Fyodor Dostoevsky: La bellezza salverà il mondo! / The beauty will save the world!

"Ama la vita più della sua logica, solo allora ne capirai il senso".

"A volte l’uomo è straordinariamente, appassionatamente innamorato della sofferenza".

"Colui che mente a se stesso e dà ascolto alla propria menzogna arriva al punto di non saper distinguere la verità né dentro se stesso, né intorno a sé e, quindi, perde il rispetto per se stesso e per gli altri".

"Oggi c’è più ricchezza ma meno forza; nessuna idea sa unire i cuori: tutto è rilasciato, rammollito, sfatto. Tutti noi, tutti noi siamo sfatti!".

"[Da una lettera al fratello Michail] Che m'importa la gloria, quando io scrivo per il pane?"

Vasily Perov | Portrait of Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1872 (detail)

Louise Camille Fenne, 1972 | Magic realism painter

Louise Camille Fenne was born in Copenhagen, Denmark.

Having a Danish father and an English mother, she grew up and went to school in both Denmark and England.

Louise studied drawing in Aix-en Provence, France and at The Glyptotek, Copenhagen, before enrolling at The Florence Academy of Art in 1995, being intrigued by the possibility of studying traditional painting and drawing techniques.

Paige Bradley, 1974 | Figurative sculptor

Born in Carmel, California Paige Bradley knew she would be an artist by the age of nine.

Immersed in nature and art, Bradley’s fascination with the human figure began early.

She believed that through the figure an artist could speak a universal language that is timeless and essential.

Paige began drawing from the model by the age of ten and by fifteen was studying intensely at university campuses during the summer months.

Joe Webb, 1976 | Mixed media painter

Joe Webb is a British visual artist, known for his enticing handmade mixed media collages.

He uses images from vintage magazines and posters to conjure surreal narratives that express both a comical and cynical take on the modern world.

Webb’s Handmade Collages

Webb worked as a commercial artist and graphic designer for several years. Tired of modern technology and its overwhelming potentials, Joe turned to collage, a technique he described as "more immediate and graphic than painting".

Webb’s elegant handmade collages are made of vintage magazines and printed ephemera that he has collected during the years.

Francis Henry Newbery | Glasgow School of Art

Francis Henry Newbery (1855-1946) or Fra Newbery was a painter and art educationist, best known as director of the Glasgow School of Art between 1885-1917.

Under his leadership the School developed an international reputation and was associated with the flourishing of Glasgow Style and the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and his circle.

Newbery helped commission Mackintosh as architect for the now famous School of Art building and was actively involved in its design.

Robert Schumann: "Talent works, genius creates"!

• "Art was not created as a way to riches. Strive to become a true artist; all else will take care of itself".

• "Only if the form is first clear to you will the spirit then reveal itself".

• "To compose is to remember music that has never been written".

• "When you play, never mind who listens to you".

Gustave Adolphe Mossa (1883-1971) | Clara and Robert Schumann

Frants Henningsen | Genre painter

Frants Peter Diderik Henningsen (Copenhagen, 1850-1908) was a Danish painter, illustrator and professor.

His paintings depict unfortunate occurrences in the lives of middle-class people living in Copenhagen during difficult times.

His connections with Denmark's more traditional, realist school encouraged criticism from many of his more reactionary contemporaries, especially Karl Madsen who objected to his appointment as a professor at the Academy in 1887.

Johann Sebastian Bach: "La musica aiuta a non sentire dentro il silenzio che c’è fuori"!

• "Tre cose sono necessarie per un buon pianista: la testa, il cuore e le dita".

• "La perfezione si raggiunge per gradi".

• "Ai miei occhi ed alle mie orecchie l’organo è il re di tutti gli strumenti".

• "La musica non è nelle note, la musica è tra le note".

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

• "Buffone è chi non ride mai".

• "Ogni difficoltà su cui si sorvola, diventa un fantasma che turberà i nostri sonni".

Johann Sebastian Bach (1714-1788), Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) e Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756-1791)

Léon Pilet | Un Coup de vent, 1888

Léon Pilet (1836-1916) was a French sculptor and medalist, known for his classical subjects in bronze.

Pilet also produced male and female figurines from clay, marble and ivory. Many of his works depict religious as well as historical figures.

Pilet presented "Le Coup de vent" during the Paris Universal Exposition of 1888, now at the Musée Granet - Aix-en-Provence.

The artist continued to exhibit at the Salon from 1861 to 1914.

Emanuel Phillips Fox (1865-1915)

Emanuel Phillips Fox was an Australian impressionist painter.

After studying at the National Gallery of Victoria Art School in Melbourne, Fox travelled to Paris to study in 1886 and enrolled at the Académie Julian, where he gained first prize in his year for design, and École des Beaux-Arts (1887-90), where his masters included William-Adolphe Bouguereau and Jean-Léon Gérôme, both among the most famous artists of the time.

Giorgos Seferis | A word for Summer / Una parola sull'Estate, 1936

We’ve returned to autumn again; summer,

like an exercise book we’re tired of writing in, remains

full of deletions, abstract designs,

question marks in the margin; we’ve returned

to the season of eyes gazing

into the mirror under the electric light

closed lips and people strangers

in rooms in streets under the pepper-trees

while the headlights of cars massacre

thousands of pale masks.

Isaac Levitan (Russian landscape painter, 1860-1900) | Spring in Italy

Atsushi Koyama, 1978 | Humans and Machines

Born in Tokyo, Atsushi Koyama / 小山 篤 is a visual artist from Japan. He holds both a BFA in art from Tama Art University and a Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Tokyo University of Science in 2008.

Koyama’s work clearly uses the backgrounds of his tutelage as he beautifully blends anatomical illustration with mechanical diagrams.

METAMACHINE is his collaborative project at the border of visual art and electronic music.

Although the meaning behind these oil paintings by Atsushi Koyama is somewhat ambiguous, it’s easy to appreciate the exactness of his paintbrush that colorfully and elegantly depicts mechanical diagrams mixed with anatomical illustrations.

Mozart: "The music is not in the notes, but in the silence between"

• "A man of ordinary talent will always be ordinary, whether he travels or not; but a man of superior talent will go to pieces if he remains forever in the same place".

• "Un uomo di talento ordinario sarà sempre ordinario, che viaggi o no; ma un uomo di talento superiore andrà in pezzi se rimane per sempre nello stesso posto".

• "Melody is the essence of music".

• "La melodia è l'essenza della musica".

Barbara Krafft | Portrait of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, 1819 (detail)

Carl Schweninger | Genre painter

Carl Schweninger the Younger (1854-1912) was an Austrian painter.

Carl Schweninger was born in Vienna, Austria and came from a Viennese artist family.

He was the son of the painter Carl Schweninger the Elder (1818-1887) and brother of the painter Rosa Schweninger (1818-1918).

Severin Nilsson | Genre painter

Johan Severin Nilsson (1846-1918) was a Swedish painter and photographer.

Nilsson was born in Asige Parish, Halland. His father was a blacksmith.

In 1865, at the age of eighteen, he enrolled as a student at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm; graduating in 1871.

While there, he and Ernst Josephson became good friends.

Ulpiano Checa y Sanz | Orientalist painter

Ulpiano Checa y Sanz (1860-1916) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, poster designer and illustrator, known in the art world as Ulpiano Fernández-Checa y Saiz.

He used both impressionistic and academic techniques, and painted mainly historical subjects.

Checa participated in numerous Salons of Paris and in many of them was awarded.

He studied at the Academy of fine arts of San Fernando in Madrid, where he was student of Federico de Madrazo, Alejandro Ferrant, Manuel Domínguez and Pablo Gonzalvo.

Philip Hermogenes Calderon | The Orphans, 1870

Philip Hermogenes Calderon (1833-1898) was a British painter of Spanish and French descent.

His father, at one time a Roman Catholic priest, was Professor of Spanish Literature at King's College, London.

Calderon studied at James M. Leigh's school in London in 1850, then in Paris at the studio of François-Edouard Picot.

He lived near by in Montmartre, sharing a room with fellow art student Henry Stacy Marks.

Harald Friedrich | Genre painter

Harald Otto Julius Friedrich (1858-1933) was a German painter, university professor and the grandson and last direct male descendant of Caspar David Friedrich.

Harald Otto Julius Friedrich was born on April 14, 1858 in Dresden as the only son of Adolf Friedrich (1824-1889) and Caroline Lehmann (1828-1914).

He is the grandson and last male descendant of Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840).

King Charles III, 1948 | Watercolorist and Patron of the Arts

King Charles III of the United Kingdom (born Charles Philip Arthur George; 14 November 1948) is an artist, a master watercolour artist of landscapes.

King Charles III's interest began during the 1970s and 1980s when he was inspired by Robert Waddell, who had been his art master at Gordonstoun in Scotland.

In time, King Charles met leading artists such as Edward Seago, with whom he discussed watercolour technique, and received further tuition from John Ward, Bryan Organ and Derek Hill.

Sergiy Lyacevitch, 1981

Sergiy Lyacevitch è un pittore figurativo impressionista che vive e lavora in Ucraina.

Lyacevitch per i suoi quadri usa dei soggetti classici - le ballerine, la bellezza della donna e Parigi come cornice di sfondo per le sue figure.

Jean-François Portaels | A Sicilian bride, 1861

Jean-François Portaels | A Sicilian bride, 1861 | Royal Collection of the United Kingdom

Three-quarter length, facing half left, her head turned to the viewer; seated on a stone bench; she wears a white dress with red trim and flower petals embroidered on the lower sleeves, and a black sleevless garment; with loosely arranged lace headgear; holding a rosary.

Eugène Laermans | Genre painter

Eugène Jules Joseph Baron Laermans (1864-1940) was a Belgian painter.

He was born in Sint-Jans-Molenbeek. At the age of eleven, he contracted meningitis, which left him deaf and nearly mute (although some sources say he was born deaf).

This concentrated his attention on his sense of sight, and led to his decision to become a painter.

He enrolled at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in 1887, where he studied with Jean-François Portaels and was a great admirer of the paintings of Félicien Rops.

Silvio Allason | Romantic painter

Silvio Allason (1845-1912) was an Italian painter, mainly of landscapes, seascapes and moonlit nocturnes.

He was a resident in Turin.

He first trained with his elder cousin, Ernesto Allason.

He captures on canvas the calm melancholy of the Alps, the terrible impetuosity of the sea, and the landscapes of moonlit nights.

Betsy Westendorp-Osieck | The Amsterdamse Joffers group

Betsy Westendorp-Osieck (1880-1968) was a Dutch painter, watercolorist, etcher, pastelist and draftsman who was part of the Amsterdamse Joffers painting group.

Johanna Elisabeth ("Betsy" or "Betsie") Osieck was born in Amsterdam 29 December 1880 to the merchant Philip Willem Osieck and Catharina Agnes Briel.

She was one of a family of five, but one of them died as a child. Westendorp-Osieck attended a French secondary school before going to a German boarding school.

She intended becoming a pianist but when that proved improbable she took up art.

Angelica Kauffmann | Neoclassical painter

Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) was a painter in the early Neoclassical style who is best known for her decorative wall paintings for residences designed by Robert Adam.

The daughter of Johann Joseph Kauffmann, a painter, Angelica was a precocious child and a talented musician and painter by her 12th year.

Her early paintings were influenced by the French Rococo works of Henri Gravelot and François Boucher.

Heinrich Hermanns | Cityscapes painter

Heinrich Hermanns (1862-1942) was a German lithographer and landscape painter.

He was also known for architectural paintings and vedute and was associated with the Düsseldorfer Malerschule.

Born in Düsseldorf, Hermanns completed his primary education in 1883 and went on to study at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf with Eugen Dücker, Heinrich Lauenstein, Georg Heinrich Crola and Johann Peter Theodor Janssen.

Tarsila do Amaral | Modern painter

Tarsila de Aguiar do Amaral (1886-1973) was a Brazilian painter, draftswoman and translator.

She is considered one of the leading Latin American modernist artists, and is regarded as the painter who best achieved Brazilian aspirations for nationalistic expression in a modern style.

As a member of the Grupo dos Cinco, Tarsila is also considered a major influence in the modern art movement in Brazil, alongside Anita Malfatti, Menotti Del Picchia, Mário de Andrade and Oswald de Andrade.

William Brymner | Impressionist painter

William Brymner, CMG RCA (1855-1925) was a Canadian figure and landscape painter and educator.

In addition to playing a key role in the development of Impressionism in Canada, Brymner taught numerous artists who became leading figures in Canadian modern art.

Bernard Boutet de Monvel | Art déco artist

Bernard Boutet de Monvel (1881-1949) was a French painter, sculptor, engraver, fashion illustrator and interior decorator. Although first known for his etchings, he earned notability for his paintings, especially his geometric paintings from the 1900s and his Moroccan paintings made during World War I.

In both Europe and the United States, where he often traveled, he also became known as a portrait painter for high society clients.

Boutet de Monvel was simultaneously working in oil painting, especially portraits, which he began to exhibit at the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in 1903.

José Luis Corella, 1959 | Classical realism painter

"A painting should be vivid, and not a mere composition of paint" - José Luis Corella.

Jose Luis Corella is a notable and prominent representative of Contemporary Spanish Realism.

The subtlety of the realism of his portraits encompasses the profound complexity of the human being, with everyday images transformed into wonderful works of art.

José Luis Corella was born in Valencia, Spain.

Carl Emil Mücke | Genre painter

Carl Emil Mücke (1847-1923,) was a German genre and animal painter of the Düsseldorf school.

He painted mostly domestic interior scenes with women, girls and lively cats and kittens.

Carl Mücke is the son of the painter Heinrich Mücke.

Bob Dylan, 1941 | Paintings by the Music Legend

Not only is Bob Dylan one of the most iconic musicians of the modern era, a filmmaker and a best-selling author, he is also a painter, a sculptor since the 1960s.

Dylan has been awarded America’s Presidential Medal of Freedom, the National Medal of Arts, the Pulitzer Prize, Sweden’s Polar Music Prize and France’s Officer de la Legion d’honneur.

He has won an Oscar and eleven Grammy Awards.

Mary Moser | Painter and a Founding of the Royal Academy

Mary Moser RA (1744-1819) was an British painter and one of the most celebrated female artists of 18th-century Britain.

One of only two female founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768 (along with Angelica Kauffmann), Moser painted portraits but is particularly noted for her depictions of flowers.

Charles Haigh-Wood | Genre painter

Charles Haigh-Wood (1856-1927) was a British genre painter, who lived in London, Bury and Taplow, Buckinghamshire.

Haigh-Wood’s enchanting visions of romance, with attractive girls and pretty dresses are some of the most endearing and popular of all images.

His patrons adored them, a successful businessman of Haigh-Wood’s day with any pretension to artistic taste had to own one.

Jacques-Eugène Feyen | Genre painter

Jacques-Eugène Feyen (1815-1908) was a French painter and photographer.

The elder brother of painter Auguste Feyen-Perrin, Jacques-Eugène enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts and studied under Paul Delaroche.

He had a notable career at the Paris Salon from 1841 to 1882, where won medals in 1866 and 1880.

In 1881 he was decorated with the Legion of Honor.

Hector Caffieri | Victorian watercolour painter

Hector Caffieri (1847-1932) was a British watercolourist painter, born in Cheltenham Gloucestershire in England, son of French parents who had settled temporarily in England.

He studied at the Académie Julian with academic painter Léon Bonnat (1833-1922) and Jules-Joseph Lefebvre (1836-1911), both great exponents of genre painting and both traditional academicians.

Caffieri worked and lived in London in 1880.

Romanian Art History and Sitemap

Romanian art consists of the visual and plastic arts (including Romanian architecture, woodwork, textiles and ceramics) originating from the geographical area of Romania.

The production of art in Romania is as old as the Paleolithic, an example being a cave painting from the Cuciulat Cave (Sălaj County).

During the Neolithic, multiple cultures lived on the modern territory of Romania.

Their material culture included pottery and abstract clay statuettes decorated with geometric patterns.

These may give hints on the way these civilizations used to dress and maybe tattoo.

Demetre Chiparus | Art Déco sculptor

Tracey Sylvester Harris, 1966

In her paintings, Tracey Sylvester Harris presents a dazzling aqueous vision that merges the past with the present.

Aptly called "Sunshine Noir", T.S. Harris’ paintings speak to the central issues of human existence - desire and loss, impermanence and beauty, and the many dimensions of our connections with others.

Inspired by snapshots and film stills from the mid-century, the paintings are colorful yet bittersweet, depicting fleeting moments captured almost a lifetime ago.

Van Gogh, Rembrandt and the Rijksmuseum

Vincent van Gogh travelled to Amsterdam in 1885 to visit the Rijksmuseum, which had recently opened.

On the day of his visit he painted his "View of Amsterdam from Central Station".

The paint still wet, he took the new work with him to the Rijksmuseum.

Vincent van Gogh | Wheat field, 1888 | Rijksmuseum

Jill Maytorena | Mixed media painter

Jill Maytorena's portraits reveal figures who emerge through a glow of pastels and vibrant patterns.

She has a unique style of capturing beauty through textural representations and forms.

This series of artworks discovers the presence of patterns that are introspective and exploratory.

Sewing patterns, patterned fabrics and papers, charcoals, and soft pastels blend in collaged layers to illuminate the topography of her figurative art.

Johan Tirén | Genre painter

Johan Tirén (1853-1911) was a Swedish painter who specialized in scenes of the rural life in Northern Sweden.

He was the older brother of the artist, Karl Tirén. At the age of seven, his family moved to Oviken in Jämtland, where his father served as the Vicar.

He originally attended the Tekniska skolan in Stockholm then spent the years 1877 to 1880 at the Royal Swedish Academy of Fine Arts, where he won a Royal Medal in 1880 for his painting of Loki imprisoned by Æsir.

Geneviève Daël, 1947 | Interior scenes painter

Geneviève Daël was born in Paris and continues to live and work in Montmartre.

She studied Decorative Arts at the Académie Charpentier.

After a brief period spent living in London she returned to Paris, where she began to study painting independently, and worked as a model for Dior while developing her artistic practice.

Jacopo Zucchi | L'allegoria della Notte, 1588

"L'allegoria della Notte" di Jacopo Zucchi (1542-1596), è una delle nove tele dello splendido soffitto del Terrazzo delle Carte Geografiche, nel primo corridoio degli Uffizi a Firenze.

Fra le ombre della notte, al chiarore della luna, tutto può accadere.

Una dama alata, dalla carnagione eburnea, culla i suoi figli sopra una nube in un cielo stellato.

Uno di loro gioca con la falce del tempo.

Jacopo Zucchi | Allegoria della Notte, 1588 | Soffitto del Terrazzo delle Carte Geografiche, Gallerie degli Uffizi

Johan Oscar Cantzler | Genre painter

Johan Oscar Cantzler (1844-1921) was a Swedish painter who mainly drew portraits and genre paintings.

He also made drawings for the Swedish banknotes in denominations of SEK 5, 50 and 100.

Cantzler first worked for a time as a commercial bookkeeper, the same profession as his father.

Simon Maris | Neo-Impressionist painter

Simon Willem Maris (1873-1935) was a Dutch painter best known as a portrait artist.

He was the son of Dutch landscape painter Willem Maris of the Hague School.

He was born in The Hague. Simon Maris was a student of his father Willem Maris and subsequently studied at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in The Hague and at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts Arts of Antwerp.

Isabella, also known as Young Woman with a Fan, is a 1906 painting by Simon Maris.

It is currently in the collection of the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Sebastiano Ricci | Baroque painter

Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) was born in Belluno. At the age of fourteen, Sebastiano Ricci left his birthplace for Venice, where he soon entered the studio of Federico Cervelli (1625 - before 1700), a Milanese painter active there since the mid-1650s.

While contemporary biographers sometimes discounted Sebastiano's debt to Cervelli, modern scholars generally agree that the Milanese master gave him solid practical instruction and introduced him to the Venetian painters of the seventeenth century.

Albert de Belleroche | Painter of Belle Époque

Count Albert Gustavus de Belleroche (1864-1944), also known as Albert Belleroche, was a Welsh painter and lithographer, who lived most of his childhood and his adulthood in Paris and England.

He began as a painter, but at the turn of the century focused on lithography, for which he is most well-known. He was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre de Leopold by King Albert I of Belgium in 1933.

Florine Stettheimer | Rococo-inspired modernist painter

Florine Stettheimer (1871-1944) was an American modernist painter, feminist, theatrical designer, poet and salonnière.

Stettheimer developed a feminine, theatrical painting style depicting her friends, family, and experiences in New York City.

She made the first feminist nude self-portrait and paintings depicting controversies of race and sexual preference.

She and her sisters hosted a salon that attracted members of the avant-garde.

Jaroslav Seifert | Rondò di primavera

Tu devi credermi, io sarei felice

se sorrisi mandassero i tuoi occhi

quando stasera dovrai ricucire

ciò che le mie mani ti hanno strappato.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir