Carlo Francesco Nuvolone | Baroque painter

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone (Milan, 1609-1662)) was an Italian painter of religious subjects and portraits who was active mainly in Lombardy.

He became the leading painter in Lombardy in the mid-17th century, producing works on canvas as well as frescoes.

Because his style was perceived as close to that of Guido Reni he was nicknamed il Guido della Lombardia (the Guido of Lombardy).

Mark Ashkenazi | Pop Art painter

Mark Ashkenazi is an Israeli photo artist based in New York City.

He loved art since childhood and everyone around him, including himself, knew that he would become an artist.

Starting artwork at such a young age provided him with the opportunity to learn a lot from other renowned artists.

Michelangelo | Bacchus, 1496-1497

Bacchus (1496-1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness.

Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo.

Along with the Pietà the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.

Cappella Sistina | La Volta di Michelangelo, 1508-1512

"Senza aver visto la Cappella Sistina non è possibile formare un'idea apprezzabile di cosa un uomo solo sia in grado di ottenere" - Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

La decisione di Giulio II di rifare integralmente la decorazione della volta fu probabilmente dovuta ai gravi problemi di natura statica che interessarono la Sistina fin dai primi anni del suo pontificato (1503-1513).

Essi dovettero essere la conseguenza degli scavi eseguiti sia a nord che a sud dell’edificio per la costruzione della Torre Borgia e del nuovo San Pietro.

Dopo che nel maggio del 1504, una lunga crepa si aprì nella volta, fu incaricato Bramante, allora architetto di Palazzo, di porvi rimedio, il quale mise in opera alcune catene nel locale soprastante la Cappella.

Caravaggio and the birth of Baroque

Italian Renaissance painter Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610) "put the oscuro (shadows) into chiaroscuro".

Chiaroscuro was practised long before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique a dominant stylistic element, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light.

Paul Gauguin | The Siesta, 1892-94

The unaffected grace and communal ease of Tahitian women impressed Gauguin enormously.

The artist worked on this painting over an extended period, incorporating numerous changes.

The skirt of the woman in the foreground, for example, was originally bright red; there was a dog in the position now occupied by the basket at lower right; and the woman seated at the left edge of the porch was previously situated further to the left. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Paul Gauguin quotes: "Art = a mad search for individualism"

• "L'arte è un'astrazione: spremetela dalla natura sognando di fronte ad essa e preoccupatevi più della creazione che del risultato".

• "When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body".

Correggio | Jupiter and Io, 1530

Jupiter and Io is a painting by the Italian late Renaissance artist Antonio Allegri da Correggio (1489-1534).

It is part of the collection of the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna, Austria.

History

The series of Jupiter's Loves was conceived after the success of Venus and Cupid with a Satyr. Correggio painted four canvasses in total, although others had been programmed perhaps.

Master of the Story of Griselda | Artemisia, 1498

"Artemisia" - Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milano (Lombardia, Italy) - attributed to an anonymous Sienese master, known conventionally as the Master of the story of Griselda.

The Master of the Griselda Story is named from set of paintings which relate the story of Patient Griselda.

Other paintings have been ascribed to him.

The style is typical of Sienese art in the late fifteenth century and reflects the manner of Luca Signorelli.

His figures are notable for their elongated limbs, almost dancing motion and great elegance.

Master of the Female Half-Lengths | Renaissance painter

The Master of the Female Half-Lengths, active ca.1530-1540, was a Dutch Northern Renaissance painter* or likely a group of painters of a workshop.

The name was given in the 19th century to identify the maker or makers of a body of work consisting of 67 paintings to which since 40 more have been added.

The works were apparently the product of a large workshop that specialized in small-scale panels depicting aristocratic young ladies at half-length.

Constant Troyon | The Barbizon school of painters

Constant Troyon (1810-1865), French painter, was born in Sèvres, near Paris, where his father was connected with the famous manufactory of porcelain.

Troyon was an animal painter of the first rank, and was closely associated with the artists who painted around Barbizon.

The technical qualities of his methods of painting are most masterly; his drawing is excellent, and his composition always interesting.

It was only comparatively late in life that Troyon found his métier, but when he realized his power of painting animals he produced a fairly large number of good pictures in a few years.

Ricardo Sanz, 1957 | Figurative painter

Ricardo Sanz is a San Sebastián painter. His work is contemporary figurative style.

His artistic vocation was forged through his grandfather, owner of the Art Gallery La Perfecta in which he met the great artists of the painting: Sorolla, Zuloaga, Vázquez Diaz, etc.

At fourteen he began his training as a painter with José Camps, while he continued his studies until graduating in History from the University of Deusto and Art History in Madrid.

In Paris and Italy continues his apprenticeship with prominent painters of the time.

Gerard ter Borch | Baroque painter

Gerard Terborch, Terborch also spelled Ter Borch or Terburg (1617-1681), Dutch Baroque painter who developed his own distinctive type of interior genre in which he depicted with grace and fidelity the atmosphere of well-to-do, middle-class life in 17th-century Holland.

Terborch’s father had been an artist and had visited Rome but from 1621 was employed as a tax collector.

François Lassere, 1960 | Oppositionist Art

Born in Puy de Dôme, France, François Lassere is a self-taught painter who practices several techniques.

He was interested in hyperrealism for many years, then moved on to working in raw material, when a painter in Paris suggested to him to expand to new techniques.

Lassere then embarked on a new trend, which he calls “Oppositionism”. From this point on his work will mostly consist of highlighting heterogeneous styles to extract harmony from them.

Alda Merini | Alla tua salute, amore mio!

Sono folle di te, amore

che vieni a rintracciare

nei miei trascorsi

questi giocattoli rotti delle mie parole.

Ti faccio dono di tutto

se vuoi,

Pablo Picasso |The Embrace, 1900

Citazioni da Picasso: "Dipingere non è un'operazione estetica.."

• "Quando uno inizia un ritratto e cerca per successive eliminazioni di trovare la forma pura... si finisce inevitabilmente con un uovo.."

• "La pittura non è fatta per decorare gli appartamenti. È uno strumento di guerra offensiva e difensiva contro il nemico".

Peregrine Heathcote, 1973 | Academic Realism painter

Born in London, Peregrine Heathcote spent his childhood living in both Britain and Dubai where his imagination was free to flourish as he witnessed an international jet set culture.

Hence it is no surprise that the artist's imagery reflects a provocative Silver Screen theatrical quality.

In 1995, Peregrine Heathcote graduated from the Florence Academy of Art and since that time he has been profiled by the BBC in a documentary about his portraits resulting in international exposure.

Paul Gauguin | Post-Impressionist painter

Paul Gauguin, in full Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848, Paris, France-died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia) French painter, printmaker and sculptor who sought to achieve a "primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work.

The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti, French Polynesia.

His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.

Pablo Picasso | Periodi artistici

Periodo blu

Partendo dal 1901 lo stile pittorico di Picasso incominciò a presentare tratti originali e nuove soluzioni artistiche; in quell'anno, infatti, ha inizio il cosiddetto «periodo blu», che si protrae sino alla primavera del 1904.

Questa fase artistica picassiana, come già accennato, scaturì in seguito alla morte suicida dell'amico Carlos Casagemas, come affermato dallo stesso maestro andaluso:

«Quando mi resi conto che Casagemas era morto, incominciai a dipingere in blu» - Pablo Picasso

Van Gogh | Saintes-Maries (series)

Saintes-Maries is the subject of a series of paintings that Vincent van Gogh made in 1888.

When Van Gogh lived in Arles, he took a trip to Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer on the Mediterranean sea, where he made several paintings of the seascape and town.

The work he produced in Saintes-Maries took on a more experimental and expressive style than his earlier work.

Over the course of his visit, Van Gogh made two paintings of the sea, one of the village, and nine drawings.

Vincent van Gogh | Small bottle with peonies and blue delphiniums, 1886

Vincent van Gogh began experimenting with color in his still life flower series.

By the summer of 1885, the artist created some 40 paintings with a traditional approach, meaning that the flowers were in a vase and placed in the center of the canvas.

His 1886 painting Small Bottle with Peonies and Blue Delphiniums, done with oil on painter's board -a cheaper material than canvas-, from the Gemeente Museum collection, is one of them.

Flowers became the subject of many of the artist's works during this period.

But after painting over 10 species in mid-September, he sought out other subjects including fruit, shoes, fish and budding flower bulbs.

Vincent van Gogh | Small bottle with peonies and blue delphiniums, 1886 | Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam

Ivan Pili, 1976 | Figurative painter

Ivan Pili, concert musician, composer and visual artist, was born in Cagliari, Italy.

His artistic skills emerged from the earliest age, first on the kindergarten benches and then manifested themselves in his early portraiture works at the age of 9 years.

From 1986-1990 he attended painters in Cagliari asking for his presence in their labs to try to improve the technique of the little boy.

Édouard Manet Quotes: "Black is not a color"

• Everything is mere appearance, the pleasures of a passing hour, a midsummer night's dream. Only painting, the reflection of a reflection - but the reflection, too, of eternity - can record some of the glitter of this mirage.

• A painter can say all he wants to with fruit or flowers or even clouds.

• A good painting is true to itself.

• In una figura, cercate la grande luce e la grande ombra, il resto verrà da sé.

Eric Wallis, 1968 | Ballet dancers

"I love the movement and anatomical definition that dancers have characteristically.

There is power in their bodies that they use to convey beautiful grace and emotional verbiage.

It is difficult to capture that in a 2 dimensional work and therefore it embodies a challenge that I enjoy" - Eric Wallis.

Victor Gilbert | Belle Époque painter

The mid-nineteenth and early twentieth century saw the introduction of art based on daily life, a depiction of everything from the street vendors to the homeless in and around France.

Artists were often deeply embroiled in the social issues of the time and sought to free themselves from the imposing historicism that had stifled art production for decades.

Leo Putz | Impressionist painter

Leo Putz (1869-1940) was a Tyrolean painter. His work encompasses Art Nouveau, Impressionism and the beginnings of Expressionism. Figures and landscapes are his predominant subjects.

Leo Putz was born in Merano in South Tyrol, Italy, in 1869.

His artistic career began in 1885 under the aegis of his stepbrother.

This was Robert Poetzelberger (1856-1930) who was a professor at the Munich Academy and who taught him drawing.

Raymond Leech, 1949 | Impressionist painter

Raymond Leech was born at Great Yarmouth in East Angila and spent his childhood by the seaside.

He was influenced to take up an artistic career by his father, who taught him to draw.

In particular, he was inspired by the work of the Newlyn School, the french impressionists, Edgar Degas 1834-1917, Pierre-Auguste Renoir 1841-1919 and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec 1864-1901.

Renoir: "Irregularity is the basis of all art"

• "They tell you that a tree is only a combination of chemical elements. I prefer to believe that God created it, and that it is inhabited by a nymph".

• "Ti dicono che un albero è solo una combinazione di elementi chimici. Io preferisco credere che sia stato Dio a crearlo e che sia abitato da una ninfa".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Love

Renoir’s joyful, discreet and tender vision, devoid of any hint of sentimentality, ribaldry or drama, distinguishes him from the other painters of his day.

The artist locates the interactions he depicts in his paintings in the public space, the new, modern social and natural settings - theaters, restaurants, guinguettes, boulevards and gardens - frequented by various social classes.

Theses popular "scenes" of modern love encouraged greater freedom of morals and the blossoming of "illicit" loves, in an era when bourgeois conventions and religious morality still governed romantic and sexual relationships.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Estaque, 1885-1890

"L'Estaque" is an oil on canvas, 18 3/8 x 21 7/8 inches, by Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841-1919), created in 1885-1890.

It is part of the collection of the Portland Museum of Art.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir passed through Provence on his return trip to France from Italy in January 1882, stopping at the fishing village of L'Estaque on the Mediterranean coast - close to Marseilles in the South of France, where Cézanne had painted regularly since the 1860s.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | L'Estaque, 1885-1890 | Portland Museum of Art

Christopher Clark | Storyteller painter

Christopher Clark’s goal is to tell your story. His paintings resonate, showing you a world you’ve longed to live in, or recalling a memory from years past.

He specializes in painting light itself, which lends to this sense of belonging and captivation people experience in his paintings. Christopher is a licensed painter for Lucasfilm, Marvel, 20th Century Fox and Disney International, and is collected by George Lucas.

Damian Tirado, 1960: "Envie de chic?"

Damian Tirado is a Venezuelan painter and sculptor, currently living in France.

Passionate about drawing and painting, he entered the School of Fine arts Cristobal de Rojas in Caracas.

He began his career as a designer and make up artist in the world of fashion and theatre, and as an illustrator for several big brands, collaboration among others with fashion designer Guy Melliet.

Léon Perrault | Genre / Academic painter

Painter of genre, history, religion and portrait Léon-Jean-Bazile Perrault (1832-1908) stands in peril of not being remembered as distinctively as his successes might merit.

For our part, we may narrow this great artist’s claims at once by rejecting his religious painting, and we may be inclined to go on and deny him the title of historical painter, so that, although we shall have paintings of religious subjects and of historical subjects to consider, we shall in truth be considering them as work of a painter of genre and portrait.

Charles Conder | Symbolist / Impressionist painter

Charles Edward Conder (24 October 1868 - 9 February 1909) was an English-born painter, lithographer and designer.

He emigrated to Australia and was a key figure in the Heidelberg School, arguably the beginning of a distinctively Australian tradition in Western art.

Conder was born in Tottenham, Middlesex, the second son, of six children, of James Conder, civil engineer and Mary Ann Ayres.

Federico García Lorca | Indovinello della chitarra / Riddle of the guitar

Nel rotondo

crocevia

sei fanciulle

ballano.

Tre d’argento

e tre di carne.

Federico Beltrán Masses | Tres Para Uno / Three for one, 1934

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | La Balançoire / L'altalena, 1876

Renoir gives us the impression of surprising a conversation - as if in a snapshot, he catches the glances turned towards the man seen from the back.

The young woman is looking away as if she were embarrassed.

The foursome in the foreground is balanced by the group of five figures sketchily brushed in the background.

The Swing has many points in common with The Ball at the Moulin de la Galette.

The two pictures were painted in parallel in the summer of 1876.

Damian Tirado, 1960 | Fashion Designer /Sculptor

Damian Tirado was born in Caracas, Venezuela. An autodidact, Triado has been passionate about painting and drawing since childhood.

He continued his studies at the school of Fine Arts "Cristobal de Rojas" in Caracas, and then began his career as a freelance visual artist. He has worked in theater world as a decorative painter and a makeup artist.

Paul Cézanne: "Voglio dipingere la verginità del mondo"!

• Il disegno ed il colore non sono affatto distinti. Man mano che si dipinge, si disegna. Più il colore diventa armonioso, più il disegno si fa preciso.

• Deriviamo tutti da Pissarro.

• Di Cézanne c'è n'è uno ogni due secoli!

• Ho una sensazione lieve, ma non riesco ad esprimerla. Sono come uno incapace di usare la moneta d'oro in suo possesso.

Pontormo | Mannerist painter

Jacopo da Pontormo, original name Jacopo Carrucci (born May 24, 1494, Pontormo, near Empoli, Republic of Florence (Italy)-buried Jan. 2, 1557, Florence) Florentine painter who broke away from High Renaissance classicism to create a more personal, expressive style that is sometimes classified as early Mannerism.

Pontormo was the son of Bartolommeo Carrucci, a painter. According to the biographer Giorgio Vasari, he was apprenticed to Leonardo da Vinci and afterward to Mariotto Albertinelli and Piero di Cosimo.

Johan Barthold Jongkind | Impressionist painter

Johan Barthold Jongkind (1819-1891) painter and printmaker whose small, informal landscapes continued the tradition of the Dutch landscapists while also stimulating the development of Impressionism.

Jongkind first studied under local landscape painters at The Hague.

In 1846 he moved to Paris and worked under the genre painter Eugène Isabey and François Picot.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir: "La vita è un mazzo di fiori rossi"

"• "What seems most significant to me about our movement is that we have freed painting from the importance of the subject. I am at liberty to paint flowers and call them flowers, without their needing to tell a story".

• "La vita è un mazzo di fiori rossi".

Vala Ola, 1962 | Figurative sculptor / painter

"The bronze gives me an opportunity to mold the sense of life into an everlasting form.

From the force of a muscle in motion to a tender human emotion expressed.

That along with the abstract quality of composition is what inspires me" - Vala Ola.

Lili Elbe (Einar Wegener) | The Danish Girl

Lili Elbe (born December 28, 1882, Vejle, Denmark - died September 13, 1931, Dresden, Germany) was a Danish painter who was assigned male at birth, experienced what is now called gender dysphoria, and underwent the world’s first documented sex reassignment surgery.

Born Einar Wegener, Elbe lived nearly her whole life as a man.

Edward Moran | Marine painter

Edward Moran (1829-1901) was an British-born American artist who specialized in marine art.

He is arguably most famous for his series of 13 historical paintings of United States marine history.

Vincenzo Cardarelli | Autunno veneziano /Venetian Autumn, 1931

L'alito freddo e umido m'assale

di Venezia autunnale,

Adesso che l'estate,

sudaticcia e sciroccosa,

d'incanto se n'è andata,

una rigida luna settembrina

risplende, piena di funesti presagi,

sulla città d'acque e di pietre

che rivela il suo volto di medusa

contagiosa e malefica.

Marco Ortolan | The Venetian Mask

Henri Lebasque | Pittore post-impressionista

Henri Lebasque (1865-1937) fu membro fondatore del Salon d'Automne nel 1903 con il suo amico Henri Matisse ed espose al Salon des Indépendants.

Nacque in una famiglia modesta (il padre era bottaio) e si iscrisse all'Académie Colarossi nel 1886.

In seguito collaborò con Ferdinand Humbert agli affreschi del Panthéon per sei anni, a partire dal 1888.

Agnolo Bronzino | Mannerist painter

Agnolo Bronzino (1503-1563) of Florence, Italy, known as Il Bronzino, was a Mannerist painter.

Mixing styles of the late High Renaissance into the early Baroque period, Mannerists often depicted their subjects in unnatural forms.

Bronzino’s works have been described as “icy” portraits that put an abyss between the subject and the viewer.

Cristina Fornarelli, 1978 | Pop Art painter

Cristina Fornarelli is an Italian contemporary figurative painter.

Fornarelli was born in Bari, in Southern Italy where light and colors have influenced her art.

After art school, she attended the Institute of Industrial Design in Rome, where she still lives and works.

Michelle Torrez, 1956 | Abstract painter

Known for her color work, Michelle Torrez does expressionistic oil paintings of figures that are intended to communicate the beauty of unlikely emotion, movement and life.

Torrez believes that the greatest influences on her work were the circumstances of her childhood and teenage years:

"My life has influenced me to look deeper to find the beauty and humanity in people and places. Even at an early age, I knew I was an artist".

Vincent van Gogh | Sunflowers series

Sunflowers (original title, in French: Tournesols) are the subject of two series of still life paintings by the Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh.

The earlier series, executed in Paris in 1887, depicts the flowers lying on the ground, while the second set, executed a year later in Arles, shows bouquets of sunflowers in a vase.

In the artist's mind both sets were linked by the name of his friend Paul Gauguin, who acquired two of the Paris versions.

Vincent van Gogh | Sunflowers, 1887 | National Gallery, London