Erwin Blumenfeld | Fashion / Surrealist photographer

Erwin Blumenfeld (26 January 1897 - 4 July 1969) was one of the most influential photographers of the twentieth century.

An experimenter and innovator, he produced an extensive body of work including drawings, collages, portraits, celebrity portraiture, advertising campaigns and his renowned fashion photography both in black and white and color.

He was born in Berlin, and in 1941 emigrated to the United States, where he soon became a successful and well-paid fashion photographer, working as a free-lancer for Harper's Bazaar, Life and American Vogue.

Aristide Maillol | Art Nouveau / Nabi painter /sculptor

Maillol (1861-1944) began his career as a painter and tapestry designer, but after c. 1900 devoted himself to three-dimensional work, becoming one of the most important sculptors of the 20th century.

He concentrated almost exclusively on the female figure in the round, consciously wishing to strip form of all literary associations and architectural context.

Although inspired by the Classical tradition of Greek and Roman sculpture, his figures have all the elemental sensuousness and dignity associated with the Mediterranean peasant.

Pablo Picasso | The figures

Pablo Picasso [1881-1973] was born in Málaga, Spain. The son of an academic painter, José Ruiz Blasco, he began to draw at an early age. In 1895 the family moved to Barcelona, and Picasso studied there at La Lonja, the academy of fine arts.

His visit to Horta de Ebro from 1898-1899 and his association with the group at the café Els Quatre Gats in about 1899 were crucial to his early artistic development. Picasso’s first exhibition took place in Barcelona in 1900, and that fall he went to Paris for the first of several stays during the early years of the century.

Picasso settled in Paris in April 1904, and his circle of friends soon included Guillaume Apollinaire, Max Jacob, Gertrude and Leo Stein, as well as two dealers, Ambroise Vollard and Berthe Weill.

Vadim Stein, 1967 | Fashion photographer

Вадим Штейн is talented Ukrainian photo art creator based in St. Petersburg, Russia. Stein was born in Kiev, Ukraine, where he got an education in the sphere of sculpture and restoration. From 1985-1992 he worked in the Theater of Plastic Drama - as an actor and a lighting designer.

After leaving the theater he got keen on decorative sculpture and graphics. Then it became necessary to take photos of his own works. It was the beginning.

Now Vadim Stein lives and works in St. Petersburg, Russia, in the city of the white nights and the melancholy people. He is known here as a photographer, sculptor, and stage designer. Now he is trying himself as a videographer.

Sharon Sprung, 1953 | Figurative painter

Sharon Sprung is a Brooklyn based award-winning artist🎨 who studied at Cornell, The Art Students League in New York and the National Academy of Design.

Apart from her creative practice, Sprung also teaches painting and drawing at National Academy Museum and School of Fine Arts and The Art Students League.

Her work has won numerous awards and is featured in prominent public collections, including the United States House of Representatives, Bell Laboratories, ATandT, Princeton University, Sherman and Sterling and the Chase Manhattan Bank.

Art Quotes

Laura Knight(1877-1970) A Girl Reading, probably Florence Carter Wood (later Mrs Alfred Munnings)

One ought, every day at least, to hear a little song, read a good poem, see a fine picture, and, if it were possible, to speak a few reasonable words.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (German writer and statesman, 1749-1832)

La musica lava via dall'anima la polvere della vita di ogni giorno.

- Berthold Auerbach (Poeta e scrittore Tedesco, 1812-1882)

Painting is poetry that is seen rather than felt, and poetry is painting that is felt rather than seen.

- Leonardo da Vinci (Inventore, artista e scienziato Italiano, 1452-1519)

Le idee sono per la letteratura ciò che la luce è per la pittura.

- Paul Bourget - (Scrittore e saggista Francese, 1852-1935)

Abbott Fuller Graves | Impressionist painter

Abbott Fuller Graves (1859-1936) was an American painter🎨 and illustrator who specialized in decorative open air🎨 garden paintings and floral still lifes.

His use of thick brushstrokes, bright colors, and natural light shows the influence of European impressionism🎨.

Graves was born in Weymouth, Massachusetts, on April 15, 1859, the son of James Griswold Graves and Eliza Nicholls (Fuller). Hoping to become an architect, Graves attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology but did not graduate.

Graves went to Paris and Italy in 1884 to refine his skills as a flower painter. In Europe, he roomed with Edmund C. Tarbell.