Georgia O'Keeffe: "Non basta essere gentili nella vita. Devi avere coraggio"

"Un fiore è relativamente piccolo. Ognuno ha molte associazioni con un fiore - l'idea dei fiori. Allunghi la mano per toccare il fiore - ti pieghi in avanti per annusarlo - forse lo tocchi con le labbra quasi senza pensarci - o lo dai a qualcuno per compiacerlo. Eppure - in un certo senso - nessuno vede un fiore - davvero - è così piccolo - non abbiamo tempo - e per vedere ci vuole tempo, come per avere un amico ci vuole tempo... Così mi sono detto - Dipingerò quello che vedo - cos'è il fiore per me, ma lo dipingerò in grande e loro saranno sorpresi nel prendersi del tempo per guardarlo - farò in modo che anche i newyorkesi indaffarati si prendano del tempo per vedere quello che vedo dei fiori.. . Beh, ti ho fatto prendere del tempo per guardare ciò che ho visto e quando ti sei preso del tempo per notare davvero il mio fiore.".

Georgia O'Keeffe | Abstract painter

For several decades Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) was a major figure in American art who, remarkably, maintained her independence from shifting artistic trends.

She painted prolifically, and almost exclusively, the flowers, animal bones, and landscapes around her studios in Lake George, New York and New Mexico, and these subjects became her signature images.

She remained true to her own unique artistic vision and created a highly individual style of painting, which synthesized the formal language of modern European abstraction and the subjects of traditional American pictorialism.

Alex Levin, 1975 | Surrealist painter

Levin comes from Kiev, Ukraine, where he was born and later on attended Art Academy, which he graduated with honors.

In 1990 Alex Levin immigrated to Israel, where he continues to live in a city of Herzeliya.

With most productive and hectic schedule, Alex Levin finds additional time to grow as an artist and studies new techniques with Professor Baruch Elron who was the Chairman of Israel Artist Association.

The main painting styles are Surrealism and Realism.

Artworks of Levin admired worldwide and were purchased for numerous private, corporate and institutional collections in the United States of America, Israel, France, Italy, Ukraine, Switzerland and Belgium.

Vadim Suljakov 1960 | Urban landscape painter

Вадим Суляков was born in the cultural center of Moscow. His parents gave him an excellent home education and he began painting at the age of seven. He continued with Russia's most rigid and traditional art education. The schools were very strict and difficult, and only a few were chosen to go on to the next level.

Morgan Weistling, 1964 | Romantic painter

Morgan studied art at an early age with his father, a former art student. His parents both met at art school. His father, Howard, a POW in Germany, entertained his fellow American prisoners in Stalag 1 with a daily comic strip that he created and drew to keep morale up. Drawn on scraps of paper found on the prison grounds, he crafted a humorous world of characters that managed to bring a smile to imprisoned soldiers. In the last days of the war and feeling the Russians would be coming, his talents with painting saved his life. Using some paints supplied by the Geneva Convention, he painted a American Flag on the shoulder of his prisoner uniform so that the Russians invading Germany would identify him and not shoot him. It worked.

François Joseph Bosio | Neoclassical sculptor

Baron François Joseph Bosio (19 March 1768 - 29 July 1845) was a French sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.

Born in Monaco, Bosio was given a scholarship by prince Honoré I to study in Paris with the eminent sculptor Augustin Pajou.

After brief service in the Revolutionary army he lived in Florence, Rome and Naples, providing sculpture for churches under the French hegemony in Italy in the 1790s.

William Powell Frith | Victorian Era painter

Frith [1819-1909] was an British painter, specialising in Genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian Era.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1852.

He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".

Jacques-Laurent Agasse

Born at Geneva, Agasse [1767-1849] studied in the public art school of that city. Before he turned twenty he went to Paris to study in veterinary school to make himself fully acquainted with the anatomy of horses and other animals. He seems to have subsequently returned to Switzerland.

Scott Mattlin, 1955

American painter Scott Mattlin is an artist with a deep and passionate appreciation for beauty in the natural world and within the human spirit. This enthusiastic and sensitive joy is reflected strongly in his artwork. His work is executed in a vibrant, impressionistic style, which - while still retaining its representational roots, incorporates abstract elements, resulting in a uniquely contemporary union.

Vladimir Hozatski, 1955

Well-known in his native Russia, as well as abroad, Hozatski has received numerous accolades for his work. One of the major commissions he received was a request, in 1985, from then-President Mikhail Gorbachev for Hozatski and his father Guenrich to paint the interior walls of the President's Black Sea summer dacha in the Crimea.

Émile Friant | Genre painter

Émile Friant (1863-1932) carries out primarily portraits and scene paintings of the everyday life. Its fabrics draw their instantaneous character in the photographic process.

Émile Friant is born in Dieuze in 1863. Its family, of modest origin, settles in Nancy at the time of the annexation of the Alsace-Moselle. Émile Friant begins his formation at the School of the Art schools of Nancy and exposes as of the fifteen years age to the local Show. Friant continues his studies in Paris in the workshop of the painter Alexandre Cabanel and becomes at twenty years second price of Rome. Paris where the Friant young person finds other Lorraine artists like Aimé Morot, Jules Bastien-Lepage and Victor Prouvé.

Lovers in Art | Painting and sculpture

Ti amerò finchè il cielo non avrà più lacrime da piovere,

ti amerò finchè le stelle si tufferanno dal cielo dritte dritte nelle nostre tasche...

I'm gonna love you

Till the heavens

Stop the rain.

I'm gonna

Love you

Till the stars

Fall from the sky

For you and I

Love is a dream. Dreams are good, but do not be surprised if you wake up in tears.

Jim Morrison

Gustav Klimt (1862-1918)

Ladies with flowers

Cogli questo piccolo fiore,

prendilo! Non indugiare!

Temo che appassisca

e cada nella polvere.

Se non può trovare posto

tra i fiori della tua ghirlanda

onoralo almeno

con il tocco della tua mano

anche se doloroso.

Pierre Auguste Cot (1837-1883)

William Harnett | Trompe-l'œil still lifes painter

William Michael Harnett (1848-1892) was an Irish-American painter**, known for his trompe l'oeil still lifes of ordinary objects.

Harnett painted musical instruments, hanging game, and tankards, but also painted the unconventional Golden Horseshoe 1886, a single rusted horseshoe shown nailed to a board.

Jean Béraud | Belle Époque painter

Jean Béraud (January 12, 1848 - October 4, 1935) was a French painter renowned for his numerous paintings depicting the life of Paris, and the nightlife of Paris society.

Pictures of the Champs Elysees, cafés, Montmartre and the banks of the Seine are precisely detailed illustrations of everyday Parisian life during the "Belle Époque". He also painted religious subjects in a contemporary setting.

Beppo Zuccheri, 1973

Beppo Zuccheri, Italian painter, graphic designer and video-manipulator was born from the Tagliamento river in 1973. After his classical studies he pretended to attend the Fine Arts' Academy in Bologna and the Faculty of literary and philosophical studies in Bologna, too. He got his diploma at the International graphic-advertising School in Venice. Since 2006 he has been cooperating with the “ONOFF” group, which was founded by himself.

Harbin Snow Sculpture Festival, 2012

In frigid northeastern China, in the city of Harbin is hosting its 26th annual International Ice and Snow Sculpture Festival. Massive buildings built of ice from the frozen surface of the nearby Songhua River, large scale snow sculptures, ice slides, festival food and drinks can be found in several parks in the city. At night, visitors who endure the bitter cold will see the lights switched on, illuminating the sculptures from both inside and outside.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Still life

The Impressionism, a movement, first in painting and later in music, that developed chiefly in France during the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Impressionist painting comprises the work produced between about 1867-1886 by a group of artists who shared a set of related approaches and techniques.

The most conspicuous characteristic of Impressionism in painting was an attempt to accurately and objectively record visual reality in terms of transient effects of light and colour.

In music, it was to convey an idea or affect through a wash of sound rather than a strict formal structure.

Kate Lightfoot - Pop Surrealism painter

I'm a self-taught Aussie artist who lives in a quiet Melbourne town-house with my lovely boyfriend, two demanding cats and a bright blue Siamese fighting fish called Jet Li.
During the day, I work in the creative department of an advertising agency. At night, I draw my girls.
I like to work in pencil as I have absolutely no patience and I hate waiting for paint to dry. Watercolour is also great fun (and dries quickly!) - it has a mind of its own and I love the surprise results you can get from it.

Italia Ruotolo | Pop Art painter

Italia Ruotolo born in Naples, Italy.

After Classic Literature studies graduated at the Fine Arts Academy of Naples.

For many years she worked as goldsmith and jewel designer.

Ruotolo's work is a broad range of pop art and Art Nouveau.

Lennette Newell ~ Fashion photographer

Naturalist fashion photographer Lennette Newell channels a lifelong passion for Earth’s biodiversity and the magical wonder of the natural world into compelling animal portraits that afford viewers an intimate glimpse of creatures large and small.

Franco Puliti, 1945

After completing art school in Lucca, Tuscany, he immersed himself in the new generation of artists, post-Macchiaioli Toscani, the Italian equivalent of French Impressionists. In the late 1960’s, he opened a studio in Livorno, Italy where he had permanent exposition until the mid- 1970’s.  He moved to the United States in 1980, continuing his art career and showing his work from coast to coast.  The careful geometric design and harmonious distribution of color throughout his work reflect his excellent artistic schooling and passion for his craft.

Rembrandt | Periods, themes and styles

Throughout his career, Rembrandt (1606-1669) took as his primary subjects the themes of portraiture, landscape and narrative painting. For the last, he was especially praised by his contemporaries, who extolled him as a masterly interpreter of biblical stories for his skill in representing emotions and attention to detail.

Stylistically, his paintings progressed from the early "smooth" manner, characterized by fine technique in the portrayal of illusionistic form, to the late "rough" treatment of richly variegated paint surfaces, which allowed for an illusionism of form suggested by the tactile quality of the paint itself.

Nicoletta Tomas, 1963 | Figurative painter | VideoArt

Nicoletta Tomas was born in Madrid, Spain. A self taught painter, started the artistic career in Valencia (Spain) 1990, using in depth the pastel technique. I concentrated on diferent themes such as indoor motifs, city views and bullfighting scenes. At this time and since 1998 I have given my paintings a new turn, centered on the human body. I am in a constant search for new ways of artistic expresions, both in style and means.

Manolo Valdés,1942

Valdés is a Spanish artist residing in New York, working in paint, sculpture and mixed media. He introduced to Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony.

Manolo Valdés was born in Valencia. He entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in 1957, where he studied two years.

In 1964 he established the artists' group Equipo Crónica with Joan Toledo and Rafael Solbes in which he remained until Solbes' death in 1981.

He now lives and works in New York and Madrid.

Caravaggio | Art in Detail

Michelangelo Merisi, detto il Caravaggio (1571-1610) è stato un pittore italiano. Formatosi a Milano ed attivo a Roma, Napoli, Malta e in Sicilia fra il 1593 e il 1610, fu uno dei più celebri pittori italiani di tutti i tempi, dalla fama ancora oggi universale.

George McNeil | Abstract expressionist painter

A pioneer Abstract Expressionist of the New York School, George McNeil (1908-1995) had over forty solo exhibitions during his lifetime.

Between the ’40s and until the mid ’60s his art was decidedly abstract but it was always joined to metaphor. George McNeil had a career that spanned the entire postwar American art era.

McNeil attended Pratt Institute and the Art Students’ League, where he studied with Jan Matulka.

Ben Nicholson | Abstract painter

Benjamin Lauder Nicholson, OM (1894-1982) was an English painter of abstract compositions (sometimes in low relief), landscapes and still-life.

He was one of the leading promoters of abstract art in his country.

Born in Denham, Buckinghamshire, Nicholson was the son of the painters Sir William Nicholson and Mabel Pryde, and the brother of artist Nancy Nicholson, architect Christopher Nicholson and Anthony Nicholson.

Arturo Souto Feijoo [1902-1964]

Arturo Souto Feijoo was an important spanish painter who studied in Seville and Madrid and then traveled to Paris in the 1920s where he was influenced by the avant-garde. Prior to his exile from Spain following the Spanish Civil War, Souto exhibited throughout Europe. While living in Havana, Mexico, and the U.S. during the 1940s until his death in 1964, Souto continued to exhibit and developed a reputation as one of the outstanding spanish painters of the twentieth century.

Angelica Privalihin

Angelica Privalihin was born in a small village called Uzlovaja in the Tula region of Russia. She attended the Special School for Gifted in Arts for children in Krasnoyarsk, Siberia. She was taught to see the beauty of the world, and to depict it not realistically, but through her own feelings and vision. When not with her family Angelica devotes all of her time to painting, participating in exhibitions in both Russia and abroad. Her works are held in the Art Museum of the city of Krasnoyarsk and Art Museum of Divnogorsk and other museums in Siberia and the Far East and in private collections in Russia, Israel, Germany, USA, China and now, UK.

Anatoly Dverin, 1935 | Impressionist painter

Anatoly Dverin was born in Ukraine, studied in St. Petersburg and earned wide recognition and success before leaving the Soviet Union in 1976, eventually settling in Massachusetts.

Since that time, he has amassed numerous awards and created a breathtaking body of work.

He is a popular demonstrator at the major pastel societies.

He recently published a book of his life and work, Anatoly Dverin - American Impressionist.

Mariusz Lewandowski

Mariusz Lewandowski è nato nel 1931 a Dzialdowo. Fin dall'infanzia ha sentito la necessità di creare. Nel 1975 dipinse il suo primo quadro ad olio. Da allora, inizia a prendere parte attiva all'aria aperta e varie mostre. Oggi i suoi quadri rappresentano l'orgoglio di molti collezionisti, sia in patria che all'estero.

Eser Afacan, 1953 | Figurative painter

Eser Afacan is a Turkish artist, painter, and sculptor of Assyrian ethnicity.

His father, also an artist, is Assyrian, while his mother is of Greek origin.

Afacan began drawing at a young age.

Eser Afacan, Turkish painter, studied in Manchester, England before moving to Norway in 1978 to study Mathematics and Physics at the University of Bergen.

Isabelle Sauvineau, 1965 | Pop Art painter

French painter Isabelle Sauvineau studied nursing during her time spent at Cegep in Granby.

She later started working in the fashion industry where she stayed for 5 years.

After the birth of her two children Sauvineau’s passion for painting emerged.

It’s with enthusiasm and confidence that she launched herself down a new career path, in the visual arts.

Ibe Onyeka, 1971 | Abstract painter

Nigerian-born American painter Ibe Onyeka has achieved international recognition for his dramatic approach to painting.

Described as one of the most exciting young painters to emerge from Sub-Saharan Africa since the 1990s, he was awarded “The Best SOLO Artist of the Year 2006” at the International Artexpo New York.

Ibe looks for inspiration in “natural and humanistic traditions of contemporary realism and abstraction”.

Christian Deberdt | Fantasy painter

Deberdt (1947-2011) began his career studying printmaking and graphic arts at the Gametta Printing School and the Estienne Graphic Art School in Paris, followed by a stint as an illustrator on the popular comic strip Asterix.

In 1966, at the age of 18, with four years of experience in the graphic arts field, Deberdt decided to leave Paris and to start a new life in Montreal where his eldest brother was already established.

Itching for adventure, Deberdt left Paris in 1968 for North America where, for the next seven years, he traveled extensively across Canada and the United States, absorbing the incredible landscapes.

Scott Harding, 1965

Scott Harding was born in San Antonio, Texas.

His passion for art began at an early age when he spent much of his time drawing.

His need to draw continued through his school years, often getting him in trouble when his teachers caught him sketching in class.

After receiving his Bachelor of Fine Arts degree through the Honors Painting Program at Indiana University, Bloomington in 1989, Harding moved to Chicago and began a professional career in illustration.

Frederick Arthur Bridgman | Orientalist painter

Frederick Arthur Bridgman (1847-1928) was an American artist known for his paintings of "Orientalist" subjects.

Born in Tuskegee, Alabama, Bridgman was the son of a physician.

He began as a draughtsman in New York City, for the American Bank Note Company in 1864-65, and studied art in the same years at the Brooklyn Art Association and at the National Academy of Design.

Bob Stroody ~ Digital landscapes

Stroody (Bob) is a British digital painter, graphic designer, photographer and illustrator of the UK. Pictures Bob's full of magical beauty and fabulousness and performed at the highest professional level.

Dino Valls, 1959 | Surrealist painter

Having previously obtained a degree in medicine, he is now one of the Spanish representatives of the vanguard of figurative art.

His painting, elaborating and expanding the methods of past masters, centers on the human psyche by using figurative techniques only as a formal support in which to project a conceptual content laden with profound psychic weight, where the most obscure pulsations develop in a symbolic process of intellectualism.

His first one-man exhibition was received in Zaragoza in 1981. The following year he was awarded the San Jorge First Place Award in Painting, after receiving his degree in medicine and surgery in 1982, he decided to devote himself exclusively to painting; the kind of painting which would be influenced by the humanistic perspective that brought about the study of man.

This kind of attitude is reminiscent of the creative climate of the Renaissance.

Roberto Ferri, 1978

Roberto Ferri is an Italian painter who is deeply inspired by Baroque painters (Caravaggio in particular) and other old masters of Romanticism, the Academy and Symbolism.

Ferri was born in Fontanaviva, Taranto, Italy in 1978.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Roberto Ferri see Roberto Ferri, 1978 | Baroque Era style painter.

Katherine Stone, 1986 | Realist painter

Katherine Stone’s approach to art is traditional with an emphasis on technique and fine craftsmanship.

She uses chiaroscuro and other traditional techniques to diffuse hard edges and create dramatic light effects.

Stone also incorporates symbolic objects into her compositions—including skulls, dead birds, flowers, and books—which allude to the passage of time, life and death, and decay and regeneration.

In the past few years she has won First Place and People’s Choice in the biannual Portrait Society of Canada Portrait Competition, First Place in the Still Life Category in the international ARC Salon, and has placed in half a dozen international art competitions including the prestigious ARC International Salon.

Aung Kyaw Htet, 1965 | Figurative painter | VideoArt

Burmese artist Aung Kyaw Htet paints detailed Buddhist figures on expressionistic and sometimes ethereal backgrounds.
With a strong emphasis on the figurative and facial expressions in particular, he expertly combines color, line and form to achieve balanced compositions, as peaceful to experience as they are beautiful to look at.
For biographical notes and other works by Aung see:

• Aung Kyaw Htet, 1965 | Figurative painter ➻

Tadeusz Makowski | Cubist painter

Tadeusz Makowski [1882-1932] was a Polish painter who worked in France and was associated with the School of Paris.

From 1902-1906, he studied classical philology at the Jagiellonian University. During that time, he also began studying art at the Kraków Academy of Fine Arts with Jan Stanisławski and Józef Mehoffer.

Upon completing his courses there in 1908, he moved to Paris, where he would live for the rest of his life.

Originally he painted in the style taught by his professors. Then, he painted some frescoes that attracted the attention of a group of Cubist painters, led by Henri Le Fauconnier, who worked in Montparnasse. This had a decisive influence on his work.

Karen Aghamyan, 1946

Karen Aghamyan is an armenian-born painter. Born in 1946 and President of the Artist's Union of Armenia since 1998. In 1969, he graduated from the Yerevan Fine Arts and Theatre Institute and has been a member of the Artists' Union of the USSR since 1970. Since 1970 he has participated in more than 70 exhibitors, 11 of which were one-man shows. His pictures are property of museums of Armenia, Russia, Ukraine, France and private collections in many countries of the world.

Ben Goossens, 1945 ~ Surrealist photographer

Goossens worked for 35 years in his native Belgium as an ad agency art director. After retiring, Goossen's turned to creating photo montages with a distinctive Surrealism style reminiscent of his fellow countryman, René Magritte.