Angelo Barabino | Divisionist painter

Angelo Barabino (Tortona, 1 January 1883 - Milan, 5 November 1950) was an Italian painter, friend and student of Giuseppe Pellizza Volpedo.

He was born in Tortona on 1 January 1883. Barabino attended the Academy of Fine Arts in Milan and studying Volpedo who initiated him to painting in the Divisionism style.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Stile artistico

Renoir è stato uno degli interpreti più convinti e spontanei del movimento Impressionista.

Artista prodigiosamente prolifico, con all'attivo ben cinquemila tele e un numero altrettanto cospicuo di disegni e acquerelli, Renoir si è distinto anche per la sua poliedricità, tanto che possiamo distinguere numerosi periodi nella sua produzione pittorica.

È lo stesso Renoir, in ogni caso, a parlare del suo metodo di fare arte:

"Dispongo il mio soggetto come voglio, poi mi metto a dipingerlo come farebbe un bambino.

Voglio che il rosso sia sonoro e squillante come una campana, quando non ci riesco aggiungo altri rossi ed altri colori finché non l'ottengo".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Luncheon of the Boating Party, 1881

Luncheon of the Boating Party by Pierre-Auguste Renoir remains the best known and most popular work of art at The Phillips Collection, just as Duncan Phillips imagined it would be when he bought it in 1923.

The painting captures an idyllic atmosphere as Renoir's friends share food, wine, and conversation on a balcony overlooking the Seine at the Maison Fournaise restaurant in Chatou.

Parisians flocked to the Maison Fournaise to rent rowing skiffs, eat a good meal, or stay the night.

Sara Teasdale | Cadrà dolce la pioggia / There will come soft rains

Cadrà dolce la pioggia e si diffonderà il profumo della terra,

le rondini voleranno in cerchio stridendo;

canteranno le rane negli stagni a notte alta,

e i pruni selvatici biancheggeranno tremuli;

Jean Béraud

Francesco Hayez / Shakespeare | The Kiss, 1859 / Sonnet 116

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove: O no! it is an

ever-fixed mark That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

Francesco Hayez | The Kiss, 1859 | Pinacoteca di Brera

Paris, the artistic rebirth for Chagall

In 1910, the Russian and French artist Marc Chagall (1887-1985) left Russia for Paris: "I felt that, if I stayed in Vitebsk any longer, I should be covered with hair and moss», he wrote in his autobiography.

A year later, in La Ruche, he came into contact with the artistic community of the nearby quarter of Montparnasse and made friends with Guillaume Apollinaire (who would define his work "supernatural"), Robert Delaunay, Fernand Léger and Blaise Cendrars, the poet who, from that point on, would name all his French works.

Guernica, 1937 by Pablo Picasso

During the war, Picasso was visited by Nazi Ambassador Otto Abetz in his Parisian studio.

The latter came upon a picture of Guernica, which had been sent to New York by the painter as soon as the Exhibition was over.

He asked: "Did you really do this?" to which Picasso answered: "No, You did".

Guernica is Pablo Picasso's monumental 1937 oil painting that stands as one of the most powerful and famous anti-war statements in history.

Painted in response to the bombing of the Basque town of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War, the artwork captures the universal suffering and brutality of conflict through its chaotic imagery and stark monochrome palette.