Marcos Rodrigo, 1957 | Expressionist Figurative painter

Marcos Rodrigo is a contemporary Spanish-born figurative expressionist painter whose work prominently features the female form, sensuality and portraiture.

Born in Old Castile, Spain, his family moved to the Lot region of France when he was four years old.

Heavily influenced by his father, who was a sculptor and craftsman, Rodrigo developed an early appreciation for physical materials, texture, and structural form.

Mònica Castanys, 1973 | Impressionist Figurative painter

Spanish painter Mònica Castanys was born in Barcelona.

She graduated from the School of Arts and Crafts of Barcelona in 1993.

In 1990, she assisted a course at the Lorenzo di Medici School in Florence, Italy.

She received several national prizes for young artists.

Mònica’s art has been exhibited at numerous personal and group exhibitions in Spain and abroad.

Salvador Dalì | The hallucinogenic toreador, 1969-1970

The Hallucinogenic Toreador (Spanish: El Torero Alucinógeno) is a 1969–1970 multi-leveled oil painting by Salvador Dalí which employs the canons of his particular interpretation of surrealist thought.

It is currently being exhibited at the Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.

In The Hallucinogenic Toreador Dalí transmits his wife's dislike for bullfighting by combining symbolism, optical illusions, and estranging yet familiar motifs.

Dalí used his paranoiac-critical method to create his own visual language within the painting, and combined versatile images as an instructive example of his artistic ability and vision.

Salvador Fuster Vercher, 1966 | Figurative painter

Salvador Fuster Vercher born in Alcoy, is the son of the painter Rafael Fuster he inherited his great mastery of drawing and color.

Salvador Fuster is a painter who, like his progenitor, dominates all painting techniques, and is considered one of the best portrait painters in the current art scene.

His painting is present in great part of the best collections of painting of Europe and America and even the distant Australia counts on portraits and work of this great artist.

José Puyet | Modern Impressionist painter

José Puyet Padilla (1922-2004) was an Spanish modern impressionist painter, whose popularity spread throughout Spain and the United States.

Puyet was born in Malaga, Spain.

He was grandson of teacher José Padilla, a spanish artist who began painting in the nineteenth century.

As a child, Puyet learned to paint by watching his grandfather, whose company he preferred to that of children his own age.

By age eight, he had started working in pencils and oils.

David Farrés Calvo, 1955 | Figurative / Cityscape painter

David Farrés Calvo was born in Badalona, Barcellona, Spain.

"David Farrés trained in the studio of renowned painter Manuel Sanchez Almendros (director of the Academy longed Mediterranean in Barcelona who founded the failed Joaquim Torrents Lladó).

It belongs to the "Cercle Artistic de Sant Lluc" of Barcelona, founded in 1893 Great artists have been associated with this circle as Joan Miró and Antoni Gaudi.

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.

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".

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

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

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

During the war, Picasso was visited by Nazi Ambassador Otto Abetz in his Parisian studio.

The latter came upon a picture of Guernica, which had been sent to New York by the painter as soon as the Exhibition was over.

He asked: "Did you really do this?" to which Picasso answered: "No, You did".

Guernica is Pablo Picasso's monumental 1937 oil painting that stands as one of the most powerful and famous anti-war statements in history.

Painted in response to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, the artwork captures the universal suffering and brutality of conflict through its chaotic imagery and stark monochrome palette.

Alfredo Roldán, 1965 | Figurative painter

Alfredo Roldàn was born in Madrid. At the age of 22, having had no formal artistic training, he started drawing professionally, selling his work in street markets, at the same time presenting his work at major competitions, of which he won several.

It was on winning the award granted by the City Council of Madrid in 1994 that he was discovered by a major gallery.

His winning painting now hangs in the Museum of Modern Art, Madrid.

Remedios Varo | Surrealist painter

Remedios Varo’s paintings combine Surrealist influences with a distinctive style that evokes mystical or eerie adventures.

She had a life philosophy of non-conformity and a personal story marked by dislocation and tumult.

During her childhood in Spain, Varo was influenced by her engineer father, who taught her to draw, and her strict Catholic schooling, against which she rebelled.

Pablo Picasso | La nascita del Cubismo

Dopo un'ulteriore vacanza a Horta de Ebro nell'estate 1909, Picasso una volta ritornato a Parigi decise di allontanarsi dal pur pittoresco squallore di Montmartre e di affittare - insieme con Fernarde e il loro gatto siamese - un appartamento al numero 11 di boulevard de Clichy, nei pressi di place Pigalle.

Qui si dedicò con assoluta e piena dedizione ai propri quadri cubisti, dando vita a opere quali La femme assise (1909) e Ragazza con mandolino (1910) ed i ritratti effigianti Georges Braque (1909), Ambroise Vollard (1909-10) e Daniel-Heinrich Kahnweiler (1910).

Con queste tele Picasso, meditando sulla lezione di Cézanne, intendeva studiare il rapporto tra forma e spazio mediante il trattamento schematico dei piani e la scomposizione dei volumi: da queste premesse prese forma una fase che i critici d'arte definiranno «cubismo analitico».

Pablo Picasso: "La pittura è solo un altro modo di tenere un diario"

• "I computer sono inutili. Ti sanno dare solo risposte".

• "Computers Are useless. They Can Only Give You Answers".

• "La pittura è solo un altro modo di tenere un diario".

• "Painting is just another way of keeping a diary".

Oscar Alvarez Pardo, 1967 | Abstract Figurative painter

Spanish self-taught artist and painter Oscar Álvarez Pardo was born, living and working in Zaragoza, Spain.

"In my watercolors, after years of dedication and learning to master this so difficult medium, there is an initial stage devoted to a hard work essentially realistic... mainly portraits and seascapes become a constant in my work.

In what could be a second stage I begin to introducer the fantasy in my paintings, realistic work alternating with others of fantástco court".

Picasso Quotes: "Love is the greatest refreshment in life..."

• "Non giudicare sbagliato ciò che non conosci, prendi l'occasione per comprendere!"

• "Do not judge wrong what you don't know, take the opportunity to understand"!

Eugenio Lucas Villaamil | Belle Époque painter

Eugenio Lucas Villaamil (Madrid, 1858-1918) also known as Lucas "the younger", was born to the painter Eugenio Lucas Velázquez and Francisca Villaamil.

Until only a few years ago the information we had about his life was almost as vague as what is known about his work.

After initially training in his father’s studio as a boy, he furthered his studies at the Special School of Painting in Madrid and took part in the National Exhibitions of Fine Arts three times.

Bathers, 1918 by Pablo Picasso

Starting from 1918, Picasso spent all his summers at the beach, first at Biarritz, then on the Cote d'Azur or in Dinard.

These journeys inspired him to create a series of works on the theme of bathers.

This painting was created in 1918 at Biarritz and the first one of the series.

It has been a long tradition in art history for artists to depict the female figure with the sea scene, extending from The Birth of Venus by Sandro Botticelli to The Large Bathers of Paul Cezanne.