Albert Carrier-Belleuse | Chryselephantine sculpture

Carrier-Belleuse is the name used by this sculptor -born Carrier de Belleuse- on his mature pieces, after initially signing works "A. Carrier". His career began firmly in the applied arts, with his apprenticeship at thirteen to a Parisian ciseleur today known as Bauchery (or Beauchery), and he did subsequent work for Jacques-Henri Fauconnier and Fannière Frères. His formal education took place at the Petite Ecole - chosen after an unhappy stint at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in 1840 under the direction of David d'Angers, his official master.

While at the Petite Ecole in the 1840s, Carrier-Belleuse began his lifelong practice of providing commercial houses with models for edition, as statuettes or as ornament for functional pieces. Around 1850, the sculptor moved to England as a designer for Minton China Works, at Stoke-upon-Trent, as well as for Wedgewood, Coalbrookdale Ironworks, and Graham Jackson furniture makers.

Even after returning to Paris in 1855, he continued to send models to British firms throughout his life.

He began to garner acclaim as a fine-arts sculptor after ten years of showing in the Salon, beginning with two portrait medallions in 1850 and a flurry of busts and groups with mythological or historical subjects between 1857-1861, the latter of which earned him a third-class medal.

Catherine Calcagni | Ed intanto fuori piove..

Assorta nella penombra

delle pagine gialle della mia vita

mi siedo con l'abbandono

con le mani raccolgo il vuoto

e mi conforta la pena

non guardo fuori...

sento solo....confesso

il rigurgito fuso delle mie angosce

eppur..... c'era il sole

Jeremy Mann

The fountain of the Four Rivers / La Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, 1651

Quattro enormi allegorie sedute in pose contrastanti agli angoli delle rocce in marmo bianco che rappresentano i maggiori fiumi di ciascuno dei quattro continenti noti, secondo le cognizioni geografiche del XVII secolo:

Il Danubio per l'Europa, scolpito da Antonio Raggi;

Il Gange per l'Asia di Claude Poussin;

Il Rio della Plata per l'America di Francesco Baratta;

Il Nilo per l'Africa di Antonio Fancelli.

Will Barnet | Abstract painter

American painter and printmaker Will Barnet (1911-2012) has lived through every major artistic school in modern American art.

He can remember watching John Singer Sergent paint murals on the ceiling of the Boston Public Library in the 1920s, and being the printmaker in New York for Mexican muralist José Clemente Orozco.

He remembers the explosion of Abstract Expressionism that would come to define the so-called New York School of artists.

Alda Merini / Michelangelo | Bambino..

Bambino,

se trovi l'aquilone della tua fantasia

legalo con l'intelligenza del cuore.

Vedrai sorgere giardini incantati

e tua madre diventerà una pianta

che ti coprirà con le sue foglie.

Michelangelo Buonarroti | La Madonna di Bruges 1503-1505

Edgar Allan Poe | Il Corvo, la poesia illustrata da Manet

Il Corvo - The Raven - ed altre poesie è una raccolta di poesie scritte da Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849), scrittore, poeta, critico letterario, giornalista, editore, storyteller e saggista statunitense, considerato tra le figure più importanti della letteratura americana, inventore del racconto poliziesco, della letteratura horror e del giallo psicologico, finisce per diventare anche uno dei rappresentanti maggiori del racconto gotico.

Il Corvo fu pubblicato per la prima volta il 29 gennaio 1845, sul New York Evening Mirror.

Édouard Manet 1832-1883 | Illustration for The Rave by Edgar Allan Poe

Richard Baxter, 1966

Richard Baxter is an Australian painter, photographer and digital artist.

These three aspects of visual art constantly interweave for me, and I don't like to create borders between them as they all enhance each other in different ways.

The main, simple message in all my recent work is that life is joyous and explosive, here and now in the present, amidst the ordinary, amongst the flowers and the garbage.

Yannick Bouchard, 1982 | Surrealist / Symbolist painter

I am not claiming myself as a "surrealist artist", but my art is undeniably marked by their influence.

I was also very impressed by some notable fantasy artists, as well as erotic artists; the way they depict beauty and sensuality, and how they bring grandiose imaginary worlds to life.
Overall, my paintings are more or less a mixture of all those types; surrealism, fantasy with a touch of symbolism and even sometimes macabre.

But most of all, my paintings are images resulting of my inner thoughts and feelings; they are the expression of my love for the human body, the inspiring curves of femininity, as well as the superphysical side of the human mind, the mystical and the magical, or just very simple little things, like textures, colors and nature.

They are not intellectual pieces. They don't depict sophisticated and complicated opinions and cryptic theories.

Their essence is to stimulate the imagination and guide viewers where only they want to go. Mostly, I paint for myself; I paint what I want, I paint what I like, what moves me, what I feel and what I am.

Kent R. Wallis | Romantic Impressionist painter

Kent R. Wallis, born in Ogden, Utah, began his formal art endeavors rather late compared to most other artists.

He received his Bachelors' and Masters' degrees from Utah State University in Business Administration in 1969; after which he was employed by the B. F. Goodrich Company in Akron, Ohio.

He worked for six years in the fields of marketing and finance. During that 6-year experience, personal feelings kept reoccuring that his career was not fulfilling his creative needs.

With his sense of frustration growing, in January of 1975 he renewed an old hobby that had been abandoned years earlier but which he had enjoyed during his young life--drawing and painting. He did so in an effort to sharpen his creative faculties and give more purpose to his free time.

Momix Ballet

Conosciuta nel mondo intero per le sue opere di eccezionale inventiva e bellezza, Momix è una compagnia di ballerini, diretta dall'americano Moses Pendleton. Sin dalla fondazione ha acquisito grande notorietà per la sua capacità di evocare un mondo di immagini surreali utilizzando il corpo, costumi, attrezzi, luci e giochi d’ombra.

The Vigeland Sculpture Park

Il Parco delle sculture di Vigeland, un'area di circa 320 ettari, si trova all'interno del Frognerparken di Oslo, l'antica Kristiania, in periferia della capitale norvegese.
E' dedicata all'esposizione permanente di sculture, bassorilievi e opere in ferro battuto dell'artista norvegese Gustav Vigeland. Disseminate nel Parco Vigeland oltre 200 sculture che ritraggono scene di vita quotidiana.

Il tema di fondo dell'intero parco, il ciclo della vita, dalla nascita e della morte, si articola in cinque aree: Il Cancello, Il Ponte, La Fontana, La Terrazza del Monolite e la Ruota della Vita.
Tutti i sentieri del Parco Vigeland portano all’obelisco, monolite granitico si staglia in cielo per 17 metri, con scolpiti 121 corpi avvinghiati. Vigeland si occupò anche del design e della progettazione architettonica del parco.

Mark Mawson | Conceptual photographer

Mark Mawson is a London based photographer with 25 years experience of producing creative and inspiring images.

He specialises in shooting liquids and his colourful liquid work, titled "Aqueous", has become very well known and collectable. An Aqueous video was projected onto the walls of Buckingham Palace for The Queen's diamond jubilee concert.

Mark also enjoys shooting underwater fashion and beauty and his non commissioned personal work shows a love of atmospheric, cinematic work.

His work is held in many private collections around the world.

Ronit Baranga, 1973 | Surrealist sculptor

An Israeli artist with a head full of memories. Memories that might come from childhood, confronting the hands of an adult? An art that creates mysterious characters, images of women hiding behind their masks, or objects that have a life of themselves, and some human presence.

Miriana Mitrovich | Abstract photographer

Miriana Mitrovich is Bulgarian-born Canadian artist, born in Sofia. As a daughter of a ballerina and a sculptor, she was enrolled in a classical ballet and piano lessons by the age of six and sculpting portraiture under the guidance of her father. At the age of ten, she was accepted as one of twenty-eight children from across the country into a nine-year program at the National Ballet School in Sofia.

La Galleria degli Uffizi di Firenze

La Galleria degli Uffizi, una imponente ed armoniosa struttura del Cinquecento fiorentino, uno dei musei più conosciuti al mondo, è sito nel Piazzale degli Uffizi a Firenze.

Fù realizzata dall'architetto Giorgio Vasari su disposizione di Cosimo I, il quale volle riunire tutti gli uffici amministrativi della città in un solo grande edificio.

La costruzione del palazzo iniziò nel 1560 per terminare nel 1580, quando Giorgio Vasari era già morto.

L’opera fu portata a termine dagli architetti Alfonso Parigi e Bernardo Buontalenti, che mantennero il disegno originale.

Piazza della Signoria - Fontana del Neptune