Ippolito Caffi between Venice and the Orient

150 years ago during the Battle of Lissa, Ippolito Caffi (1809-1866) lost his life on the sinking ship Re d’Italia, on which he had embarked to document the events of the war through his swift and accurate drawings.

Caffi, born in Belluno but Venetian by choice, was an extraordinary painter and reporter, a restless observer of society and a convinced patriot. 150 years ago (almost a sign of fate!) the Veneto and Venice were annexed to Italy.

Cecil Kennedy | Still Life

Helene Knoop, 1979 | Figurative / Narrative painter

Helene Knoop has studied under Odd Nerdrum and became part of the renowned “Nerdrum School” where philosophical ideas are as equally important as the handcraft.

She is a painter who values sincerity and handcraft above irony and originality. And her paintings are for everyone and for eternity.
A six-pages article showing her work and interview was published in the flight magazine, Scanorama in 2004. Good sales results and publicity have been achieved at her solo-exhibitions.

Her last solo show was in 2005, at Amells Gallery in London.

In Helene Knoop’s pictorial universe we are confronted with an aesthetic which is in sharp contrast to what today is considered “True Art”.

Nydia Lozano, 1947 | Impressionist Figurative painter

Spanish painter Nydia Lozano was born in Alginet, a small town of the Ribera of Valencia.

The name Nydia recalls the character created by Bulwer-Lytton in his The Last Days of Pompei when the local priest refused a baptism with a pagan name so that Nydia had to be baptized as Laura.

Nydia grew up in the huerta landscape, in which life translates itself in a strong luminous atmosphere and in the bright colors of rice fields and of orange and lemon trees.

Everything that her sensitiveness kept accumulating in youth manifested itself in her affection for painting.

William Shakespeare | Shall I compare thee to a summer's day?

Sonnet 18 (also known as "Shall I compare thee to a summer's day") is one of the best-known of the 154 sonnets written by English poet and playwright William Shakespeare.

In the sonnet, the speaker asks whether he should compare the Fair Youth to a summer's day, but notes that he has qualities that surpass a summer's day, which is one of the themes of the poem.

He also notes the qualities of a summer day are subject to change and will eventually diminish.

The speaker then states that the Fair Youth will live forever in the lines of the poem, as long as it can be read.

There is an irony being expressed in this sonnet: it is not the actual young man who will be eternalized, but the description of him contained in the poem, and the poem contains scant or no description of the young man, but instead contains vivid and lasting descriptions of a summer day, which the young man is supposed to outlive.

Nydia Lozano