 'tidy up' their husband's styles. Lee Krasner (Mrs. Jackson Pollock) takes her husband's paint and enamels and changes his unrestrained, sweeping lines into neat little squares and triangles." Even after the rise of feminism in the 1960s and 1970s, Krasner's artistic career was always put into relation to Pollock since remarks made about her work often commented on how she had become a successful artist by moving out of Pollock's shadow. In articles about her work, Pollock is continually referred to. Krasner is still sometimes referred to as "Action Widow", a term coined in 1972 by art critic B. H. Friedman who accused the female surviving partners of Abstract Expressionist artists of artistic dependence on their male partners. Typically in the 1940s and 1950s, Krasner also would not sign works at all, sign with the genderless initials "L.K.", or blend her signature into the painting in order to not emphasize her status as a woman and as a wife to another painter.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Mary Beth Edelson's "Some Living American Women Artists / Last Supper" (1972) appropriated Leonardo da Vinci’s "The Last Supper", with the heads of notable women artists, including Krasner's, collaged over the heads of Christ and his apostles. The image, addressing the role of religious and art historical iconography in the subordination of women, became "one of the most iconic images of the feminist art movement."


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner died on June 19, 1984, age 75, at New York Hospital where she was being treated for an intestinal ailment and acute arthritis.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Six months after her death, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City held a retrospective exhibition of her work. A review in "The New York Times" noted that it "clearly defines Krasner's place in the New York School" and that she "is a major, independent artist of the pioneer Abstract Expressionist generation, whose stirring work ranks high among that produced here in the last half-century." As of 2008, Krasner is one of only four women artists to have had a retrospective show at this institution. The other three women are Louise Bourgeois (1982), Helen Frankenthaler (1989) and Elizabeth Murray (2004).


title: Lee Krasner

text: Her papers were donated to the Archives of American Art in 1985; they were digitized and posted on the web for researchers.


title: Lee Krasner

text: After her death, her East Hampton property became the Pollock-Krasner House and Studio, and is open to the public for tours. A separate organization, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, was established in 1985. The Foundation functions as the official estate for both Krasner and Pollock, and also, under the terms of her will, serves "to assist individual working artists of merit with financial need." The U.S. copyright representative for the Pollock-Krasner Foundation is the Artists Rights Society.


title: Lee Krasner

text: On November 11, 2003, "Celebration," a large painting from 1960 sold to the Cleveland Museum of Art for $1.9 million and in May 2008, "Polar Stampede" sold for $3.2 million. "No one today could persist in calling her a peripheral talent," said critic Robert Hughes.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner was portrayed by Marcia Gay Harden in the film "Pollock" (2000), which is about the life of her husband Jackson Pollock. Harden won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in the film.


title: Lee Krasner

text: In John Updike's novel "Seek My Face" (2002), a significant portion of the main character's life is based on Krasner's.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner and Jackson Pollock established a relationship in 1942 after they both exhibited at the McMillen Gallery. She was intrigued by his work and the fact she did not know who he was even though she knew many abstract painters in New York. She went to his apartment to meet him. By 1945, they moved to The Springs on the outskirts of East Hampton. In the summer of that year, they got married in a church with two witnesses.


title: Lee Krasner

text: While the two lived in the farmhouse in The Springs, they continued creating art. They worked in separate studio spaces with Krasner in an upstairs bedroom in the house while Pollock worked in the barn in their backyard. When not working, the two spent their time cooking, baking, gardening, keeping the house organized, and entertaining friends.


title: Lee Krasner

text: By 1956, their relationship became strained as they faced certain issues. Pollock had begun struggling with his alcoholism and was having an extramarital affair with Ruth Kligman. Krasner left in the summertime to visit friends in Europe but had to quickly return when Pollock died in a car crash while she was away.


title: Lee Krasner

text: Krasner was brought up in an orthodox Jewish home throughout her childhood and adolescence. Her family lived in Brownsville, Brooklyn which had a large population of poor Jewish immigrants. Her father spent most of his time practicing Judaism while her mother kept up the household and the family business. Krasner appreciated aspects of Judaism like Hebrew script, prayers, and religious stories.


title: Lee Krasner

text: As a teenager, she grew critical of what she perceived as misogyny in orthodox Judaism. In an interview later in her life, Krasner recalls reading a prayer translation and thinking it was "indeed a beautiful prayer in every sense except for the closing of it... if you are a male you say, 'Thank You, O Lord, for creating me in Your image'; and if you are a woman you say, 'Thank You, O Lord, for creating me as You saw fit.'" She also began reading existentialist philosophies during this time period, causing her to turn away from Judaism even further.


title: Lee Krasner

text: While she married Pollock in a church, Krasner continued to identify herself as Jewish but decided to not practice the religion. Her identity as a Jewish woman has affected how scholars interpret the meaning of her art.


title: Lee Krasner

text: At a 2003 Christie's auction in New York, Lee Krasner's horizontal composition in oil on canvas, "Celebration" (1960), multiplied its presale estimate more than fourfold as it ended its upward course at $1.9 million. In 2019, Sotheby's set a new auction record for Krasner when "The Eye is the First Circle" (1960) sold for $10 million to Robert Mnuchin.


title: Old Chinese

text: Old Chinese, also called Archaic Chinese in older works, is the oldest attested stage of Chinese, and the ancestor of all modern varieties of Chinese. The earliest examples of Chinese are divinatory inscriptions on oracle bones from around 1250 BC, in the late Shang dynasty. Bronze inscriptions became plentiful during the following Zhou dynasty. The latter part of the Zhou period saw a flowering of literature, including classical works such as the "Analects", the "Mencius", and the "Zuo zhuan". These works served as models for Literary Chinese (or Classical Chinese), which remained the written standard until the early twentieth century, thus preserving the vocabulary and grammar of late Old Chinese.


title: Old Chinese

text: Old Chinese was written with several early forms of Chinese characters, including Oracle Bone, Bronze, and Seal scripts. Throughout the Old Chinese period, there was a close correspondence between a character and a monosyllabic and monomorphemic word. Although the script is not alphabetic, the majority of characters were created based on phonetic considerations. At first, words that were difficult to represent visually were written using a "borrowed" character for a similar-sounding word (rebus principle). Later on, to reduce ambiguity, new characters were created for these phonetic borrowings by appending a radical that conveys a broad semantic category, resulting in compound "xingsheng" (phono-semantic) characters (). For the earliest attested stage of Old Chinese of the late Shang dynasty, the phonetic information implicit in these "xingsheng" characters which are grouped into phonetic series, known as the "xiesheng" series"," represents the only direct source of phonological data for reconstructing the language. The corpus of "xingsheng" characters was greatly expanded in the following Zhou dynasty. In addition, the rhymes of the earliest recorded poems, primarily those of the "Shijing", provide an extensive source of phonological information with respect to syllable finals for the Central Plains dialects during the Western Zhou and Spring and Autumn periods. Similarly, the "Chuci" provides rhyme data for the dialect spoken in the Chu region during the Warring States period. These rhymes, together with clues from the phonetic components of "xingsheng" characters, allow most characters attested in Old Chinese to be assigned to one of 30 or 31 rhyme groups. For late Old Chinese of the Han period, the modern Southern Min dialects, the oldest layer of Sino-Vietnamese vocabulary, and a few early transliterations of foreign proper names, as well as names for non-native flora and fauna, also provide insights into language reconstruction.


title: Old Chinese

text: Although many of the finer details remain unclear, most scholars agree that Old Chinese differed from Middle Chinese in lacking retroflex and palatal obstruents but having initial consonant clusters of some sort, and in having voiceless nasals and liquids. Most recent reconstructions also describe Old Chinese as a language without tones, but having consonant clusters at the end of the syllable, which developed into tone distinctions in Middle Chinese.


title: Old Chinese

text: Most researchers trace the core vocabulary of Old Chinese to Sino-Tibetan, with much early borrowing from neighbouring languages.


title: Old Chinese

text: During the Zhou period, the originally monosyllabic vocabulary was augmented with polysyllabic words formed by compounding and reduplication, although monosyllabic vocabulary was still predominant. Unlike Middle Chinese and the modern Chinese dialects, Old Chinese had a significant amount of derivational morphology. Several affixes have been identified, including ones for the verbification of nouns, conversion between transitive and intransitive verbs, and formation of causative verbs. Like modern Chinese, it appears to be uninflected, though a pronoun case and number system seems to have existed during the Shang and early Zhou but was already in the process of disappearing by the Classical period. Likewise, by the Classical period, most morphological derivations had become unproductive or vestigial, and grammatical relationships were primarily indicated using word order and grammatical particles.


title: Old Chinese

text: Middle Chinese and its southern neighbours Kra–Dai, Hmong–Mien and the Vietic branch of Austroasiatic have similar tone systems, syllable structure, grammatical features and lack of inflection, but these are believed to be areal features spread by diffusion rather than indicating common descent.


title: Old Chinese

text: The most widely accepted hypothesis is that Chinese belongs to the Sino-Tibetan language family, together with Burmese, Tibetan and many other languages spoken in the Himalayas and the Southeast Asian Massif.


title: Old Chinese

text: The evidence consists of some hundreds of proposed cognate words, including such basic vocabulary as the following:


title: Old Chinese

text: Although the relationship was first proposed in the early 19th century and is now broadly accepted, reconstruction of Sino-Tibetan is much less developed than that of families such as Indo-European or Austronesian.


title: Old Chinese

text: Although Old Chinese is by far the earliest attested member of the family, its logographic script does not clearly indicate the pronunciation of words.


title: Old Chinese

text: Other difficulties have included the great diversity of the languages, the lack of inflection in many of them, and the effects of language contact.


title: Old Chinese

text: In addition, many of the smaller languages are poorly described because they are spoken in mountainous areas that are difficult to reach, including several sensitive border zones.


title: Old Chinese

text: Initial consonants generally correspond regarding place and manner of articulation, but voicing and aspiration are much less regular, and prefixal elements vary widely between languages. Some researchers believe that both these phenomena reflect lost minor syllables. Proto-Tibeto-Burman as reconstructed by Benedict and Matisoff lacks an aspiration distinction on initial stops and affricates. Aspiration in Old Chinese often corresponds to pre-initial consonants in Tibetan and Lolo-Burmese, and is believed to be a Chinese innovation arising from earlier prefixes. Proto-Sino-Tibetan is reconstructed with a six-vowel system as in recent reconstructions of Old Chinese, with the Tibeto-Burman languages distinguished by the merger of the mid-central vowel with . The other vowels are preserved by both, with some alternation between and , and between and .


title: Old Chinese

text: The earliest known written records of the Chinese language were found at the Yinxu site near modern Anyang identified as the last capital of the Shang dynasty, and date from about 1250 BC. These are the oracle bones, short inscriptions carved on tortoise plastrons and ox scapulae for divinatory purposes, as well as a few brief bronze inscriptions. The language written is undoubtedly an early form of Chinese, but is difficult to interpret due to the limited subject matter and high proportion of proper names. Only half of the 4,000 characters used have been identified with certainty. Little is known about the grammar of this language, but it seems much less reliant on grammatical particles than Classical Chinese.


title: Old Chinese

text: From early in the Western Zhou period, around 1000 BC, the most important recovered texts are bronze inscriptions, many of considerable length. Even longer pre-Classical texts on a wide range of subjects have also been transmitted through the literary tradition. The oldest sections of the "Book of Documents", the "Classic of Poetry" and the "I Ching", also date from the early Zhou period, and closely resemble the bronze inscriptions in vocabulary, syntax, and style. A greater proportion of this more varied vocabulary has been identified than for the oracular period.


title: Old Chinese

text: The four centuries preceding the unification of China in 221 BC (the later Spring and Autumn period and the Warring States period) constitute the Chinese classical period in the strict sense, although some authors also include the subsequent Qin and Han dynasties, thus encompassing the next four centuries of the early imperial period. There are many bronze inscriptions from this period, but they are vastly outweighed by a rich literature written in ink on bamboo and wooden slips and (toward the end of the period) silk and paper. Although these are perishable materials, and many books were destroyed in the burning of books and burying of scholars in the Qin dynasty, a significant number of texts were transmitted as copies, and a few of these survived to the present day as the received classics. Works from this period, including the "Analects", the "Mencius", the "Tao Te Ching", the "Commentary of Zuo", the "Guoyu", and the early Han "Records of the Grand Historian", have been admired as models of prose style by later generations.


title: Old Chinese

text: During the Han dynasty, disyllabic words proliferated in the spoken language and gradually replaced the mainly monosyllabic vocabulary of the pre-Qin period, while grammatically, noun classifiers became a prominent feature of the language. While some of these innovations were reflected in the writings of Han dynasty authors (e.g., Sima Qian), later writers increasingly imitated earlier, pre-Qin literary models. As a result, the syntax and vocabulary of pre-Qin Classical Chinese was preserved in the form of Literary Chinese ("wenyan"), a written standard which served as a "lingua franca" for formal writing in China and neighboring Sinosphere countries until the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.


title: Old Chinese

text: Each character of the script represented a single Old Chinese word. Most scholars believe that these words were monosyllabic, though some have recently suggested that a minority of them had minor presyllables. The development of these characters follows the same three stages that characterized Egyptian hieroglyphs, Mesopotamian cuneiform script and the Maya script.


title: Old Chinese

text: Some words could be represented by pictures (later stylized) such as 'sun', 'person' and 'tree, wood', by abstract symbols such as 'three' and 'up', or by composite symbols such as 'forest' (two trees).


title: Old Chinese

text: About 1,000 of the oracle bone characters, nearly a quarter of the total, are of this type, though 300 of them have not yet been deciphered.


title: Old Chinese

text: Though the pictographic origins of these characters are apparent, they have already undergone extensive simplification and conventionalization.


title: Old Chinese

text: Next, words that could not be represented pictorially, such as abstract terms and grammatical particles, were signified by borrowing characters of pictorial origin representing similar-sounding words (the "rebus strategy"):


title: Old Chinese

text: Sometimes the borrowed character would be modified slightly to distinguish it from the original, as with 'don't', a borrowing of 'mother'.


title: Old Chinese

text: Later, phonetic loans were systematically disambiguated by the addition of semantic indicators, usually to the less common word:


title: Old Chinese

text: Such phono-semantic compound characters were already used extensively on the oracle bones, and the vast majority of characters created since then have been of this type.


title: Old Chinese

text: In the "Shuowen Jiezi", a dictionary compiled in the 2nd century, 82% of the 9,353 characters are classified as phono-semantic compounds.


title: Old Chinese

text: In the light of the modern understanding of Old Chinese phonology, researchers now believe that most of the characters originally classified as semantic compounds also have a phonetic nature.


title: Old Chinese

text: These developments were already present in the oracle bone script, possibly implying a significant period of development prior to the extant inscriptions.


title: Old Chinese

text: This may have involved writing on perishable materials, as suggested by the appearance on oracle bones of the character 'records'.


title: Old Chinese

text: The character is thought to depict bamboo or wooden strips tied together with leather thongs, a writing material known from later archaeological finds.


title: Old Chinese

text: Development and simplification of the script continued during the pre-Classical and Classical periods, with characters becoming less pictorial and more linear and regular, with rounded strokes being replaced by sharp angles.


title: Old Chinese

text: The language developed compound words, so that characters came to represent morphemes, though almost all morphemes could be used as independent words.


title: Old Chinese

text: Hundreds of morphemes of two or more syllables also entered the language, and were written with one phono-semantic compound character per syllable.


title: Old Chinese

text: During the Warring States period, writing became more widespread, with further simplification and variation, particularly in the eastern states.


title: Old Chinese

text: The most conservative script prevailed in the western state of Qin, which would later impose its standard on the whole of China.


title: Old Chinese

text: Old Chinese phonology has been reconstructed using a variety of evidence, including the phonetic components of Chinese characters, rhyming practice in the "Classic of Poetry" and Middle Chinese reading pronunciations described in such works as the "Qieyun", a rhyme dictionary published in 601 AD.


title: Old Chinese

text: Although many details are still disputed, recent formulations are in substantial agreement on the core issues.


title: Old Chinese

text: For example, the Old Chinese initial consonants recognized by Li Fang-Kuei and William Baxter are given below, with Baxter's (mostly tentative) additions given in parentheses:


title: Old Chinese

text: Various initial clusters have been proposed, especially clusters of with other consonants, but this area remains unsettled.


title: Old Chinese

text: Bernhard Karlgren and many later scholars posited the medials , and the combination to explain the retroflex and palatal obstruents of Middle Chinese, as well as many of its vowel contrasts.


title: Old Chinese

text: Vowels could optionally be followed by the same codas as in Middle Chinese: a glide or , a nasal , or , or a stop , or . Some scholars also allow for a labiovelar coda .


title: Old Chinese

text: Most scholars now believe that Old Chinese lacked the tones found in later stages of the language, but had optional post-codas and , which developed into the Middle Chinese rising and departing tones respectively.


title: Old Chinese

text: Little is known of the grammar of the language of the Oracular and pre-Classical periods, as the texts are often of a ritual or formulaic nature, and much of their vocabulary has not been deciphered. In contrast, the rich literature of the Warring States period has been extensively analysed. Having no inflection, Old Chinese was heavily reliant on word order, grammatical particles, and inherent word classes.


title: Old Chinese

text: Classifying Old Chinese words is not always straightforward, as words were not marked for function, word classes overlapped, and words of one class could sometimes be used in roles normally reserved for a different class. The task is more difficult with written texts than it would have been for speakers of Old Chinese, because the derivational morphology is often hidden by the writing system. For example, the verb 'to block' and the derived noun 'frontier' were both written with the same character .


title: Old Chinese

text: Personal pronouns exhibit a wide variety of forms in Old Chinese texts, possibly due to dialectal variation.


title: Old Chinese

text: In the oracle bone inscriptions, the pronouns were used by the king to refer to himself, and the forms for the Shang people as a whole.


title: Old Chinese

text: This distinction is largely absent in later texts, and the forms disappeared during the classical period.


title: Old Chinese

text: The forms and continued to be used interchangeably until their replacement by the northwestern variant (modern Mandarin "nǐ") in the Tang period.


title: Old Chinese

text: There was no third-person subject pronoun, but , originally a distal demonstrative, came to be used as a third-person object pronoun in the classical period.


title: Old Chinese

text: There were demonstrative and interrogative pronouns, but no indefinite pronouns with the meanings 'something' or 'nothing'.


title: Old Chinese

text: As in the modern language, localizers (compass directions, 'above', 'inside' and the like) could be placed after nouns to indicate relative positions.


title: Old Chinese

text: They could also precede verbs to indicate the direction of the action. Nouns denoting times were another special class (time words); they usually preceded the subject to specify the time of an action. However the classifiers so characteristic of Modern Chinese only became common in the Han period and the subsequent Northern and Southern dynasties.


title: Old Chinese

text: Old Chinese verbs, like their modern counterparts, did not show tense or aspect; these could be indicated with adverbs or particles if required. Verbs could be transitive or intransitive. As in the modern language, adjectives were a special kind of intransitive verb, and a few transitive verbs could also function as modal auxiliaries or as prepositions.


title: Old Chinese

text: Adverbs described the scope of a statement or various temporal relationships. They included two families of negatives starting with and , such as and . Modern northern varieties derive the usual negative from the first family, while southern varieties preserve the second. The language had no adverbs of degree until late in the Classical period.


title: Old Chinese

text: Particles were function words serving a range of purposes. As in the modern language, there were sentence-final particles marking imperatives and yes/no questions. Other sentence-final particles expressed a range of connotations, the most important being , expressing static factuality, and , implying a change. Other particles included the subordination marker and the nominalizing particles (agent) and (object).


title: Old Chinese

text: As with English and modern Chinese, Old Chinese sentences can be analysed as a subject (a noun phrase, sometimes understood) followed by a predicate, which could be of either nominal or verbal type.


title: Old Chinese

text: Before the Classical period, nominal predicates consisted of a copular particle followed by a noun phrase:


title: Old Chinese

text: In the Classical period, nominal predicates were constructed with the sentence-final particle instead of the copula , but was retained as the negative form, with which was optional:


title: Old Chinese

text: As in Modern Chinese, but unlike most Tibeto-Burman languages, the basic word order in a verbal sentence was subject–verb–object:


title: Old Chinese

text: Besides inversions for emphasis, there were two exceptions to this rule: a pronoun object of a negated sentence or an interrogative pronoun object would be placed before the verb:


title: Old Chinese

text: An additional noun phrase could be placed before the subject to serve as the topic. As in the modern language, yes/no questions were formed by adding a sentence-final particle, and requests for information by substituting an interrogative pronoun for the requested element.


title: Old Chinese

text: In general, Old Chinese modifiers preceded the words they modified. Thus relative clauses were placed before the noun, usually marked by the particle (in a role similar to Modern Chinese "de" ):


title: Old Chinese

text: A common instance of this construction was adjectival modification, since the Old Chinese adjective was a type of verb (as in the modern language), but was usually omitted after monosyllabic adjectives.


title: Old Chinese

text: Similarly, adverbial modifiers, including various forms of negation, usually occurred before the verb. As in the modern language, time adjuncts occurred either at the start of the sentence or before the verb, depending on their scope, while duration adjuncts were placed after the verb. Instrumental and place adjuncts were usually placed after the verb phrase. These later moved to a position before the verb, as in the modern language.


title: Old Chinese

text: The improved understanding of Old Chinese phonology has enabled the study of the origins of Chinese words (rather than the characters with which they are written).


title: Old Chinese

text: Most researchers trace the core vocabulary to a Sino-Tibetan ancestor language, with much early borrowing from other neighbouring languages.


title: Old Chinese

text: The traditional view was that Old Chinese was an isolating language, lacking both inflection and derivation, but it has become clear that words could be formed by derivational affixation, reduplication and compounding.


title: Old Chinese

text: Most authors consider only monosyllabic roots, but Baxter and Laurent Sagart also propose disyllabic roots in which the first syllable is reduced, as in modern Khmer.


title: Old Chinese

text: During the Old Chinese period, Chinese civilization expanded from a compact area around the lower Wei River and middle Yellow River eastwards across the North China Plain to Shandong and then south into the valley of the Yangtze. There are no records of the non-Chinese languages formerly spoken in those areas and subsequently displaced by the Chinese expansion.


title: Old Chinese

text: However they are believed to have contributed to the vocabulary of Old Chinese, and may be the source of some of the many Chinese words whose origins are still unknown.


title: Old Chinese

text: Jerry Norman and Mei Tsu-lin have identified early Austroasiatic loanwords in Old Chinese, possibly from the peoples of the lower Yangtze basin known to ancient Chinese as the Yue. For example, the early Chinese name ( ) for the Yangtze was later extended to a general word for 'river' in south China.


title: Old Chinese

text: Norman and Mei suggest that the word is cognate with Vietnamese (from *"krong") and Mon "kruŋ" 'river'.


title: Old Chinese

text: Haudricourt and Strecker have proposed a number of borrowings from the Hmong–Mien languages. These include terms related to rice cultivation, which began in the middle Yangtze valley:


title: Old Chinese

text: Other words are believed to have been borrowed from languages to the south of the Chinese area, but it is not clear which was the original source, e.g.


title: Old Chinese

text: In ancient times, the Tarim Basin was occupied by speakers of Indo-European Tocharian languages, the source of ( ) 'honey', from proto-Tocharian *"ḿət(ə)" (where *"ḿ" is palatalized; cf. Tocharian B "mit"), cognate with English "".


title: Old Chinese

text: The northern neighbours of Chinese contributed such words as ( ) 'calf' – compare Mongolian "tuɣul" and Manchu "tuqšan".


title: Old Chinese

text: Chinese philologists have long noted words with related meanings and similar pronunciations, sometimes written using the same character.


title: Old Chinese

text: Henri Maspero attributed some of these alternations to consonant clusters resulting from derivational affixes.


title: Old Chinese

text: Subsequent work has identified several such affixes, some of which appear to have cognates in other Sino-Tibetan languages.


title: Old Chinese

text: A common case is "derivation by tone change", in which words in the departing tone appear to be derived from words in other tones.


title: Old Chinese

text: If Haudricourt's theory of the origin of the departing tone is accepted, these tonal derivations can be interpreted as the result of a derivational suffix .


title: Old Chinese

text: Another alternation involves transitive verbs with an unvoiced initial and passive or stative verbs with a voiced initial:


title: Old Chinese

text: Some scholars hold that the transitive verbs with voiceless initials are basic and the voiced initials reflect a de-transitivizing nasal prefix.


title: Old Chinese

text: Others suggest that the transitive verbs were derived by the addition of a causative prefix to a stative verb, causing devoicing of the following voiced initial.


title: Old Chinese

text: Both postulated prefixes have parallels in other Sino-Tibetan languages, in some of which they are still productive.


title: Old Chinese

text: Old Chinese morphemes were originally monosyllabic, but during the Western Zhou period many new disyllabic words entered the language.


title: Old Chinese

text: For example, over 30% of the vocabulary of the "Mencius" is polysyllabic, including 9% proper names, though monosyllabic words occur more frequently, accounting for 80–90% of the text.


title: Old Chinese

text: Many disyllabic, monomorphemic words, particularly names of insects, birds and plants, and expressive adjectives and adverbs, were formed by varieties of reduplication ( /):


title: Old Chinese

text: A number of bimorphemic syllables appeared in the Classical period, resulting from the fusion of words with following unstressed particles or pronouns.


title: Old Chinese

text: Thus the negatives and are viewed as fusions of the negators and respectively with a third-person pronoun .


title: Wounds (film)

text: Wounds is a 2019 psychological horror film written and directed by Babak Anvari, in his English language debut, and starring Armie Hammer, Dakota Johnson, and Zazie Beetz. The film is based on the novella "The Visible Filth" by Nathan Ballingrud.


title: Wounds (film)

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2019, and was released in the United States on October 18, 2019, by Hulu and internationally on Netflix.


title: Wounds (film)

text: Will is a New Orleans-based bartender who works at a run-down cockroach-infested bar. One evening, Alicia (one of his exes), her (current) boyfriend Jeffrey, a drunk Eric, and a group of college kids enter the bar. Eric gets into a fight with another guest, resulting in Eric being stabbed in the cheek with a broken bottle. The kids leave the bar in a panic and Will discovers one of them has left their phone behind. Will returns to his house, which he shares with his student girlfriend Carrie. While inspecting the phone, he receives messages from someone called Garrett, who claims that he is scared and something from the "tunnel" is following him.


title: Wounds (film)

text: The next morning, Will awakens to discover that overnight, Garrett has sent the phone a photo that shows a pile of bloody teeth. Carrie insists they call the police. Will drops Carrie off at school, where he suspects her professor is sleeping with her. He then visits Eric. Eric's wound is now infected, and he claims he is suffering from nightmares. Will spots some sort of inhuman flesh in Eric's wound. He visits Alicia and it is revealed that he has a crush on her and envies Jeffrey. Returning home, Will doesn't notice one of the college kids following him around town. He discovers photos and videos on the phone of a corpse and decapitated head being surrounded by cockroaches. Carrie sees the footage and forces Will to hand it over to the police. She discovers a book in one of the photos entitled "The Translation of Wounds". They call Garrett and hear an inhuman screeching on the other end.


title: Wounds (film)

text: While driving to the station, Will spots one of the college kids following him and receives messages from another member of the group, stating that he "has been chosen". Will hallucinates the phone turning into a cockroach creature and throws it out the car window, where it is picked up by one of the kids. Without the phone, the police cannot do anything. Will and Alicia later hang and make out before Alicia stops, feeling guilty. Will receives strange texts from Carrie and discovers her at home, staring at a strange video of a tunnel in a trance. Carrie has no memory of sending Will the texts. Later that night, Will awakens to discover Garrett in the house. Garrett throws up a pile of teeth before claiming he and his friends summoned "something", that it possessed them and Will has now brought it into his own home: it now sees him as "the perfect vessel for more".


title: Wounds (film)

text: Will hallucinates a cockroach crawling out of a wound in his armpit. Will and Carrie start to get more distant and aggressive to one another. He discovers she has been searching for Garrett online, as well as the books she noticed in the photo and Gnostic rituals which state that a wound is a portal for higher beings to enter the world. At work, Will gets more and more erratic and starts a fight with Jeffrey. He receives another text from Carrie, claiming someone is in the house with her. Will rushes home and discovers her in a trance again. She is in a catatonic state that does not stop until she is bathed, which results in a strange dark liquid washing off her. The next day, she and Will break up, with Carrie accusing Will of being empty.


title: Wounds (film)

text: Will goes to work and snaps at his boss, resulting in him quitting, while Alicia tells him to stop calling her. Broken and alone, Will decides to stay at Eric's house. Eric's wound has worsened. He reveals the college kids forced him to lure Will to the house, and they asked him to give Will "a present". Will spots an eye looking at him through Eric's wound. He discovers the phone in Eric's possession and is prompted to accept the "present" wrapped in flesh. He realizes the higher being the kids summoned is inside Eric's wound. After calling Garrett again, which fills the room with the inhuman screeching, a swarm of cockroaches arrive. Will finally submits and starts to absorb the higher being in an attempt to become whole as cockroaches envelop the house.


title: Wounds (film)

text: In February 2018, it was announced Armie Hammer had been cast in the film, with Babak Anvari writing and directing the film. Megan Ellison, Christopher Kopp, and Lucan Toh produced the film under their Annapurna Pictures, AZA Films, Two & Two Pictures banners, respectively. In March 2018, Dakota Johnson and Zazie Beetz joined the cast of the film. In April 2018, Karl Glusman, Brad William Henke and Jim Klock joined the cast.


title: Wounds (film)

text: The film had its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 26, 2019. It also screened at the Cannes Film Festival in the Directors Fortnight section on May 22, 2019. The film was scheduled to be released on March 29, 2019. However, it was pulled from the schedule. It was released in the United States on October 18, 2019, by Hulu. Netflix distributed the film internationally in all territories outside of the United States on October 18, 2019.


title: Wounds (film)

text: "Wounds" received mixed reviews from film critics. It holds approval rating on review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, based on reviews, with an average of . The site's critical consensus reads, ""Wounds" isn't without its creepy-crawly charms, but they – and the efforts of a talented cast – get squished by a story that never quite gets completely under the skin." On Metacritic, the film holds a rating of 51 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".


title: Sam Zell

text: Samuel Zell (born Shmuel Zielonka, September 28, 1941) is an American billionaire businessman and philanthropist. A former lawyer, Zell is the founder and chairman of Equity Group Investments, a private investment firm, founded in 1968. He has interests in and is the chairman of several public companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange: Equity Residential (EQR), Equity LifeStyle Properties (ELS), Equity Commonwealth (EQC), and Covanta Holding Corp. (CVA), and Anixter.


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell was born on September 28, 1941, in Chicago. His parents, Ruchla and Berek Zielonka, were Jewish immigrants from Poland, where his father had been a successful grain trader. They emigrated to the United States with their young daughter, Leah, via Tokyo. Soon after arriving, his parents changed their first and last names, becoming Rochelle and Bernard Zell. They then moved from Seattle to the Albany Park neighborhood in Chicago, where his father became a jewelry wholesaler. When he was twelve, the family moved to Highland Park, Illinois, where he graduated from Highland Park High School. In 1963, Zell graduated with a bachelor's degree from the University of Michigan, where he was also a member of the Alpha Epsilon Pi fraternity.


title: Sam Zell

text: While in school, Zell entered the real estate business. He managed a 15-unit apartment building in return for free room-and-board. Soon, he was managing the owner's other properties. By his graduation, that venture was netting $150,000. Joined by his fraternity brother Robert H. Lurie, he won a contract with a large apartment development owner in Ann Arbor. By the time he graduated with a J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 1966, he and Lurie were managing over 4,000 apartments and owned 100–200 units outright. After school, he sold his interest in the management company to Lurie and moved to Chicago.


title: Sam Zell

text: After graduation, Zell worked as a lawyer for one week before deciding that the legal profession was not for him. One of the senior partners decided to invest with him, enabling Zell to purchase an apartment building in Toledo. Zell also purchased several apartment buildings in Reno, Nevada, including Arlington Towers. In 1968, Zell founded the predecessor of Equity Group Investments and was joined a year later by his former partner, Robert H. Lurie. Together, they went on to grow the small firm into a vast enterprise, until Lurie's death in 1990.


title: Sam Zell

text: Equity Group Investments was the genesis for Equity Residential, the largest apartment owner in the United States; Equity Office Properties Trust, the largest office owner in the country; and Equity Lifestyle Properties, an owner/operator of manufactured home and resort communities.


title: Sam Zell

text: In 2006, the Blackstone Group announced the purchase of Equity Office for $36 billion, which was the largest leveraged buyout in history at the time. Blackstone then sold many of the portfolio's properties for record amounts. By early 2009, most of the properties sold were "under water" (worth less than the mortgage).


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell affiliates owned the Schwinn Bicycle Company, the drugstore Revco, department store chain Broadway Stores, energy company Santa Fe Energy Resources, and mattress company Sealy. In 1985, Zell took over Itel Corporation.


title: Sam Zell

text: Between 1992 and 1999, Zell's Chillmark fund owned Jacor Communications, Inc., a successful radio broadcast group that included a television station. The company was sold to Clear Channel Communications in 1999. On April 2, 2007, the Tribune Company announced its acceptance of Zell's offer to sponsor the going-private transaction of "Chicago Tribune", the "Los Angeles Times", and the company's other media assets. On December 20, 2007, Zell took the company private, and the following day he became the chairman and CEO. He sold the Chicago Cubs and the company's 25 percent interest in Comcast SportsNet Chicago. Under the burden of the debt incurred as part of Zell's leveraged buyout and in context of the unexpected severity of the Great Recession, the Tribune Co. filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy reorganization in December 2008.


title: Sam Zell

text: In January 2008, Zell bought a controlling share in the Tribune Company, owner of the "Chicago Tribune", among other newspapers. His decision to put Randy Michaels in charge was one of several moves that were sharply criticized by the employees. Besides creating a hostile workplace, Michaels laid off several employees while giving large bonuses to the executives. Less than a year after Zell bought the company, it tipped into bankruptcy, listing $7.6 billion in assets against a debt of $13 billion, making it the largest bankruptcy in the history of the American media industry. More than 4,200 people have lost jobs since the purchase, while resources for the Tribune newspapers and television stations have been slashed."


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell and his wife, Helen, are philanthropists who focus heavily on education and the arts. Among their public beneficiaries are: the University of Michigan with the sponsorship of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies and the Master of Fine Arts Creative Writing Program, Northwestern University's Kellogg School Zell Center for Risk Research and Zell Scholar Program, the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School's Zell/Lurie Real Estate Center, The Ounce of Prevention Fund, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra.


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell, according to "The Forward", is also "a major donor to causes in Israel. His donations include a $3.1 million donation to the Herzliya Interdisciplinary Center in Israel and separate donations to the Israel Center for Social and Economic Progress, a free market oriented Israeli think tank founded by Daniel Doron. In the United States, he has given major gifts to such Jewish causes as the American Jewish Committee and the Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School, a Chicago Jewish primary school named after his father." Zell donated to Chicagoland Jewish High School renaming the school to Rochelle Zell Jewish High School, after his mother.


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell donated $100,000 to Restore Our Future, the Super PAC supporting the 2012 presidential election campaign of Mitt Romney. In 2015 he donated $50,000 to the John Bolton Super PAC.


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell is known for using "salty" language in the newsroom. In February 2008, the website" LA Observed" reprinted an internal memo that said:


title: Sam Zell

text: In a June 2008 opinion piece for "The Washington Post" entitled, "The L.A. Times' Human Wrecking Ball", veteran Los Angeles-based editor and columnist Harold Meyerson took Zell to task for "taking bean counting to a whole new level", asserting that "he's well on his way to... destroying the "L.A. Times"." Comparing Zell to James McNamara, who was sentenced to life in prison for the notorious 1910 "Los Angeles Times" bombing (which killed 21 employees), Meyerson concluded his article by opining that "Life in San Quentin sounds about right" for Zell.


title: Sam Zell

text: In 2008, Zell confirmed a plan to place the Chicago Cubs and Wrigley Field up for sale separately in order to maximize profits. He also announced he would consider selling naming rights to Wrigley Field. These announcements were widely unpopular in Chicago and a poll taken by the "Chicago Sun-Times" showed that 53% of 2,000 people who voted said they would no longer attend Cubs games if the field were renamed.


title: Sam Zell

text: In 2010, "The New York Times" ran an article about Zell's and new top executive Randy Michaels's management of The Tribune Co. entitled "At Flagging Tribune, Tales of a Bankrupt Culture." The report details a culture promoting sexual harassment and debasement, with executives openly discussing the "sexual suitability" of employees in the office and a tight circle of executives who were earning tens of millions of dollars in bonuses despite being deep in bankruptcy and a failure to stem declining profits.


title: Sam Zell

text: In June 2018, at a conference organized by Nareit, Sam Zell stated "I don't think there's ever been a 'We gotta get more pussy on the block'" when explaining his views of female discrimination on the workplace.


title: Sam Zell

text: Zell has been married three times and divorced twice; he has three children: son, Matthew and daughter, JoAnn, from his first marriage; and an adopted daughter, Kellie, from his second marriage. His third wife is Helen (née Herzog) Fadim Zell. He lives in Chicago, Illinois, and has homes in Sun Valley, Idaho and Malibu, California.


title: Sam Zell

text: In May 2017, Zell released his book, "Am I Being Too Subtle?: Straight Talk From a Business Rebel". The book was published by Portfolio The book details his business philosophy on finding business and investment opportunities anywhere.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield () is an Argentine sports club based in Liniers, Buenos Aires. Its football team plays in Primera División, the highest level of the Argentine league system. Founded in 1910, the club has spent most of its history in the top tier of Argentine football. The club's home ground is the 49,540-capacity José Amalfitani Stadium, where they have played since 1951.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: One of the most successful clubs in Argentine football, Vélez Sarsfield had their first major success in 1968, when they won the league championship, and subsequently made regular seasons between 1970 and 1990. The club have enjoyed their greatest period of success in the past two decades, winning 15 trophies since 1993. Domestically, Vélez have won ten Primera División titles, while in continental competitions have won five international cups (including both the Copa Libertadores and the Intercontinental Cup). It is one of eight teams to have won CONMEBOL's treble.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez Sarsfield's regular kit colours are white shirts and shorts, with some details in blue. The club's crest has been changed several times in attempts to re-brand the club and modernise its image. It is one of the most supported clubs in Argentina. Apart from football the club takes part in other sports such as athletics, basketball, gymnastics, handball, field hockey, martial arts, tennis, roller skating and volleyball.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez foundation dates back to the last days of 1909, when rain interrupted an informal football game played near the Vélez Sarsfield railway station of the Buenos Aires Western Railway, which served the barrio of Vélez Sársfield, named after jurist Dalmacio Vélez Sarsfield. (Vélez Sarsfield station is in Floresta barrio and was renamed Floresta station in 1944.) Three of the young men whose game got interrupted, Julio Guglielmone, Martín Portillo and Nicolás Marín Moreno, sheltered in the station and discussed the possibility of founding a football club to practice the sport more seriously. The club was officially founded on 1 January 1910, in Marín Moreno's house. The founders decided to call the new club "Club Atlético Argentinos de Vélez Sarsfield" (in English: Argentines of Vélez Sarsfield Athletic Club), and appointed Luis Barredo as their first chairman. They also decided to form two teams (one for the Argentine third division and the other for the fourth) and chose to sport white shirts, that were easy to obtain for everyone. In 1912, however, the directive board decided to change the uniform to navy blue shirts and white shorts. Vélez Sarsfield first home ground was a piece of land located between the streets of Ensenada, Provincias Unidas (currently Juan Bautista Alberdi), Mariano Acosta and Convención (currently José Bonifacio). This block is in Floresta barrio, where it meets Vélez Sársfield and Parque Avellaneda barrios.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez affiliated to the Argentine Football Association (AFA) in 1912. Nonetheless, on 5 September, the board decided to disaffiliate the club from AFA and affiliate it to the recently created Federación Argentina de Football (FAF), citing as reason AFA's detrimental attitude towards the club. In that same year, the team was strengthened by the joining of some former players of San Lorenzo de Almagro, who had left that club due to its internal problems. With this help, Vélez reached the Federation's second division championship final on their first year of affiliation, losing 2–4 to Tigre in GEBA's ground.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 7 February 1913, 10 new people were accepted as members of the club. Among them was José Amalfitani, who later would go on to be club president for 30 years. Subsequently, on 23 November, the board of directors decided to shorten the club's name, eliminating the term ""Argentinos"" and leaving the club with its current name: "Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield". The board also decided that players from the different teams had to contribute an initial membership fee of $1 Argentine pesos, plus a monthly $0.50 of the same coin. In that year, Vélez rented a terrain in the neighbourhood of Mataderos known as "Quinta de Figallo", located in the Tapalqué street, between Escalada and Chascomús streets. This new ground had the advantage that a wind mill could provide water for the dressing rooms. The club's stay in Mataderos was short however, as they moved again in 1914, this time to the neighbourhood of Villa Luro. There, they bought a terrain between the streets of Bacacay, Víctor Hugo and Cortina, and the Maldonado Stream (parallel to what today is the Gaona avenue).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In 1915, Vélez re-affiliated to AFA after the disappearance of FAF. One year later, on 14 March, and owing to the great number of members of the club who were Italian immigrants, the kit was changed again. The new colours adopted were green, red and white, the colours of the Italian flag. From then on the club played in green, red and white stripes. During the decade, the team fought to achieve promotion to Primera División, the Association's first division. On 2 December 1917, Vélez lost the Intermedia (second division) final to Defensores de Belgrano in GEBA's ground. The club regularly took part in the Copa de Competencia Jockey Club, in which both first and second division teams could compete. In 1919, however, Vélez left AFA in protest of alleged discriminatory policies that hindered the club's prospects of achieving promotion. Another 6 teams protested against these maneuvers and were expelled from the Association, while another 7 were expelled for protesting the expulsion of the first 6. All together, the expelled clubs formed a rival association, the Asociación Amateurs de Football (AAF).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Therefore, in 1919 Vélez competed in the first division for the first time in their history, in the AAF's inaugural season. The team played their first game against Independiente, winning 2–1 with two goals scored by Martín Salvarredi. On their debut season, the club finished as runner-up, behind Racing Club, who were seven times consecutive champions of AFA's league. During the campaign, Vélez won 9 games, drew 2 and lost 2; scoring 21 goals and conceding 8.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The most frequent line-up was: Acacio Caballero, Atilio Braneri, Atilio Barderacco, Miguel Fontana, José Luis Boffi, Julio Giachi, Juan Bru, Humberto Bassadone, Marcelino Martínez, Martín Salvarredi, Alberto Granara.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez made its debut in Primera División playing at dissident Asociación Amateurs de Football in 1919, where the team finished 2nd to Racing. The following championship Vélez finished 6th, and team's forward Salvador Carreras was the first player of the club to become top scorer in an Argentine league. In 1921, José Luis Boffi became the first player of the club to represent the Argentina national football team, playing against Chile in Valparaíso, a game which Argentina won 4–1.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 13 March 1923, José Amalfitani was elected president of the club for his first two-year period. One year later, the club rent a new field to establish its home ground, staying in the neighbourhood of Villa Luro, but this time in the intersection of the streets Basualdo, Schmidel, Pizarro and Guardia Nacional. The stadium's main wood stand was finished in November of that year, and was inaugurated on 16 March 1924, in a 2–2 draw with River Plate (Vélez' scorer was Ángel Sobrino).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Four years later, in 1928, the Basualdo St. stadium hosted the first night game in Argentine football history, between the Argentina Olympic national team (silver medalist in that year's Olympics) and a team formed by players from the AAF's league. The Olympic team won 3–1, with goals by Roberto Cherro, Manuel Ferreira and Cesáreo Onzari for the Olympics, and Manuel Seoane for the AAF.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez Sarsfield was also the first Argentine football team to have a manager. The job was held by Luis Martín Castellano (a physical education teacher) from 1928 to 1936.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Between 1930 and 1931, Vélez made a Pan-American tour playing against teams from Chile, Peru, Cuba, Mexico and the United States. The team played a total 25 games, winning 20, drawing 4, and losing 1 (against Fall River in Rhode Island); scoring 84 goals and conceding 32. The team was formed with 17 players, 10 from the club and another 7 loaned freely by other teams, a common practice during the amateur era. The club's players were: Celio Caucia, Eleuterio Forrester, Manuel de Sáa, Alfredo Sánchez, Rodolfo Devoto, Norberto Arroupe, Saúl Quiroga, Alberto Álvarez, Eduardo Spraggón and Ernesto Garbini; while the loaned players were Fernando Paternoster (Racing Club), Bernabé Ferreyra (Tigre), Francisco Varallo (Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata), Carlos Volante (Platense), Gerónimo Díaz and Agustín Peruch (both from Newell's Old Boys) and Alberto Chividini (Central Norte de Tucumán). Varallo (who had played the inaugural World Cup previously that year) and Ferreyra (who was later sold by Tigre to River Plate) were the top scorers, scoring 16 and 38 goals respectively.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In 1931, Vélez Sarsfield and another 17 clubs broke away from the official AFA league (that remained amateur) to form the Liga Argentina de Football, the first professional league in Argentine football. The team debuted on the first fixture of the 1931 inaugural championship, in a 0–1 defeat to Platense. Vélez would eventually finish the competition in the 9th place.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In 1932, the club's nickname "el Fortín" (in English: "the Small Fort") was coined by journalist Hugo Marini ("Crítica") in reference to the club's Villa Luro stadium, to describe Vélez strength while playing at home. Vélez had a 24 games unbeaten run at the old Villa Luro stadium between 1934 and 1935. However, the club's home unbeaten record of 28 games was achieved at the current Liniers stadium, the José Amalfitani Stadium, between 1967 and 1969.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In 1933, the club changed their kit to the present colors, when a sports-equipment merchant offered a white jerseys with a blue "V" on the chest ordered by a rugby union team that had not claimed them. The new design has remained unchanged to the present day, replacing the red, white and green shirt used since 1915. However, Vélez has used the original Italian flag colors in alternate jerseys throughout their history. On 1935, Agustín Cosso became the first Vélez' player in the professional era to become Primera División top scorer. During the following year, Vélez toured South America again, playing games in Chile, Peru and Brazil.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: During the 1940 season, Vélez was relegated from the first division for the only time to date. Vélez finished penultimate, one point behind Atlanta that defeated Independiente on their final fixture for 6–4 (being 6–0 at the end of the first half, on a match suspected to be fixed). With the club on the second division, it entered a crisis and was forced to vacate the stadium's lot. José Amalfitani returned to the club's presidency, and eventually the team moved to the Liniers neighbourhood.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez stayed three seasons in the second division, returning to the Primera División in 1943 after winning the Segunda División championship on the category's first professional season. Vélez confirmed the championship on 20 November by defeating Dock Sud 5–2 at home at Ferro Carril Oeste's stadium. The team's manager during the season was the former club captain Victorio Spinetto, while Juan José Ferraro was the top goal scorer. During that same 1943, the club inaugurated the Liniers' stadium on the ground over the Maldonado Stream, the same spot where now stands the subsequently rebuild José Amalfitani Stadium. On 1945, Vélez achieved its biggest win in history by defeating Independiente 8–0 (goals from di Bella (3), Scliar (3), Bottini and Cano).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: That team was formed by Miguel Ángel Rugilo, Héctor Cuenya, Blas Angrisano, Armando Ovide, Víctor Curuchet, Héctor Herrero, Marco Aurelio, Eduardo Heisecke, Juan José Ferraro, Ángel Fernández and Alfredo Bermúdez, being Victorio Spinetto the coach. Other players were Osvaldo Bottini, Jorge Cano, Alfredo Costa, Salvador di Bella, Emilio Díaz, Simón Fredotivich, Adriano Garrone, Luis Orué, Pedro Perrota, José Puisari, and José Scorzo.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: During 1949, Vélez' goalkeeper Miguel Ángel Rugilo, formed at the club's youth divisions, saved 5 penalty kicks in 5 consecutive games. Moreover, in 1950, he saved two penalties in a match against River Plate. The club's player represented Argentina 5 times, most notably in a 1–2 away defeat by England at Wembley. Despite the defeat, journalist Luis Elías Sojit nicknamed him "El León de Wembley" (The Lion of Wembley) for his performance.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 22 April 1951, Vélez reinaugurated the Liniers' stadium, rebuild to be almost entirely made of cement. On the reinauguration, the team defeated Huracán 2–0 with goals by Raúl Nápoli.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On the 1953 championship, Vélez Sarsfield was runner-up for the first time in the professional era of Argentine football, finishing 4-point behind River Plate. The team was coached by Victorio Spinetto (the same who had achieved promotion in 1943), and had a strong forward quintet formed by Norberto Conde, Ernesto Sansone, Juan José Ferraro, Osvaldo Zubeldía, and Juan Carlos Mendiburu. Conde was subsequently Argentine Primera División top scorer in the 1954 season. The line-up in those years was: Nicolás Adamo, Oscar Antonio Huss, Ángel Allegri, Armando Ovide, Jorge Ruiz, Rafael García Fierro, Norberto Conde, Ernesto Sansone, Juan José Ferraro, Osvaldo Zubeldía and Juan Carlos Mendiburu, coached by Victorio Spinetto. The rest of the squad were Juan Carlos Cerretani, Emilio Espinoza, Argentino Geronazzo, Roberto Iglesias, Pablo Mallegni, Joaquín Martínez, Carlos Sardá and José Viglienghi. On May 24, 1959, the first official change of goalkeeper in a First Division match took place, when at 45 minutes, Floreal Rodríguez replaced Roque Marrapodi at the Velez Sarsfield fence, in a 1-0 defeat against San Lorenzo in the gasometer of Avenida La Plata.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: During the 1960s decade, Vélez finished among the top positioned teams in the 1966 championship (5th), the 1967 Metropolitano (3rd in its group) 1967 Nacional (3rd), and the 1968 Metropolitano (1st in its group and eliminated in the semi-finals by Estudiantes de La Plata). Moreover, in 1965 the team's striker Juan Carlos Carone finished as the league's top scorer.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez Sarsfield clinched its first national championship on the 1968 Nacional. Coached by Manuel Giúdice, the team finished first on the final league standings, sharing the position with River Plate and Racing Club. Therefore, the three teams had to play a championship playoff, where Vélez drew 1–1 with River (goal by José Luis Luna) and defeated Racing 4–2 (goals by Omar Wehbe (3) and Roberto Moreyra). Vélez finished tied with River, who had defeated Racing 2–0, in both points and goal difference. However, Vélez won the championship for having more goals for in the regular championship (39, over River's 35). During this tournament, Vélez also achieved its biggest victory in official matches, 11–0 against Huracán de Bahía Blanca. Moreover, Omar Wehbe was league top scorer with 16 goals. In total, the team played 17 games, winning 11, drawing 3, and losing another 3; with 44 goals for and 17 against.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The 1968 champion line up was: Miguel Marín, Luis Gallo, Iselín Santos Ovejero, Luis Atela, Eduardo Zóttola, Alberto Ríos, Roberto Moreyra, José Solórzano, Daniel Willington, José Luis Luna, Omar Wehbe, Carlos Bianchi, Mario Nogara. Manuel Giúdice was the coach, and the rest of the roster were Osvaldo Biaggio, Carlos Caballero, Juan Carlos Carone, Juan Manuel Gómez, Roque Nieva, Jorge Pérez, Néstor Sinatra, and Carlos Zeballos.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez would have played its first international tournament in the 1969 Copa Libertadores, however the club refused to play for economic reasons. The team did however play internationally during the decade, both a friendly against Pelé's Santos (played in the José Amalfitani Stadium to re-inaugurate the lighting systems), and a friendly tournament in Montevideo, Uruguay against Nacional, Torpedo Moscow, and Sparta Prague. During the final tournament of the decade, Vélez finished 3rd in its group in the 1969 Metropolitano.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: During the 1970 Nacional, Vélez came 3rd in its group and was unable to challenge the title (only the first two of each group advanced to the semi-finals). One year later, on the 1971 Metropolitano, the team came second to Independiente after losing its first place on the last two fixtures of the championship (1–2 defeats with Racing and Huracán). On both of the mentioned championships, Vélez' striker Carlos Bianchi was the overall top scorer.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The club also had good participation in the 1972 Nacional (3rd in its group), 1973 Nacional (again 3rd in its group), 1974 Nacional (first in its group and 3rd in the final tournament group), 1977 Metropolitano (3rd overall), and 1978 Nacional (2nd in its group and eliminated by River Plate).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez was again runner-up in the 1979 Metropolitano, after losing the tournament final with River Plate. In that year's Nacional, the team was first in its group but was again eliminated by River Plate (this time in the quarter-finals through a penalty shootout). Vélez did however defeat Unión in the runners-up play-off to define the second team qualified for the Copa Libertadores.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez started the year 1980 by playing its first Copa Libertadores. The team came first on its group (over River Plate and Peruvians Sporting Cristal and Atlético Chalaco), but was eliminated in the semifinals (ending last its group behind Brazilian Internacional and Colombian América de Cali).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In the local league, Vélez reached the semi-finals of the 1981 Nacional, where it was eliminated by Ferro Carril Oeste. Vélez' striker Carlos Bianchi, who had returned to the club after a period in French football, was for the third time league top scorer. Subsequently, the club was third in its group in the 1982 Nacional, and fifth in the 1982 Metropolitano. The following season, Vélez' was eliminated in the round of 16 of the 1983 Nacional, and came fourth in the 1983 Metropolitano, 4 points behind champions Independiente.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The team was again runner-up of the Argentine Primera División during the 1985 Nacional, losing the final to Argentinos Juniors. Vélez striker Jorge Comas was the tournament's top scorer with 12 goals.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The 1990s decade started with Vélez finishing third in the 1990 Apertura tournament. In the last fixture of the championship, Vélez defeated River Plate 2–1 (goals from Ricardo Gareca and Esteban González) at the Monumental, thwarting River's chances of winning the title. Vélez goalkeeper, former Argentine international Ubaldo Fillol, saved a penalty kick during the game, and retired at the age of 41. The 1990–91 season also saw the team's striker Esteban González finish as league top scorer, with 18 goals. Subsequently, the club finished fourth in the 1991 Apertura and second in the 1992 Clausura.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In December 1992, former striker Carlos Bianchi was appointed as the club's manager. Bianchi, who had been league champion and three times top scorer with the team, had no coaching experience in Argentine football. In his first tournament as manager (the 1993 Clausura), Vélez won the Argentine Primera División title after 25 years. The championship was defined in the penultimate fixture (8 June), when the team drew 1–1 with Estudiantes de La Plata (with goalkeeper José Luis Chilavert scoring his first goal in Vélez). The team played 19 games, winning 10, drawing 7 and losing 2, with 23 goals for and 7 against. Its most frequent line-up was: José Luis Chilavert, Héctor Almandoz, Roberto Trotta, Víctor Hugo Sotomayor, Raúl Cardozo, José Basualdo, Marcelo Gómez, Christian Bassedas, Walter Pico, José Oscar Flores, Omar Asad and Esteban González. Carlos Bianchi was the coach, and the roster was also formed by Mariano Armentano, Horacio Bidevich, Patricio Camps, Carlos Campagnucci, Juan Carlos Docabo, Cecilio Galeano, Claudio Husaín, Mauricio Pellegrino, Martín Posse, Leonardo Ramos, Fabián Vázquez and Sergio Zárate. On that year's Apertura, the team was runner-up, one point behind River Plate. Vélez played the last games of the tournament with substitutes, as they were already participating in the 1994 Copa Libertadores (the 1993 Apertura finished in February 1994).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 31 August 1994, in the club's second participation in the Copa Libertadores, they won the title by defeating defending champions São Paulo in the final. The first series final was played at the José Amalfitani Stadium, with Vélez winning 1–0 (goal by Omar Asad). The return game was played at the Estádio do Morumbi, with São Paulo winning by the same margin. The champion had to be defined via penalty shootout, with Vélez winning 5–3 (the last penalty was scored by Roberto Pompei).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On its way to the championship, the team had finished first in their group, ahead Boca Juniors (with results of 1–1 and 2–1), and Brazilians Palmeiras (1–0 and 1–4) and Cruzeiro (1–1 and 2–0). Subsequently, Vélez had defeated Uruguayan Defensor Sporting in the round of 16 (1–1 and 0–0, 4–3 in penalties), Venezuelan Minervén in the quarter-finals (0–0 and 2–0) and Colombian Junior in the semi-finals (1–2 and 2–1, 5–4 in penalties).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: As Copa Libertadores champion, Vélez played the 1994 Intercontinental Cup in Tokyo, Japan, facing Italian side AC Milan (winner of the 1993–94 UEFA Champions League). On 1 December 1994, Vélez defeated Milan 2–0, with goals from Roberto Trotta (from a penalty kick at the 5th minute of the second half), and Omar Asad (13th minute of the second half), successfully becoming club world champion for the first time in history. Moreover, Asad was selected as the game's best player, and was awarded an automobile from Toyota, the tournament's sponsor. The team was formed by the same players that had won the domestic title, with Roberto Pompei replacing Pico. Other players of the roster were Mariano Armentano, Patricio Camps, Carlos Campagnucci, Juan Carlos Docabo, Federico Domínguez, Esteban González, Sandro Guzmán, Claudio Husaín, Guillermo Morigi, Martín Posse, Ricardo Rentera, Flavio Zandoná and Marcelo Herrera.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Among the starting eleven of the Intercontinental Cup title, 7 players and the manager were from the club's youth divisions (Almandoz, Asad, Bassedas, Cardozo, Flores, Gómez, Pompei and Bianchi).


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Subsequently, the team came third in the 1994 Apertura and in the 1995 Clausura. In this last championship, Turu Flores was the top scorer, with 14 goals. The club won its third national championship in the 1995 Apertura, finishing 6 points above runner-up Racing Club. Vélez won the last 6 games of the tournament, including a 3–0 away victory over Independiente in the final fixture (goals by Roberto Trotta (p.k.), Patricio Camps and José Basualdo). The team played 19 games, winning 13, drawing 2 and losing 4; with 29 goals for and 13 against.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 24 February 1996, Vélez won its third international competition by defeating Costa Rican Cartaginés in the Copa Interamericana (0–0 away and 2–0 at home, with goals by José Oscar Flores). During that year, the team also won the 1996 Clausura, finishing one point above Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata. By winning successively the Apertura and Clausura of the 1995–96 season, Vélez became the sixth club in the Argentine professional football history to win two championships in a row. Osvaldo Piazza, a former club player, replaced Carlos Bianchi as coach for the last four fixtures of the season. In total, Vélez won 11 games, drew 7 and lost 1, scoring 40 goals and allowing 18.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Under Piazza's coaching, Vélez won the 1996 Supercopa Sudamericana unbeaten, defeating Grêmio (3–3 and 1–0), Olimpia (3–0 and 1–0), Santos (1–0 and 2–0) and Cruzeiro (1–0 and 2–0). With 4 goals, Patricio Camps was the tournament's top scorer.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: On 13 April 1997, the team won the Recopa Sudamericana, defeating River Plate 4–2 in the penalty shootout, after drawing in the regular time 1–1 (goal by José Luis Chilavert, from a penalty kick). This was Vélez's 5th and, to date, last international championship.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: After the Recopa, Vélez finished fifth in the 1997 Clausura and fourth in the 1997 Apertura. Subsequently, under Marcelo Bielsa's coaching, the club won their fifth national championship by finishing first in the 1998 Clausura, 6 points above runner-up Lanús. Vélez secured the championship in the penultimate fixture, with a 1–0 home win over Huracán (goal by Martín Posse). The team played 19 games, winning 14, drawing 4 and losing 1; with 39 goals for and 14 against.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: During the first years of the 2000s decade, Vélez was unable to finish in the league's top positions until the 2003 Clausura, when the team finished third behind River Plate (champion) and Boca Juniors. In the 2004 Clausura, striker Rolando Zárate was league top scorer with 13 goals, and in the 2004 Apertura Vélez was again runner-up. The team finished two points behind Newell's Old Boys, after drawing 1–1 in the last fixture with Arsenal de Sarandí.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: In the following championship, the 2005 Clausura, Vélez won their 6th national championship. The team finished 6 points above Banfield, effectively winning the tournament in the penultimate fixture, after defeating Estudiantes de La Plata 3–0 (goals by Fabián Cubero, Rolando Zárate and Lucas Castromán). Vélez was coached by Miguel Ángel Russo, and had a team formed mostly by players formed in the club's youth divisions, who averaged 25 years of age. In the starting eleven, only Gastón Sessa and Fabricio Fuentes were not from Vélez' youths. The team played 19 games in total, winning 11, drawing 6 and losing 2, scoring 32 goals and allowing 14.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: The team's lineup was: Sessa; Cubero, Fuentes, Maximiliano Pellegrino, Ariel Broggi/Marcelo Bustamante; Jonás Gutiérrez, Leandro Somoza, Marcelo Bravo; Leandro Gracián; Castromán and Rolando Zárate. Other players who played regularly for the first team during the tournament were Juan Manuel Martínez, Santiago Ladino, Maximiliano Bustos, Emanuel Centurión, Hernán Pellerano and Mauro Zárate, among others.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: Vélez subsequently finished third in the 2005 Apertura, reached the semi-finals of the 2005 Copa Sudamericana and the quarter-finals in the 2006 Copa Libertadores. In the 2006 Apertura, Mauro Zárate was the 13th player in the club's history to finish as Argentine Primera top scorer (counting both professional and amateur eras), sharing the honour with Rodrigo Palacio.


title: Club Atlético Vélez Sarsfield

text: By the end of 2008, Christian Bassedas, former player of the club during the successful 1990s era, was appointed as director of football; while Ricardo Gareca, former club player in the late 1980s and early 1990s, was contracted as manager. In the first tournament under Gareca's coaching, Vélez became Argentine league champion for the seventh time in history, by winning the 2009 Clausura. In the final fixture of the tournament, the team played against Huracán (who was first, one point above Vélez) at home, winning 1–0 (goal by Maximiliano Moralez) and therefore securing the championship. In total, the team won 11 games, drew 7 and lost 1, scoring 29 goals and allowing 13. Moreover, goalkeeper Germán Montoya was awarded the Ubaldo Matildo Fillol Award for having the lowest goals-to-games ratio in the tournament. The starting eleven for the final against Huracán was: Montoya; Gastón Díaz, Sebastián Domínguez, Nicolás Otamendi, Emiliano Papa; Cubero, Franco Razzotti, Víctor Zapata; Moralez; Juan Manuel Martínez and Hernán Rodrigo López. Other players who took part of the first team squad during the tournament were Jonathan Cristaldo (who could not play the last fixture due to an injury), Joaquín Larrivey, Nicolás Cabrera (who was a starter until he suffered a knee injury in the fifth fixture), Darío Ocampo, Waldo Ponce, Roberto Nanni, Leandro Coronel and Ariel Cabral, among others. Captain Leandro Somoza was out for the entire tournament due to an injury.