Gianni De Conno | Surrealist book illustrator

Gianni De Conno (Milan, 1957 - Milan, 26 agosto 2017) is an Italian painter.

In 1990 Gianni received the Gold Plate🎨 of Italian Illustrators Annual, in 1998, 2000 and 2001 the Communication Arts Award of Excellence, in 2002 the Stepan Zavrel prize for Children's Illustrator and the Silver Medal of the President of the Italian Republic for artistic merits.

Gianni De Conno is teaching in the main schools of illustration.

He has illustrated and published numerous books for children.

Gianni De Conno (Milano, 1957 – Milano, 26 agosto 2017) è stato un illustratore Italiano🎨.

Illustratore e presidente dell'Associazione illustratori dal 2005-2007, ha seguito un percorso formativo ricco di esperienze diverse (ha studiato al Conservatorio G. Verdi di Milano) anche se nel solco della creatività applicata al disegno.

Dopo gli studi superiori ha seguito i corsi di scenografia e animazione tenuti presso la Scuola di Cinema da qui ha iniziato la sua carriera di scenografo e realizzatore di storyboard.

Nel suo lavoro di illustratore utilizzava sia tecniche tradizionali (acrylic, olio) sia Pittura digitale, De Conno nel 2008 contribuisce a fondare il gruppo Bandalarga a Milano e cura dal 2009-2012 l'immagine e la grafica del progetto MiMaster di Illustrazione Editoriale, concepito nel 2009 con la produzione della Scuola del Fumetto di Milano e proseguito dal 2010 con l'Associazione OPPI specializzata in formazione e accreditata presso il MIUR e la Regione Lombardia.

Nel 2010 il festival Lucca Comics & Games gli dedica una mostra antologica della sua carriera.

È stato pubblicato da: Bayard, Black Cat, Bohem Press, Carthusia, Casterman, Computer World Magazine, De Agostini, Fabbri RCS, Fatatrac, Gallimard, Giunti, Grimm Press, Finmeccanica, Hachette, Hermes Paris, Interlinea, Yale University Magazine, Lapis, Lorenzo Marini & Associati, Milan, Prìncipi and Princìpi, Purple Bear Books NY, Random House NY, Salani, Sterling Publishing NY, Vicen Vives.

Mostre collettive e personali in Italia, Svizzera, Germania, Giappone, Taiwan, Francia, Stati Uniti.

Amedeo Modigliani | School of Paris

Amedeo Modigliani, (born July 12, 1884, Livorno, Italy-died January 24, 1920, Paris, France), Italian painter and sculptor whose portraits-characterized by asymmetrical compositions, elongated figures, and a simple but monumental use of line-are among the most-important portraits of the 20th century.

Modigliani was born into a Jewish family of merchants.

As a child, he suffered from pleurisy and typhus, which prevented him from receiving a conventional education.

Piet Mondrian | Neo-Plasticist painter

Piet Mondrian is a Dutch painter who has carved a unique niche for himself on the global platform matching the likes of other celebrity painters.

He is possibly best known for being one of the founders of the De Stijl, which incorporated an art movement that worked around abstract works, and the new art forms that were being introduced to the world in the early 20th century.

The movement was also based on the reductive theory; which took a larger scale image, and brought it to life on the canvas, in architectural works, and in sculpture forms, and in the form of graphic arts as well.

Guy Cambier | Genre painter

Guy Cambier (1923-2008) was born in Uccle-lez-Bruxelles in 1923. He was a painter of Genre painting, scenes, figures, portraits and still life paintings.

At the age of nine years old, he lost the use of his legs caused by a tragic accident. He was self taught and studied the techniques and works of those artists he emulated, Corot and Watteau.

Brian McCarthy, 1960 | Magic Realism painter

Brian McCarthy is a Irish painter, best known for his Boomtown and Masquerade series of paintings.

Brian McCarthy's artistic career began in 1981, when a painting sold at Ireland's Douglas Hyde Gallery's 'Living Art Exhibition'.

Fine art auctioneers, such as Christie's in London and Adam's in Dublin, regularly feature his paintings, which can be found in many corporate and private collections, both in Ireland and internationally.

Elsewhere, his work has been included in numerous group shows at commercial galleries in Ireland and the UK, as well as annual exhibitions at the Irish Royal Hibernian Academy.

Gianni Strino (1953-2023)

Gianni Strino, Italian painter, was born in Naples, Italy.

A still life and figure painter, Strino knows how to treat his light and shade with an absolutely sure technique.

His works today express the unique maturity of his talents.

Today his works are found in numerous prestigious public and private collections throughout Italy and America.

After completing his studies at the Neapolitan Artistic Lyceum, he enrolled at the Faculty of Architecture.

Philip Wilson Steer | Impressionist painter

Philip Wilson Steer (1860-1942) was a British painter🎨 of landscape and occasional portraits and figure studies. He was a leading figure in the Impressionist movement🎨 in Britain. Philip Wilson Steer was born in Birkenhead, in Merseyside, near Liverpool. He was the son of the portrait-painter, Philip Steer 1810-1871.

After finding the examinations of the British Civil Service too demanding, he became an artist in 1878. He studied at the Gloucester School of Art and then from 1880-1881 at the South Kensington Drawing Schools.

Antinous, the Greek God / Antinoo, il Dio Greco

Antinous -also Antinoüs or Antinoös, Ancient Greek: Ἀντίνοος (27 November, c. 111 - before 30 October 130) was a Bithynian Greek youth and a favourite, or lover, of the Roman emperor Hadrian.

He was deified after his death, being worshiped in both the Greek East and Latin West, sometimes as a god (theos) and sometimes merely as a hero (heros).

Little is known of Antinous' life, although it is known that he was born in Claudiopolis (present day Bolu, Turkey), in the Roman province of Bithynia. He was probably introduced to Hadrian in 123, before being taken to Italy for a higher education.

He had become the favourite of Hadrian by 128, when he was taken on a tour of the Empire as part of Hadrian's personal retinue. Antinous accompanied Hadrian during his attendance of the annual Eleusinian Mysteries in Athens, and was with him when he killed the Marousian lion in Libya.

Dan Thompson | Portrait / Figurative painter

American painter🎨 Dan Thompson was born in Alexandria, Virginia, and graduated from the Corcoran School of Art in Washington, DC. He earned his MFA from the Graduate School of Figurative Art of the New York Academy of Art, and supplemented his training with several additional years of private study and studio apprenticeships along the east coast of the United States.

He has been awarded two grants from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation and has twice received the Ethel Lorraine Bernstein Memorial Award🎨 for Excellence in Painting from the Corcoran College of Art and Design.

In 2001, Thompson won Best of Show in the American Society of Portrait Artist’s International Portrait Competition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

Russell Mills, 1971 | Abstract mixed media painter

British illustrator🎨 Russell Mills (aka) Byroglyphics was born in Exeter, Devon, UK. Graduated from Leeds Met University in 1995 after completing a BA in Graphic Art and Design, specialising in Experimental Film and Animation.

After finding gainful employment in various non-creative institutions went back to basics and began work with pen, pencil and computer. Has spent almost 20 years crafting skills, absorbing influences from every facet of visual culture and archiving found objects and ephemera to substantiate his work.

Khalil Gibran | Il pittore / The painter

Khalil Gibran (1883-1931) - Lebanese-American writer, poet, visual artist - painted more than 700 pictures, watercolors and drawings.

In 1930, Gibran's final will reflected this similar desire: "Everything found in my studio after my death - pictures, books, objects of art, ecc. - goes to Mrs. Mary Haskell Minis, now living at 24 Gaston Street West, Savannah, Ga. But I would like to have Mrs. Minis send all, or any part of these things, to my hometown, should she see fit to do so".

Kahlil Gibran | Love letter to Mary Haskell, 1912

New York, 7th January 1912

"Now I will say goodnight, as any other time.

I kiss you and then I say goodnight

and then I open the door and then I go out to the streets

with a full heart and a hungry soul.

But I always come again

to kiss you and to say goodnight

and to open the door and to go out to the street

with hungry soul and full heart".

Kahlil

New York - domenica pomeriggio, 7 gennaio 1912

"Ora ti do la buonanotte, come ogni altra volta.

Ti bacio e poi ti auguro la buonanotte,

e poi apro la porta e poi esco per le strade

con il cuore pieno e l’anima affamata.

Ma continuo a tornare, ancora e sempre,

per baciarti e augurarti la buonanotte

e aprire la porta e uscire per la strada

con l’anima affamata e il cuore pieno".

Kahlil

John Atkinson Grimshaw (British painter, 1836-1893)

John Atkinson Grimshaw was born in Leeds, his father was a policeman, and he started work as a railway clerk. His parents were opposed to his taking up art as a career. Grimshaw was influenced by the Pre-Raphaelites, and in his youth produced vivid, highly finished landscapes.

Gradually, Grimshaw developed his own highly distinctive style, and subject matter. He became a consummate painter of twilight, night time, and autumnal scenes. Grimshaw spent holidays at Scarborough, and many of his pictures were set there, and in Whitby.

He also painted nocturnal harbour and dockside pictures. He spent some time in London.

Richard Blunt | Historia de un amor

- Born in Stourbridge in the West Midlands I had a happy but pretty average childhood for a kid growing up in the eighties.

My favourite place to be was outside but if I was ever inside I loved to be creative, especially with art and later on playing guitar and music.

On leaving school I went to art college to study 3D design and although I enjoyed the course, as with many teens I was easily distracted and became easily derailed.

I soon began to lose my way and eventually dropped out of art college early.

Sacha Baraz, 1940 | Mamá Africa

French painter Baraz Sacha, son of Ukrainian and Polish immigrants, was born in Paris, was a life whose content seems surreal to ordinary mortals.

Indeed, You have to live it to believe it. To date, Sacha Baraz worked on three periods: surreal, figurative, and now it is in an abstract phase.
Discover Baraz Sacha and his work, is a human adventure like no other. It is a living crossroads of cultures, rare, buried and disparate. It is the expression by the materialization of images and colors of all shapes and kinds of lives.

How not to succumb to so much talent and wealth of the mind? We don 'fate as they came. This is a free and strong spirit in a world where imitation and the standardization of tastes, choices, desires are measures undertaken by the law of the dominant business.

Giampaolo Ghisetti, 1944 | Magic realism painter

Giampaolo Ghisetti, Italian painter🎨, approached painting toward the 50s. In the 60s he takes part in many art exhibitions together with other artists achieving nominees and prizes🎨.

At that time he moves to Murano where he begins his glass decoration activity. Well known for his ability, he receives commissions to portrait very important cultural from all over the world.

At the same time Ghisetti assiduously works on his main art: oil painting on canvas. In 1970 the Academy of Saint Andrea in Rome awards him a Golden Medal🎨 certificate for his great artistic qualities.

Michiel Schrijver, 1957 | Surreal architecture painter

"Travel fuels the imagination" is a variant on an old saying which certainly applies to Michiel Schrijver. Painting is a form of travel for him, after all. And the way it amazes him is a great motivation to paint. Amazement at everything he discovers en route in his inner world, becaust that is what appears in his paintings.

The paintings of Michiel Schrijver give us the opportunity to travel through his world.

We are taken into his inner world where people play a minor role in an often overwhelming architecture.

A minor role but of certain importance. Moreover, you always feel the presence of the sea in his paintings.

Edmund Blair Leighton, il Preraffaellita

Leighton (Londra, 1853-1922) fu figlio dell'artista Charles Blair Leighton.

Frequentò l'University College School e successivamente la Royal Academy of Arts.

Nel 1885 si sposò con Katherine Nash dalla quale ebbe un figlio ed una figlia.

Dal 1878 al 1920 espose le sue opere alla Royal Academy con cadenza annuale.

Ivan Alifan Jdanov, 1989

Ivan Alifan Jdanov, Russian-born Canadian painter, currently living in Canada. He attended the OCAD University in Toronto, Canada, and is son of the very talented Russian painter Anna Razumovskaya🎨.

Ivan recently participated in the Los Angeles International art fair, and had his work shown alongside Malcolm Liepke🎨 and Jeremy Lipking🎨.

Whether it is beautifully rendered charcoal drawings, of the colorful, brushy, and energetic paintings, Ivan is an extremely talented artist.

Peder Severin Krøyer | Impressionist painter

Peder Severin Krøyer (23 July 1851 - 21 November 1909) portrayed the life of the artists.

Scenes such as walking along the beach, dining together, and the magnificent atmosphere of the evenings in the moonlight was Krøyer’s chosen motifs.

Krøyer was 14 years old when he first enrolled to the Royal Academy of Fine Arts.

He was quite talented as an artist, and he was respected as a portrait painter, which by this time was a very prestigious genre.

Piero della Francesca | Early Renaissance painter

Piero della Francesca, original name Piero di Benedetto dei Franceschi, (born c. 1416/17, Sansepolcro, Republic of Florence, Italy - died October 12, 1492, Sansepolcro), painter whose serene, disciplined exploration of perspective had little influence on his contemporaries but came to be recognized in the 20th century as a major contribution to the Italian Renaissance.

The fresco cycle The Legend of the True Cross (1452-66) and the diptych portrait of Federico da Montefeltro, duke of Urbino, and his consort (1465) are among his best-known works.

Johan Christian Dahl | Romantic painter

Born in Bergen Norway and trained at the Copenhagen Academy, Johan Christian Clausen Dahl (1788-1857) nonetheless spent most of his working career in Germany.

He is thus claimed by all three schools for their own, although it was his influence on the latter that was more important, as from 1824 until his death he held the senior professorship of art at the Dresden Academy.

His memories of his homeland, however, provided him with themes that he reused throughout his career, but it was his attention to nature and use of the plein-air sketch that earned him the Dresden appointment in preference to Friedrich.

Jeff Rowland (1964-2018) | Meet me on the Bridge

Jeff Rowland was a professional British painter who entered the fine art industry in 1984 having studied art at North Tyneside College. He had further studied at Newcastle in 2000 where he earned an HND in advertising / illustration.

During this time Jeff Rowland had undertaken many works and also went on to win an award from the NEPA (North East Print Association).

Camille Claudel, Debussy and "La Valse", 1891

Created at the height of her artistic career, Camille Claudel's La Valse, is a stunning example of the sophistication and skill of the young sculptress.

This dynamic rendering of a couple in movement, with its detailed and complex treatment surface and form, is considered among her best sculptures.

Claudel created La Valse near the end of her 10 year love affair with Auguste Rodin, a passionate relationship filled with conflict, hard work, disputes and ultimately disappointment. One of her most erotic sculptures, Claudel presented her dancers naked in the first version, which has sadly since disappeared.

Piero della Francesca | The lives of the artists, Giorgio Vasari

Giorgio Vasari - Lives of the Most Excellent Painters, Sculptors, and Architects (1568)

Piero della Francesca (1422-1492)

Truly unhappy are those who, laboring at their studies in order to benefit others and to make their own name famous, are hindered by infirmity and sometimes by death from carrying to perfection the works that they have begun.

And it happens very often that, leaving them all but finished or in a fair way to completion, they are falsely claimed by the presumption of those who seek to conceal their asses’ skin under the honorable spoils of the lion.

And although time, who is called the father of truth, sooner or later makes manifest the real state of things, it is none the less true that for a certain space of time the true craftsman is robbed of the honor that is due to his labors; as hap happened to Piero della Francesca of Borgo a San Sepolcro.

Trisha Lambi, 1962 | Figurative painter🖌

Trisha Lambi🎨: "I am an Australian painter🎨 born in Warwick, a small country town in Queensland. I was raised on a farm as part of a large, happy family.

My earliest memories are of drawing and reading for my maiden aunts when I was about 4 or 5 while my brothers and sisters were having a great time playing outside!
I still love to draw and read - the maiden aunts didn't put me off..

Light on form is my inspiration.

My latest work represents a fusion of the figurative into landscape using strong lighting and moody palettes to provide dramatic narratives.

After school I started a Bachelor of Visual Arts however the lure of money and independence proved too strong and I joined the workforce.

Louise Rayner | Watercolour painter

Louise Ingram Rayner (21 June 1832 - 8 October 1924) was a British watercolour artist.

Rayner was born in Matlock Bath in Derbyshire. Her parents Samuel Rayner and Ann Rayner (née Manser) were both noted artists, Samuel having been accepted for exhibition at the Royal Academy when he was 15. Four of Louise's sisters - Ann ("Nancy"), Margaret, Rose and Frances - and her brother Richard were also artists.

Harold Harvey | Genre painter

Harold Harvey (1874-1941) was a Newlyn School painter who painted scenes of working class Cornish fishermen, farmers and miners and Cornish landscapes.

He was born in Penzance and trained at the Penzance School of Arts under Norman Garstin and the Académie Julian in Paris (1894-1896).

Private life

Harold Charles Francis Harvey was born to Mary Bellringer Harvey and Francis McFarland Harvey on 20 May 1874 in Penzance.

His father was a bank clerk. During his youth, he was home schooled. From 1894-1896, he studied art at the Academie Julian in Paris under Norman Garstin. In 1896, he studied at both the Académie Delécluse and the Academie Colarossi.

Sergio Lopez, 1983 | Landscape / Figurative painter

San Francisco Bay Area based Fine Artist Sergio Lopez specializes in Plein air and innovative figure paintings, oil Landscapes and Contemporary Figures, gouache paintings and charcoal drawings.

Sergio Lopez is a graduate of the Academy of Art in San Francisco – and is an exemplary painter in a variety of mediums.

Emilia Castañeda, 1943 | The Secret Gardens

Emilia Castañeda Martinez is a Spanish painter.

She was born in Madrid, but moved to Barcelona with her family as a child. She began training in 1956 at the academy of the painter Víctor Esteban Ripaux and at Escola de la Llotja in 1959 and Escuela Massana in 1969.

By the 70s she had finished her studies and became a professional painter.

Her works focus on the nude, generally placed in an abstract and dreamlike background that include objects that offer clues to the story told by the central figures.

Her work has been compared with that of modernists such as Gustav Klimt, Anglada Camarasa and with the French symbolist school.

Some of her works have been rejected by art galleries due to their erotic themes. | © Wikipedia

Amy Brown, 1972 | Magical Faeries in watercolor

American painter Amy Brown, born in Bellingham, Washington, is a popular Fantasy and Fairy artist.

Her career began in the 1992, and today her watercolor designs appear on t-shirts, calendars, and buttons and people have been using her images for tattoos.

Two books of her artwork have been published, The Art of Amy Brown and The Art of Amy Brown II.

Victor Bauer, 1969 | Figurative painter

My name is Victor Bauer🎨 and currently I live and work in New York. My work can be found in corporate and private collections in the US, Europe and Canada. I consider myself a self taught artist. Painting comes as natural as walking to me. My father was a painter, and I grew up playing in his studio, drawing experimenting with colors.

My earlier works were mostly abstracts and during these years I developed my own style and technique using mostly just a palette knife. My fascination with the human figure for its timeless sensitivity is reflected in my latest works. In my paintings I try not only just to replicate a scene, but to create the mood and feelings. Sometime when I feel it, I incorporate abstract fragments in a composition.

Raffaello Sorbi (1844-1931) | Genre painter

Raffaello Sorbi was an Italian painter🎨.

He was born in Florence. As a young man, he studied design in the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Florence; then painting under professor Antonio Ciseri.

By 18 years, he had completed his first major work: Corso Donati mortally wounded is transported by Monks of San Salvi to their Abbey.

Leon Kroll (1884-1974) | Realist painter

Leon Kroll was an American painter🎨 and lithographer.

Born into a musical family on lower Second Avenue in New York City, Kroll's father was a violinist and his cousin was William Kroll.

He studied at the Art Students League of New York under John Henry Twachtman, and at the Académie Julian in Paris with Jean Paul Laurens in the late 1900s. In 1913 Kroll showed work at the Armory Show.

Dasil (David Silva) | Surrealist painter

Resident in region of Montreal since the spring of 2002, Dasil (David Silva) Mexican🎨-born painter, is a professional, self-taught, fine art artist, continuously active for almost twenty years.

In parallel with a multi-year career in commercial photography, corporate communications and television programming production, Dasil has developed a rich pictorial work, original and very personal.

Upon his recent arrival in his new adoptive country, he confirmed his firm will to devote himself totally from now on to the development of his painting.

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta | Rococo Era painter

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, also called Giambattista Piazetta, (born Feb. 13, 1682, Venice [Italy] - died April 28, 1754, Venice), painter, illustrator and designer who was one of the outstanding Venetian artists🎨 of the 18th century. His art evolved from Italian Baroque🎨 traditions of the 17th century to a Rococo manner in his mature style.

Piazzetta began his career in the studio of his father, Giacomo, a woodcarver. Soon after assisting the latter to carve the still-surviving bookcases of the library of the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo at Venice, he abandoned the family profession and began to study painting under Antonio Molinari.

In about 1703 he went to Bologna, where he worked in the studio of Giuseppi Maria Crespi. He was back in Venice by 1711 and continued to work there until his death.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo | Rococo painter

The Venetian Giovanni Battista Tièpolo (1696-1770) was arguably the greatest painter of eighteenth-century Europe and the outstanding first master of the Grand Manner.

His art celebrates the imagination by transposing the world of ancient history and myth, the scriptures, and sacred legends into a grandiose, even theatrical language.

Colonna’s perspective framework for Tiepolo’s frescoes is crucial to understanding the eighteenth-century notion of painting as a staged fiction-something intended to involve the viewer on a purely imaginative level.

This was in line with theater practice of the day-especially opera.

Emily Dickinson | Se tu dovessi venire in autunno /If you were coming in the Fall

Alan King, 1952 | Massurrealism Art Movement

Se tu dovessi venire in autunno

mi leverei di torno l’estate

con un gesto stizzito ed un sorrisetto,

come fa la massaia con la mosca.

Se entro un anno potessi rivederti,

avvolgerei in gomitoli i mesi,

per poi metterli in cassetti separati -

per paura che i numeri si mescolino.