Jules Worms | The furtive message, 1877

In the "Furtive Message" Jules Worms (French academic painter, 1832-1924) re-creates a Spanish street as it might have appeared in the time of Goya.

The background is based on a watercolor sketch the artist made during an 1877 visit to Salamanca.

The picturesque setting forms a backdrop for a farce.

Jules Worms | The furtive message, 1877 | Haggin Museum, California

Marc Chagall's America Windows, 1977

The America Windows are a stunning display of the iconic style of one of the world’s most prolific and expressive artists.

They capture Marc Chagall’s unique vision as he reflected, late in his career, on the resilience and freedom of the creative spirit.

At eight feet high and thirty feet across, these stained glass windows are a vast arrangement of colors of the highest intensity - bright reds, oranges, yellows, and greens - placed against brilliant shades of blue. Representations of people, animals, and items such as writing implements, musical instruments, and artists’ tools float above a skyline of buildings and trees.

Marc Chagall | The Tree of Life, 1963 | Stained glass

The Tree of Life or The Peace window - La Paix ou L’Arbre de vie - at the chapel of Cordeliers of Sarrebourg, a small town in the Vosges Mountains in France, is a stained-glass window about 15 feet (4,6 meters) wide and 12 feet (3,7 meters) high, contains several symbols of peace and love, such as the young child in the center, being kissed by an angelic face which emerges from a mass of flowers.

The Peace Window / Tree of Life is the largest stained-glass window made by Marc Chagall.

On the left, below and above, motherhood and the people who are struggling for peace are depicted.

Musical symbols in the panel evoke thoughts of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, which was a favourite of Mr. Hammarskjöld's.

Stefan Zweig | The World of Yesterday: Memories of a European / Il mondo di Ieri, 1942

Stefan Zweig (1881-1942) was an Austrian writer.

At the height of his literary career, in the 1920s and 1930s, he was one of the most widely translated and popular writers in the world.

The World of Yesterday: Memoires of a European (German title Die Welt von Gestern: Erinnerungen eines Europäers) is the memoir of writer Stefan Zweig.

It has been called the most famous book on the Habsburg Empire.

He started writing it in 1934 when, anticipating Anschluss and Nazi persecution, he uprooted himself from Austria to England and later to Brazil.

He posted the manuscript, typed by his second wife Lotte Altmann, to the publisher the day before they both committed suicide in February 1942.

The book was first published in the original German-language by an anti-Nazi Exilliteratur publishing firm based in Stockholm (1942), as Die Welt von Gestern.

It was first published in English in April 1943 by Viking Press.

In 2013, the University of Nebraska Press published a translation by the noted British translator Anthea Bell.

In "The World of Yesterday", Stefan Zweig states:

"We of the new generation who have learned not to be surprised by any outbreak of bestiality, we who each new day expect things worse than the day before, are markedly more skeptical about a possible moral improvement of mankind.

We must agree with Freud, to whom our culture and civilization were merely a thin layer liable at any moment to be pierced by the destructive forces of the "underworld".

Caspar David Friedrich | Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, 1818 | Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg

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.

Marc Chagall's Colors

An early modernist, Marc Chagall (1887-1985) was associated with the École de Paris as well as several major artistic styles and created works in a wide range of artistic formats, including painting, drawings, book illustrations, stained glass, stage sets, ceramics, tapestries and fine art prints.

He experienced modernism's "golden age" in Paris, where "he synthesized the art forms of Cubism, Symbolism, and Fauvism, and the influence of Fauvism gave rise to Surrealism".

Marc Chagall: "Lo stile non è importante. Esprimersi lo è"

• "Color is everything. When color is right, form is right. Color is everything, color is vibration like music; everything is vibration".

• "Despite all the troubles of our world, in my heart I have never given up on the love in which I was brought up or on man's hope in love. In life, just as on the artist's palette, there is but one single colour that gives meaning to life and art–the colour of love".

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.