L'abbraccio

"Ho imparato che ogni giorno dovresti spingerti a toccare qualcuno. La gente ama una carezza affettuosa, o soltanto un amichevole pacca sulla schiena".

Maya Angelou

"Una delle migliori sensazioni al mondo è quando abbracci qualcuno e lui ricambia stringendoti più forte".

Charles Bukowski

"Quando sentiamo il bisogno di un abbraccio, dobbiamo correre il rischio di chiederlo".

Emily Dickinson

Peter Wever, 1950

Antonio Basoli's Architectural Alphabet

Antonio Basoli (1774-1848) was an Italian painter, interior designer, scenic designer, and engraver, active mostly in Bologna.

His first teacher was his father, Lelio Andrea Basoli.

His education was motivated by an insatiable and constant interest in classic art, classic and contemporary literature, and the works, decorations and inscriptions of Piranesi.

Pietro Magni | The Reading Girl / La Lettrice, 1856

Pietro Magni's marble statue The Reading Girl brought the Milanese sculptor international fame and recognition.

It was exhibited numerous times at international exhibitions throughout Europe and America, each time to great public and critical acclaim.

Stylistically it owes much to the artistic tradition of verismo or "realism" that characterized Italian art during the middle years of the nineteenth century, but it also recalls earlier aspects of Italian romanticism.

Luca Postiglione | Genre painter

Luca Postiglione (Naples, 1876-1936) was an Italian painter, mainly of portraits, historic and genre subjects, in a Realist style.

Luca Postiglione was born in a family of painters. He was the son of the painter Luigi Postiglione.

His uncle, Salvatore Postiglione (1861-1906) was also a painter and his teacher.

Salvatore Postiglione | Genre painter

Salvatore Postiglione (1861-1906) was born to father Luigi (1812-1881), who was a painter of sacred subjects.

His brother, also named Luigi Postiglione and his nephew, and Luigi's son, Lucawere also painters. He studied at the Neapolitan Institute of Fine Arts under his uncle, Raffaele and Domenico Morelli.

William Blake | Pittore Simbolista / Romantico

Tigre! Tigre! divampante fulgore

Nelle foreste della notte,

Quale fu l'immortale mano o l'occhio

Ch'ebbe la forza di formare

La tua agghiacciante simmetria?

Amor non cerca di compiacer se stesso

Né per se stesso ha cura

Ma per un altro ogni favor rassegna

E il Cielo erige in un oscuro inferno.

Alice Bailly | Cubist painter

Alice Bailly (1872-1938) was a radical Swiss painter, known for her interpretations on cubism, fauvism, her wool paintings, and her participation in the Dada movement.

In 1906, Bailly had settled in Paris where she befriended Juan Gris, Francis Picabia and Marie Laurencin, avant-garde modernist painters who influenced her works and her later life.

Paul Gauguin | The figures

The vogue for Paul Gauguin's work started soon after his death.

Many of his later paintings were acquired by the Russian collector Sergei Shchukin.

A substantial part of his collection is displayed in the Pushkin Museum and the Hermitage.

Gauguin paintings are rarely offered for sale; their price may be as high as $39.2 million US Dollars.

Francesco Vinea | Genre painter

Francesco Vinea (Forlì, August 10, 1845 - Florence, October 22, 1902) was an Italian painter, known for his period costume Genre subjects.

He studied first at the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, but had to discontinue his studies due to his poverty, and spent some time traveling without home.

He worked for a photographer, also as a designer of illustrated magazines, but returned to Florence and studied under professor Enrico Pollastrini, but only for a year.

Johann Jungblut | Romantic Landscape painter

Johan Jungblut (1860-1912), a Düsseldorf school, painted winter landscapes of rural Netherlands, Germany, and Norway in an old master style.

Jungblut was born in Sarrebourg on the French/German border in April of 1860, although in 1885 he made the German city of Dusseldorf his home.

Johan Jungblut was a solitary figure who lived alone; he made frequent trips to Holland to paint, specialising in Winter scenes infused with tranquil light.

Johann Georg Meyer | Pittore di genere

Johann Georg Meyer von Bremen (1813-1886), noto come Meyer von Bremen, è stato un importante rappresentante della pittura di genere classica Tedesca.

Meyer è considerato un rappresentante della Scuola di pittura di Düsseldorf e fu membro della Colonia di pittori di Willingshausen.

Johann Georg Meyer realizzò circa 1.000 opere.

Meyer ricevette numerosi premi ed onorificenze.

Jack B. Yeats, l'Espressionista moderno

Jack Butler Yeats RHA (1871-1957) è stato un pittore Irlandese.

Jack Butler Yeats nacque il 29 agosto 1871 a Londra, figlio del ritrattista irlandese John Butler Yeats (1839-1922) e fratello del poeta William Butler Yeats (1865-1939).

Passò gli anni dell'infanzia a Sligo, una città sul mare nel nord dell'Irlanda, dai nonni materni.

Eugene Galien-Laloue | Belle Époque painter

French painter Eugène Galien-Laloue (1854-1941) was born in Paris on 1854.

He was a populariser of street scenes, usually painted in autumn or winter.

His paintings o f the early 1900s accurately represent the era in which he lived: a happy, bustling Paris, la Belle Époque, with horse-drawn carriages, trolley cars and its first omnibuses.

Galien-Laloue's works are valued not only for their contribution to 20th century art, but for the actual history, which they document.

Paul Renard | Impressionist painter

French artist Paul Renard (1871-1920) was studied at Rotterdams Academy of Art.

He spent most of his career painting narrative street scenes of Paris for which he became renowned.

His is a well listed artist and his work can be found in galleries throughout the world.

Konstantin Korovin | Il maestro dell'Impressionismo

Il pittore e scenografo, Konstantin Korovin / Константи́н Коро́вин (Mosca, 1861 - Parigi, 1939) è stato uno dei maggiori rappresentanti russi dell'Impressionismo.

Korovin è nato il 23 novembre 1861 a Mosca da una famiglia di mercanti, che in realtà, però, risultano da alcuni documenti ufficiali come "contadini della regione di Vladimir Gubernia".

Suo padre, Aleksey Mikhailovich Korovin, conseguì una laurea e si interessò molto alle arti ed alla musica che diffondeva, perfino, nell'azienda di famiglia fondata dal nonno di Korovin.

Ilya Repin | A Parisian Café, 1875

Repin's time as an academic pensioner in Paris 1873-76 was a fruitful as well as confusing time for the rising young star of Russian realist painting and he responded to a bewildering variety of new stimuli with enthusiasm and uncertainty, painting both Russian motifs as well as the sights of contemporary France.

In particular it was a period of burgeoning experimentation as Repin (1844-1930) took cognisance of modern French artistic developments, the major outcome of which was his large canvas "A Parisian Café", which was sold in London in June 2011 for a record price by the artist.

Paris painting

"Paris is an ocean.

Explore it, and you still won’t know its depths".

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Honoré de Balzac

"Parigi è come un oceano. Gettateci una sonda e non ne conoscerete mai la profondità.

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Honoré de Balzac

Le Pont des Arts, Paris

Le Pont des Arts / The Bridge of Arts or Passerelle des Arts is a pedestrian bridge in Paris which crosses the River Seine.

It links the Institut de France and the central square (cour carrée) of the Palais du Louvre, (which had been termed the "Palais des Arts" under the First French Empire).

Between 1802-1804, under the reign of Napoleon I, a nine-arch metallic bridge for pedestrians was constructed at the location of the present day Pont des Arts: this was the first metal bridge in Paris.

The engineers Louis-Alexandre de Cessart and Jacques Dillon initially conceived of a bridge which would resemble a suspended garden, with trees, banks of flowers and benches.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir - Le Pont des Arts, Paris, 1867-1868

Edward Hopper at the Whitney Museum

Edward Hopper (1882-1967) was a keen observer of the everyday, which he transformed through his imagination into works of art that bear his signature tense, enigmatic atmospheres.

A reflective and individualistic man, he was deeply attuned to the relationship of the self to the world, and his works increasingly focused on the psychological realities of his subjects.

Hopper was frequently inspired by the two locations in which he spent most of his time: downtown New York, where he lived and worked in the same apartment on Washington Square from 1913 until his death in 1967; and Cape Cod, where, beginning in 1934, he maintained a second home and studio.

Herbert James Draper | Pittore Vittoriano

Herbert James Draper (Londra, 1863-1920) è stato un pittore Inglese dell'età Vittoriana.

Studiò arte alla Royal Academy londinese e compì svariati viaggi di studio a Roma e Parigi tra il 1888-1892.

Nel 1890 lavorò come illustratore e nel 1891 sposò Ida Williams, figlia d'un magistrato, da cui ebbe una figlia. in seguito lavorò per l'inglese Illustrated Magazine come illustratore di libri dedicati ai giovani.