Keishi Sakurai, 1974 | Romantic painter

Keishi Sakurai / 桜井 敬史 graduated from the Tokyo University of Arts in 1999, with major in Nihonga (Japanese Painting).

Keishi applies natural mineral pigments, rock paint, natural stone and hide glue on Japanese paper to create his paintings.

Keishi’s works depicting scenes from Japan, Europe, Asia, and bring a gentle feeling of serenity, viewers experience a blissful sense of tranquility when appreciating his works.

At present Keishi lives and works in Tokyo.

Legge di Murphy: "La necessità procura strani compagni di letto"

Della Umanologia | Capitolo Decimo

Prima legge di socio-genetica

• Il celibato non è ereditario.

Principio di Beifeld

• Le probabilità che un giovane maschio incontri una giovane femmina attraente e disponibile aumentano in proporzione geometrica quando è con:

1) la fidanzata,

2) la moglie,

3) un amico più bello e più ricco.

Salvador Dali | Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages, 1939 | Boijmans Van Beuningen Museum, Rotterdam

John Henry Henshall | Victorian watercolour painter

John Henry Henshall, usually known as Henry Henshall RWS (1856-1928) was a British watercolourist and etcher.

A favourite theme of Henshall's work is the contrast between the happy innocence of childhood, without cares, and the tribulations of old age.

He was not afraid to tackle uncomfortable subjects and his honest, realistic pictures of ordinary life were quite unusual for painters in the Victorian era.

Luis Sepúlveda | L’ultimo suono del tuo addio / The last sound of your goodbye

Luis Sepúlveda Calfucura noto come Luis Sepùlveda (1949-2020) è stato uno scrittore, giornalista, sceneggiatore, poeta, regista ed attivista Cileno naturalizzato Francese.

Autore di libri di poesia, "radioromanzi" e racconti - oltre allo spagnolo, sua lingua madre, parlava correttamente inglese, francese ed italiano - conquistò la scena letteraria con il suo primo romanzo, Il vecchio che leggeva romanzi d'amore, apparso per la prima volta in Spagna nel 1989 ed in Italia nel 1993.

Pubblicò poi numerosi altri romanzi, raccolte di racconti e libri di viaggio, tra i quali spicca Storia di una gabbianella e del gatto che le insegnò a volare.

Carolina Landea

Luis Sepulveda | L’ultimo suono del tuo addio

Nydia Lozano, 1947 | Ladies with flowers

Nydia Lozano felt from a very young age, to her town of Alginet, the inclination to capture on paper her impressions of the countryside and the towns of Valencia.

His church towers and family faces interested Jose Espert, the first person to tell him what painting was and probably the only one who could talk to him about painters like Sargent in the early sixties.

He saw that Nydia’s path was already drawn and helped her follow him.

Happy Birthday to Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer !

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer - a French artist and a leading exponent of Symbolism and Art Nouveau - was born on this day, September 30, 1865 to a Jewish family in Algiers, French Algeria.

His works include paintings, drawings, ceramics, furniture and interior design.

In 1865, he began studying drawing and sculpture in Paris at the Ecole Supérieure de Dessin et de Sculpture in 1879.

He first exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882 where he showed a small ceramic plaque.

Kevin Beilfuss, 1963 | Impressionist painter

Kevin Beilfuss is an American painter living in the Chicago area with his wife, Janice and son Drew.

He attended Illinois State University where he received his Bachelor of Fine Arts Degree in painting in 1985.

After working in an ad agency for a year, Kevin attended the American Academy of Art where he concentrated on painting and illustration.

Emile Claus | Il pittore Luminista

Oggi si celebra il 175° compleanno della figura più brillante del Luminismo, il belga Emile Claus (27 settembre 1849 - 14 giugno 1924).

Dalla sua casa idilliaca lungo il fiume Leie, Claus dipinse capolavori che continuano ad affascinare gli amanti dell'arte in tutto il mondo.

Émile Claus nacque in un piccolo villaggio delle Fiandre occidentali, sulle rive della Lys, sedicesimo figlio di una famiglia di commercianti rurali.

Otto Pippel | Impressionist painter

German painter Otto Eduard Pippel (1878-1960) was one of the most important Impressionists in Southern Germany.

As the son of German parents who had emigrated to Lodz, Pippel enrolled at the School of Applied Arts in Straßburg in 1896 with the express wish to become an interior decorator and a decorative painter.

He had to interrupt his studies shortly afterwards, however, as he was drafted into the Russian army for four years.

Konstantinos Kavafis | Per le scale / On the stairs / Στες σκάλες

Konstantinos Petrou Kavafis, noto in Italia anche come Costantino Kavafis / Κωνσταντίνος Καβάφης (Alessandria d'Egitto, 1863-1933), è stato un poeta e giornalista Greco.

Kavafis era uno scettico che fu accusato di attaccare i tradizionali valori della cristianità, del patriottismo e dell'eterosessualità, anche se non sempre si trovò a suo agio nel ruolo di anticonformista.

Pubblicò 154 poesie, spesso ispirate all'antichità ellenistica, romana e bizantina, ma molte altre sono rimaste incomplete od allo stato di bozza.

Scrisse le sue poesie più importanti dopo i quarant'anni.

Come un recluso, egli non fu mai riconosciuto durante la sua vita.

Oltre che i suoi soggetti, anticonvenzionali per l'epoca, le sue poesie mostrano anche un'abile e versatile arte, che viene spesso perduta nella traduzione delle sue opere.

La sua poetica viene insegnata nelle scuole greche.

Andre Kohn

Andre Kohn, 1972 | Ladies and hats

André Kohn, Russian painter, was born in Stalingrad, but was raised in the southernmost region of the Former Soviet Union near the Caspian Sea.

He spent the first 12 years of his life surrounded by nature before moving with his family to Moscow in 1984.

The precise convergence of three dynamic forces-culture, environment and talent-combined to produce one of the most collected figurative painters on the American art scene today.

Felix Nussbaum | Artist of the Holocaust

"If I perish, don’t let my works die; show them to the public", Felix Nussbaum begged a friend before he was deported to Auschwitz.

Felix Nussbaum painted multiple self-portraits during the Holocaust, giving us a unique artistic insight into the experience of one man, among the millions that were murdered.

Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944) was a German-Jewish surrealist painter.

Nussbaum's paintings, including Self Portrait with Jewish Identity Card (1943) and Triumph of Death (1944), explore his experiences as a Jew during the Holocaust.

Felix Nussbaum | Self Portrait with Jewish Identity Card / Autoritratto con passaporto ebraico, 1943

His work is usually associated with the New Objectivity movement, and was influenced by the works of Giorgio de Chirico, Henri Rousseau and Vincent van Gogh.

He took refuge in Belgium after the Nazi rise to power, but was deported to Auschwitz along with his wife Felka Platek only a few months before the British liberation of Brussels on 3 September 1944.

Peter Wever, 1950 | Embrace painting

German painter Peter Wever received his training at the National College of Art and Design in Dublin, Ireland, followed by travels in the United States and Guatemala.

Wever is known for his color etchings often dealing with relationships.

His work has warmth, and often a touch of humour.

Konstantinos Kavafis | Muri / Walls / Τείχη

Senza preavviso, né pietà, senza nessun pudore,

muri massicci ed alti mi hanno costruito intorno.

E sono qui che mi dispero e per il mio dolore

non penso ad altro: e mi rodo il cervello tutto il giorno.

René Magritte

James Ensor | The Oyster Eater / La mangiatrice di ostriche, 1882

"The Oyster Eater" is an oil painting executed in 1882 by the Belgian Expressionist artist James Ensor which is now in the collection of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp.

The genre work depicts the artist's sister Mitche eating oysters on her own at a well-appointed table replete with flowers, plates, wine and table linen.

Art critics were unapologetic about James Ensor's "The Oyster Eater".

"Offensive! Immoral! Vice!"

Yet there is not a streak of nudity to be seen, nor intimately entwined bodies.

So what was the problem?

Anna Boch | Post-impressionist painter

Anna Boch participated in the Neo-Impressionist movement.

Her early works used a Pointillist technique, but she is best known for her Impressionist style which she adopted for most of her career.

A pupil of Isidore Verheyden, she was influenced by Théo van Rysselberghe whom she met in the artistic group, Les XX.

Anna-Rosalie Boch (1848-1936), known as Anna, was a Belgian painter, art collector, and the only female member of the artistic group, Les XX.

Frantz Charlet | Impressionist painter

Frantz Charlet (1862-1928) was a Belgian painter, etcher and lithographer.

An Impressionist, he was one of the founding members in 1882, with James Ensor and Théo van Rysselberghe (1862-1926) of the group Les XX.

It is one of the first painters in Belgium to look for brighter colours and a spontaneous touch, thus becoming closer French Impressionists.

Charlet studied at the Académie Royale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels from 1872-1873 and again from 1876-1881; among his fellow pupils there were Eugène Broerman, François-Joseph Halkett, Théo van Rysselberghe and Rodolphe Wytsman, and his teacher was Jean-François Portaels.

Théo Van Rysselberghe and Les XX

Théo van Rysselberghe was one of the prominent co-founders of the Belgian artistic circle Les XX on 28 October 1883.

This was a circle of young radical artists, under the patronage, as secretary, of the Brussels jurist and art lover Octave Maus (1856-1919).

They rebelled against the outmoded academism of the time and the prevailing artistic standards.

Joaquín Sorolla to Clotilde: “You are my flesh, my life and my brain”..

Clotilde García Castillo (1865-1929) married Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (Spanish Realist/Impressionist painter, 1863-1923) at the age of 23 and they ended their days together.

The painter died six years before her, in 1923.

Clotilde donated all her assets to the State for the foundation of a museum in honour of her husband's work - the family home where the Sorolla Museum stands today.

Joaquín Sorolla | Clotilde seated on the Sofa (Clotilde sentada en un sofá), 1910 | Museo Sorolla, Madrid

Of all the portraits Sorolla painted of his wife, this is probably the most successful and is a fundamental work within the context of his artistic production.

The viewer is presented here with a refined lady, reflecting her social status and so mirroring her husband’s professional success.

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida | Clotilde seated on the Sofa, 1910 | Museo Sorolla

Hermann Hesse | Vieni con me!

Vieni con me!

Devi affrettarti però -

sette lunghe miglia

io faccio ad ogni passo.

Dietro il bosco ed il colle

aspetta il mio cavallo rosso.

Gis de Maeyer