Irina Rumyantseva, 1983 | Abstract Mixed media painter

Irina Rumyantseva was born in St Petersburg, Russia. She achieved the highest grade for her art studies at university and soon became a highly respected artist in Russia. At the age of 26 she came to England to further her career.
Since then she hasn't looked back, her name has become hugely popular in the UK and in many parts of the world. Her unique style of painting is highly sought after and to achieve so much in this short space of time, one can only imagine what the future brings for this talented artist.

Laurence Amélie | Fashion /Impressionist Romantic painter

Laurence Amélie, daughter of renowned Swiss abstract painter Gérard Schneider, continues the family tradition of painting following a successful career as Creative Director and Fashion designer of Bon Point in Paris.
Laurence paints from her idyllic country setting near Fontainebleau. It is the house where her father, a contemporary of Picasso, painted during the highly active mid-century abstract period.

Vyacheslav Khabirov, 1967

Vyacheslav Khabirov was born in Kazakhstan in the town of Ust-Kamenogorsk.

In his early childhood he showed great interest and love for art.

When a boy of 13, Vyacheslav began painting in oil as he considered it to be the best means of creating his landscapes.

Being a student of an Art school Vyacheslav participated in republic-wide exhibitions that took place in the capital of Kazakhstan Alma-Ata.

Maria Boohtiyarova and Andrei Belichenko

Andrei Belichenko / Андрей Беличенко and Maria Boohtiyarova / Мария Бахтиярова are two Russian artists, known for working in the Figurative style.

Andrei Belichenko was born in 1974 in Karaganda, Kazakhstan.

Henry Moret | Impressionist painter

Henry Moret (12 December 1856, Cherbourg - 5 May 1913, Paris) was a French Impressionist painter.

He was one of the artists who associated with Gauguin at Pont-Aven in Brittany.

Little is known of Moret's life until he began his military service in 1875.

Jules La Villette, his commander in Lorient, who first noticed his artistic talents, introduced him to Ernest Corroller, a drawing teacher and marine painter.

Gustave Loiseau, il pittore che raccontò Parigi

L'espressione pittorica di Loiseau si mantenne sempre nell'alveo della corrente post-impressionista e se egli mostrò qualche evidente influenza da parte di altri maestri, non si può che fare il nome di Claude Monet, specie osservando le sue rappresentazioni dei porti, delle falesie e delle chiese, eseguite in piccole serie.

Loiseau dipingeva all'aria aperta, immerso nei paesaggi che lo ispiravano, in Bretagna, in Normandia, od anche nei centri abitati, come Moret-sur-Loing o la stessa Parigi.

Fidel Garcia, 1960 | Dreams of Love

"Art expresses the soul of humanity in our common journey across the ages" - Fidel Garcia

Born in Mexico City, Fidel Garcia is a self-taught painter and creator.

At age seven, Garcia’s artistic ability became apparent to his father, an artist himself, who encouraged and supported his passion for creativity.

He developed an unique international dimensional style that is imaginatively imbued with the visual power of Renaissance artists such as Spanish Baroque master Diego Velazquez, American master John Singer Sargent, French master William Bouguereau, Spanish surreal master Salvador Dali, and Austrian design master Gustav Klimt.

Gustave Loiseau | Paris painting

French painter🎨 Gustave Loiseau (3 October 1865-10 October 1935) was born in Paris into an affluent commercial family.

He was largely self-taught and during his youth he worked with a decorator, painting the outskirts of Paris in his free time.

An inheritance from his grandmother provided him with a certain degree of financial comfort and independence that allowed him to concentrate fully on paining and to move to Montmartre.

Here he met Maxime Maufra, with whom he remained friends for the rest of his life.

He enrolled at the École des Arts Décoratifs for a year, the only training in colour and drawing which he received.

Giorgio Morandi | Modern Still Life painter

Giorgio Morandi (July 20, 1890 - June 18, 1964) was born on July 20, 1890, in Bologna, Italy, one of the oldest and most prestigious University towns in Europe. 

Nearly all his life was spent there working quietly in a modest studio and apartment that he shared with his three sisters. Except for occasional trips to Venice, Florence or Rome for exhibitions of his paintings and etchings, or summer excursions to the village of Grizzana in the Apennine hills above his native city, Morandi scarcely ever left Bologna. 

Antonietta Raphaël | The Roman School

Antonietta Simonovna Raphaël Mafai (1895 - 5 September 1975) was an Italian sculptor and painter of Jewish heritage and Lithuanian birth, who founded the Scuola Romana (Roman School) movement together with her husband Mario Mafai.

She was an artist characterised by a profound anti-academic conviction, also affirmed by her sculptures which, especially after World War II, dominated her output.

They highlighted the tender and vibrant carnality present in stone, with works such as Miriam dormiente (Sleeping Miriam) and Nemesis.

Mario Mafai | The Roman school

Mario Mafai (12 February 1902 - 31 March 1965) was an Italian painter. With his wife Antonietta Raphaël he founded the modern art movement called the Scuola Romana, or Roman school.

Mafai left school very early, preferring to attend, with Scipione, the Accademia di Belle Arti di Roma.

His influences in those years were Roman galleries and museums, and the Fine Arts Library at Palazzo Venezia.

Jonas Lie | Expressionist painter

Jonas Lie (April 29, 1880 - January 18, 1940) was a Norwegian-born American painter.

He is best known for colorful paintings of coastlines of New England and city scenes of New York City.

Jonas Lie was born in Moss, in Østfold county, Norway.

His father Sverre Lie, was a civil Norwegian engineer and his mother Helen Augusta Steele, was an American from Hartford, Connecticut.

His father was a brother of Thomasine Lie who had married their cousin Jonas Lie, the famous Norwegian author, whom the painter was named after.

Boris Grigoriev | Russian Avant Garde movement

Boris Dimitrievitch Grigoriev /Бори́с Дми́триевич Григо́рьев was a Russian painter born in Moscow. He was a part of the Russian Avant Garde movement who also wrote regularly for the magazine “Satyricon” and “New Satyricon”. For biographical notes -in english and italian- see Part 1 - Boris Grigoriev [1886-1939].

Paul Cézanne | The Drawings / Watercolours

"C’è una logica colorata: il pittore non deve che obbedire a lei, mai alla logica della mente".

"There are two things in the painter, the eye and the mind; each of them should aid the other".

Paul Cézanne

Robert de Niro | Abstract Expressionist painter

Robert Henry De Niro, better known as Robert De Niro, Sr. (May 3, 1922 - May 3, 1993) was an American abstract expressionist painter and the father of actor Robert De Niro.
Robert De Niro, Sr., was born in Syracuse, New York, to an Italian American father, Henry Martin De Niro (1897–1976), whose parents emigrated from Ferrazzano, in the province of Campobasso, Molise, and an Irish American mother, Helen M. (née O'Reilly; 1899–1999). He was the eldest of three children; he and siblings John and Joan were raised in Syracuse, New York.

Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen | Surrealist /Abstract painter

Vilhelm Bjerke Petersen (December 24, 1909 - September 13, 1957) was a Danish painter, writer and art theorist.

Born in Copenhagen, he studied under Axel Revold at the Norwegian National Academy of Fine Arts from 1927-1929, and then, under Paul Klee and Wassily Kandinsky at Bauhaus Dessau from 1930 to 1931.

He was a Surrealist painter and agitated for the style in several publications.

Stanislas Lepine | Seine painting

Born in Caen in 1836, Victor Edouard Stanislas Lépine (1836-1892) began his artistic career following the manner of the ship-painter Johan Barthold Jongkind and specialising in the rendering of nautical views such as Sailing Boats in Caen Harbour. In 1855 the painter moved to Paris and in 1859 he made his début at the Salon, exhibiting Port of Caen, Moonlight Effect.
Stanislas Lépine specialised in painting picturesque urban views, recurrently choosing to feature the River Seine and the old streets of Paris. In 1860 Lépine undertook a more professional apprenticeship under the guidance of Jean Baptiste-Camille Corot and during this period met the artist Henri Fantin-Latour (1836-1904).

Harald Engman | Cityscape painter

Harald Rudyard Engman (1903-1968) was a Danish painter. Above all, he is remembered for his fierce use of satire in criticizing and resisting the German occupation of Denmark during World War II.

Little has been published about Engman's life. It is known that he traveled as a working seaman and spent some time living in New York City's Chinatown around 1920.

He began to show paintings in Copenhagen in the mid 1920s. He became part of a group of self-styled "Underground Painters".

His shows always inspired controversy as he utilized caricature and satire to mercilessly criticize social ills and those in power especially the growing power of the Nazi Party in Germany.

Jan Mankes | Symbolist / Realist painter

Jan Mankes (15 August 1889, Meppel, Drenthe - 23 April 1920, Eerbeek) was a Dutch painter*. He produced around 200 paintings, 100 drawings and 50 prints before dying of tuberculosis at the age of 30.

His restrained, detailed work ranged from self-portraits to landscapes and studies of birds and animals. His work is now exhibited in his native Netherlands in the Museum of Modern Art Arnhem, Museum Belvédère Heerenveen and Museum MORE Gorssel.

Howard Schatz, 1940 | Surrealist photographer

The photographs of Howard Schatz are exhibited in museums and photography galleries internationally and are included in innumerable private collections.

He has received international acclaim for his work and has won virtually every award in his field including numerous “Photographer of the Year” awards and Gold Medals in the most prestigious competitions.

His work has been published in twenty-three monographs.

William Merritt Chase | The Plein Air Scenes

William Merritt Chase [1849-1916] won many honors at home and abroad, was a member of the National Academy of Design, New York, and from 1885 to 1895 was president of the Society of American Artists.

He became a member of the Ten American Painters after John Henry Twachtman died.

Chase's creativity declined in his later years, especially as modern art took hold in America, but he continued to paint and teach into the 1910s.

During this period Chase taught such up and coming young artists as Arthur Hill Gilbert and Edward Hopper.

One of his last teaching positions was at Carmel, California in the summer of 1914.

Camille Claudel | L’Abandon, 1988-1905

The present work, known in its final state as L’Abandon, can trace its origin to the 1888 plaster by Claudel known as Sakountala. Based on the eponymous Indian legend of the 5th century in which the heroine loses the affection of her beloved prince, only to regain it once more, the plaster was awarded an honorable mention at the Salon that same year. In fact, Sakountala most likely inspired Rodin and his famous composition of the following year, L’Eternelle idole.

Max Buri | Portrait / Genre painter

Max Alfred Buri (1868-1915) was an Swiss painter. While still at school he was given drawing lessons by Paul Volmar (1832-1906) in Berne.

From 1883 he was a pupil of Fritz Schider (1846-1907) in Basle, where he became acquainted with the works of Hans Holbein the younger and Arnold Böcklin.

In 1886 he went to the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Munich, transferring in 1887 to Simon Hollosy's painting school.

Picasso: Painting is a blind man's profession..

Pablo Picasso - Two figures, 1904

La pittura è una professione da cieco: uno non dipinge ciò che vede, ma ciò che sente, ciò che dice a se stesso riguardo a ciò che ha visto - Pablo Picasso

Barry Gross, 1948 | Portrait / Surrealist painter

In art historical terms, the early works of Barry Gross, American painter, combine the hyperfocus of Surrealism with Renaissance spirituality and humanism.

It is then all set to motion with the dynamism and drama of Baroque.

Dali and Fra Angelico join forces with Bernini.

Auguste Rodin | Drawings

Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) was a prolific draughtsman, producing some 10,000 drawings, over 7,000 of which are now in the Musée Rodin, Paris.

His drawings were seldom used as studies or projects for a sculpture or monument. The draughtsman’s oeuvre developed in tandem with the sculptor’s.

Rainer Maria Rilke | Letters on Cézanne /Lettere su Cézanne

The extraordinary letters (translated from the german by Jane Bannard Greene), show to what degree the eye of one artist can penetrate to the essence of another art.

The most distinguished of modern German poets, Rainer Maria Rilke, was born when Paul Cézanne had already been painting nearly a decade.

Leonardo da Vinci | Quale scienza è meccanica, e quale non è meccanica

Trattato della Pittura

Parte prima | Capitolo 29

Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura | Testo Integrale

Dicono quella cognizione esser meccanica la quale è partorita dall'esperienza, e quella esser scientifica che nasce e finisce nella mente, e quella essere semimeccanica che nasce dalla scienza e finisce nella operazione manuale.

Ma a me pare che quelle scienze sieno vane e piene di errori le quali non sono nate dall'esperienza, madre di ogni certezza, e che non terminano in nota esperienza, cioè che la loro origine, o mezzo, o fine, non passa per nessuno de' cinque sensi.

Leonardo da Vinci | Conclusione del Poeta, del Pittore e del Musico

Trattato della Pittura

Parte prima | Capitolo 28

Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura | Testo Integrale

Tal differenza è in quanto alla figurazione delle cose corporee dal pittore al poeta, quant'è dai corpi smembrati agli uniti, perché il poeta, nel descrivere la bellezza e bruttezza di qualunque corpo, te lo dimostra a membro a membro, ed in diversi tempi, ed il pittore tel fa vedere tutto in un tempo.

Il poeta non può porre colle parole la vera figura delle membra di che si compone un tutto, come il pittore, il quale tel pone innanzi con quella verità ch'è possibile in natura.

Madre Teresa | The most beautiful day / Il giorno più bello

Agim Sulaj, 1960

The most beautiful day: Today.

The easiest thing: Equivocate.

The biggest obstacle: Fear.

The gravest error: give up, to despair.

Giovanni Panza | Impressionist /Genre painter

Giovanni Panza (Miseno, March 9, 1894 - Napoli, December 20, 1989) was an Italian painter.

Born into a family of poets and painters, he was the nephew of Salvatore Postiglione and Luca Postiglione, sons of the painter Raphael Postiglione, who introduced him to painting.

Besides being a painter was Panza, like Uncle Luke, also a poet and writer.

His painting remained faithful to the tradition-romantic nature, tracing the figurative tradition of the Neapolitan school of the nineteenth century.

Represented landscapes, figures, roads, bucolic scenes, markets that he derived from the daily life of the neighborhoods in Naples.

Charles Angrand | Neo-Impressionist painter

Charles Angrand (1854-1926) was a visible presence in the Parisian avant-garde in the late 1880s and early 1890s. Associated with a circle of artists known as the Neo-Impressionists, Angrand emulated the shadowy crayon drawings of Georges Seurat, Neo-Impressionism's standard-bearer.

Here Angrand presents himself, not at all as an artist, but as a bourgeois dandy, impeccably dressed and smoking a small cigar.

Rainer Maria Rilke | La sera / The evening

Johan August Malmström (1829-1901) Dancing Fairies, 1866

Come una indefinibile fata d'ombre...

Vien da lungi la Sera, camminando

per l'abetaia tacita e nevosa.

Mother Teresa /Jeanie Tomanek ~ Love life /Ama la vita

Jeanie Tomanek, 1949 ~ Allegorical/Narrative painter

Love life as it is
Love her fully, unpretentious.
Love her when they love you or hate you when.
Love her when no one understands you,
or when you include everyone.
Love her when all forsake you,
or when you exalt like a king.
Love her when they steal everything,
or when you give it.
Love her when it makes sense
or when it seems not to have even a little‘.
Love her in complete happiness,
or in absolute solitude.

Sir George Clausen RA | Realist painter

Sir George Clausen RA (18 April 1852 - 22 November 1944), was an British artist working in oil and watercolour, etching, mezzotint, dry point and occasionally lithographs. He was knighted in 1927.

George Clausen was born in London on 18 April 1852, the son of a decorative artist. From 1867-1873, he attended the design classes at the South Kensington Schools in London with great success.

He then worked in the studio of Edwin Long RA, and subsequently in Paris under Bouguereau and Robert-Fleury. He was an admirer of the naturalism of the painter Jules Bastien-Lepage; about whom he wrote in 1888 and 1892.

Leonardo da Vinci | Il pittore dà i gradi delle cose opposte all'occhio..

Trattato della Pittura

Parte prima | Capitolo 27

Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura | Testo Integrale

Benché le cose opposte all'occhio si tocchino l'un l'altra di mano in mano, nondimeno farò la mia regola di venti in venti braccia, come ha fatto il musico infra le voci, che benché la sia unita ed appiccata insieme, nondimeno ha pochi gradi di voce in voce, domandando quella prima, seconda, terza, quarta e quinta, e cosí di grado in grado ha posto nomi alla varietà di alzare e abbassare la voce.

Leonardo Da Vinci - Musical Rebus

Leonardo da Vinci | Come la Musica si dee chiamare sorella e minore della Pittura

Trattato della Pittura

Parte prima | Capitolo 25

Leonardo da Vinci | Trattato della pittura | Testo Integrale

Viola Organista c. 1493-95

La musica non è da essere chiamata altro che sorella della pittura, conciossiaché essa è subietto dell'udito, secondo senso all'occhio, e compone armonia con la congiunzione delle sue parti proporzionali operate nel medesimo tempo, costrette a nascere e morire in uno o piú tempi armonici, i quali tempi circondano la proporzionalità de' membri di che tale armonia si compone, non altrimenti che faccia la linea circonferenziale per le membra di che si genera la bellezza umana.

Marie Laurencin | Cubist painter

Marie Laurencin (1885-1956) French painter, designer, illustrator, etcher and lithographer.

Born in Paris.

Studied at the Académie Humbert, where Braque was a fellow pupil. Met Picasso, André Salmon and Apollinaire; influenced by Picasso and Matisse, and began to paint pictures mainly of sloe-eyed girls in a decorative, arabesque-like style. Painted 'Apollinaire, Picasso and their Friends' 1909.

Lorado Taft ~ The Solitude of the Soul /La solitudine dell'anima, 1914

In stone, four life-sized figures, two male and two female, posed around and halfway emerging from, or captured by, an indistinct central volume.

By the American sculptor Lorado Taft, 1860-1936. In the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago.

The Neoclassicism of the sculptors Harriet Hosmer and Randolph Rogers was replaced in the second half of the 19th century by the more realistic naturalism of French-trained sculptors such as American sculptor Lorado Zadoc Taf (1860-1936). An instructor in modeling at the School of the Art Institute for 20 years, Taft created public monuments for Chicago that made the city a center for sculpture. The figures in this work are only partly freed from the marble, a technique that emphasizes the mass and outline of the stone.
Explaining The Solitude of the Soul, Taft wrote, “The thought is the eternally present fact that however closely we may be thrown together by circumstances . . . we are unknown to each other”.

Dita Omuri | Fashion/Abstract painter

Award winning artist Dita Omuri, born and raised in northern Albania, escaped her home country running towards the unknown and away from the restricted ways of expressing her emotions through art.
From a very young age, Dita’s sketchbook was her constant companion. By winning a young art competition she secured a scholarship at a traditional Art school aged 14. Learning the “Old Masters Techniques” and becoming aware that the only legal art form in Albania was Social Realism. Her passion for art, freedom and creativity was stifled in Albania.