Juan Jr Ramirez | Realist / Impressionist Portrait painter

Juan Ramirez is a young, self-taught, Mexican – American Chicago born oil painter living in Chicago.

"Self-discipline is not getting yourself to do what you want; it is controlling your fears from stopping you from what you can do" - Juan Jr. Ramirez

"It seems that painting at this moment in life, at this time in history is actually a noble thing. But I am too immature to consciously paint for nobility. But maybe I am a great artist, maybe I will inspire great artists of the future. I will continue to read my days, I will persist, and let today's chapter end".

Kelly Denato | Pop Surrealism painter

Brooklyn-based artist Kelly Denato works in a variety of industries and mediums. She works professionally in animation, illustration, and design with clients such as Nickelodeon, American Eagle Outfitters, Clinique, InStyle Magazine, and Timex. Denato also regularly exhibits her paintings, drawings, sculptures, and soft sculptures in galleries across the US.

What inspires Denato is the beauty of optimism, and its inherent tragedy, just before disappointment. Her paintings, which are marked by darkness as well as gleeful exuberance, are emotional expressions of this elusive pursuit for meaning and the simultaneity of ill-fated happiness.

Solmaz Tohidlou, 1975 | Abstract portrait painter

Solmaz Tohidloo is an Iranian artist who was born and working in Iran.

Solmaz Tohidloo has had several gallery and museum exhibitions, including at the Seyhoun Art Gallery.

Alan Giana | Fantasy painter | VideoArt

Alan Giana is an American award winning painter, known for working in the Fantasy style.

His work has won many awards, including the Pro-Comm Award of Excellence by the Business Marketing Association, the Premier Print Award by the Printing Industries of America, and the Oppenheim Toy Portfolio Best Toy Award.

Alain Dumas | Romantic painter

Alain Dumas was born into an exotic and artistic bohemian family in Marseilles, France.

His father was an itinerant musician and his mother, Amandine, was a retired showgirl.

Both parents raised Dumas to be an outgoing and confident individual, following their own philosophy of liberalism and freedom of expression.

In addition, both parents positively encouraged the young Alain to allow his creativity to blossom.

Dumas now, almost exclusively, paints figures from life. His abilities to persuade young women to pose for him without hesitation were the inspiration for a novel written by his elder brother.

Dariusz Żejmo, 1966 | Fantasy /Figurative painter

Dariusz Żejmo is an Polish painter, known for working in the Fantasy Figurative style.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and other works by Żejmo see Dariusz Żejmo, 1966 | Fantasy /Venice painting.

Pedro Fausto, 1955 | Abstract painter

Pedro Fausto Rodriguez Pérez was born in Tijarafe, La Palma.

From 1974-78 studied at the School of Arts and Crafts of S / C de la Palma and the College of Fine Arts S / C de Tenerife.

Piet van de Hoef, 1949 | Plein air painter

Born in the Netherlands, Piet van de Hoef has been painting for almost all his life. In 2003 he has decided tot quit his job as doctor and to devote his time to painting art.

Painting is an instrument to observe for him. Perception is always the starting point. The image is formed by experience and history. Therefore it is always a personal view.

The perception and its translation to an image is a journey, whether it is a landscape, model, still life or a portrait. He graduated in 2010 from the Classical Academy for Art Painting in Groningen.

Tong Chin Sye 童振狮, 1939 | Watercolor painter

Singaporean Artist Tong Chin Sye is an avid traveller who sketches and paints on location. He is inspired by architectural and cultural subject matters. Tong’s painting technique is distinctive as his oils and watercolours naturally blend in the beauty of Chinese Calligraphy. Painting the rapidly changing cityscapes and street scenes of Singapore continues to be his passion.

Born in 1939, Tong Chin Sye is a renowned Singaporean multimedia artist and part-time lecturer in Western Art at the Nanyang Academy of Fine Arts, Singapore.

In 1987, Tong won first prize in the PSA Art Competition held in Singapore.

Takanori Oguiss 荻須高徳 | Paris painting

Takanori Oguiss (1901-1986), a Japanese Expressionist painter known as "the Parisien born in Japan", was active in the Parisian art world in the early 20th century. He is noted for capturing the alcoves and street corners of the French capital with his characteristic lack of showiness and aesthetic balance, often choosing to forgo the inclusion of human figures.

Sally Swatland, 1946 | Plein air Figurative painter

Sally Swatland was born in Washington, DC and moved to Greenwich, Connecticut when she was seven. Her father was a successful attorney, which allowed her family to spend long periods in the countryside with many vacations at various seaside locations throughout the United States. She shared a passion with her family for beaches, sunshine, and fresh air. Most summer days were spent at the beach playing in tidal pools, chasing minnows, collecting shells and exploring.

Maria Giulia Alemanno | Magical Realism painter

And the ORISHAS are like dead thar are not dead.

A long chain that rivets the present and the past, linking the souls of today and yesterday, beyond time and space.

Africa and America, what it was and it will be, hearth and sky.

They are like the ancestors’ spirits, the incarnation of generations, the survival of ties, the alphabet of continuità and memory.

Maria Giulia Alemanno, Lellina, like a Malinke griot, lives to tell stories.

And she, an Italian, has searched and found them in the deepness of Cuba.

Giampaolo Talani, 1955 | Abstract Symbolism painter and sculptor

Giampaolo Talani was born in San Vincenzo (LI). After attending Art School in Lucca and in Florence he went to the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence where he met Goffredo Trovarelli as his teacher. Throughout his studies he experimented with all art classical techniques but finally he chose painting, he also devoted himself to the fresco technique in which he is one of the greatest contemporary experts.

In his youth he painted the great cycle of fresco paintings in the church of San Vincenzo, and that was followed by other works: the "Preaching of San Bernardino" in the Episcopal Palace of Massa Marittima, the Sanctuary of Our Lady of Frassine.

Aldo Mazzi, 1937 | Plein air painter

Aldo Mazzi was born in Livorno, Italy where he lives and works without rest in his studio located inside of the historical "Casini di Ardenza".

Mazzi is a self-taught artist who paints since his early youth and who can be appreciated as a part of the "macchiaiola" and "post-macchiaiola" tradition, always strongly related to the live painting, the so-called "En plein air".

Dino Pelagatti | Post Macchiaioli painter

Dino Pelagatti (1932-2016) nasce a Livorno il 2 Agosto del 1932.

Inizialmente influenzato dallo stile dei pittori Post Macchiaioli, nel corso degli anni ha rinnovato la tecnica delle sue raffigurazioni creando uno stile personalizzato e contemporaneo.

Gli anni della guerra vengono percepiti dal giovane Pelagatti come una difficile esperienza umana perché con la sua famiglia non abbandonò mai Livorno. Nel dopoguerra risultò difficile per Pelagatti rendere mestiere vero e proprio la pittura a causa del forte orientamento popolare verso pittori Macchiaioli e Post Macchiaioli già affermati. 

Roberto Fontirossi, 1940 | Surrealist /Visionary painter

Roberto Fontirossi is an Italian painter, known for working in the surrealist style. Fontirossi was born in Lucca, Italy, where he lives and works.

1961 - First Solo Show at Galleria S. Salvatore in Lauro, Roma.

1964 - IX Quadriennale di Roma, awarded the Premio per il Bianco e Nero.

His work can be found in many private and public collections.

Francesco Tammaro, 1939 | Belle Époque painter

Francesco Tammaro was born in Naples in 1939 where he attended the Instituto D'Arte di Napoli, one of the most reputed Fine Art schools in Italy. Shortly after graduation he traveled to France where he lived for a few years.
Tammaro is best know for his characteristic views of Paris, the famous cafes of Paris, interior Bistros as well as his pastoral picnic scenes on the banks of the Seine.
The artist is now also a valued and appreciated teacher of art at the Fine Arts Academy, who has the capacity of awakening in his students the love of a style of art which seems to be disappearing, suffocated by superficiality and abstraction.

Svetlana Shalygina, 1973 | Abstract Figurative painter

Svetlana Shalygina was born into a poor, humble working class family in Efremov, Russia. She and an older sister were raised in a small, studio apartment 200 miles south of Moscow by parents who worked in a local factory but were very devoted to their children. Svetlana grew up close to nature in wide-open Russian countryside and picturesque valleys which she sketched and painted throughout her childhood. It was here she developed a strong interest in Russian classical art, poetry, music and literature.

François Boucher | The Four Seasons

Source: The Frick Collection, New York

The son of a painter, François Boucher (1703-1770) was born in Paris and trained first with his father, then briefly with François Lemoine.

In 1723 he won the Academy’s first prize for painting but was denied the sojourn in Rome that normally resulted from the competition.

To earn his living the young artist produced reproductive engravings throughout the 1720s, notably after drawings and paintings by Watteau.

François Boucher - The Four Seasons, Autumn, 1755

Camille Lambert | Post Impressionist painter

Camille-Nicolas Lambert (1876-1963) was born in Arlon, Belgium in 1874. He was a student of the Académie des Beaux-Arts de Liége and Anvers.

He won the second place Prix de Rome in 1898, and third place Prix de Rome in 1901 and 1904. Lambert exhibited at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris and the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts in Brussels. He was a member of circle Pour l'Art, and he exhibited in 1912 at the 20th Salon.

Danny Ferland, 1975 | Portrait painter

Danny Ferland was born in Quebec City, Quebec.

He was self taught for many years before discovering the magnificence of figurative art during a European trip in 2002.

Seeing the historical artworks in countless museums is what made him realize the outmost importance of genuine academic training.

In 2008 he moved to New York city after being accepted into the Janus Collaborative school of art.

Rembrandt | The Return of the Prodigal Son, 1668

In the Gospel According to Luke (15: 11-32), Christ relates the parable of the Prodigal Son.

A son asks his father for his inheritance and leaves the parental home, only to fritter away all his wealth.

Arriving at last at sickness and poverty, he returns to his father's house. The old man is blinded by tears as he forgives his son, just as God forgives all those who repent.

This whole work is dominated by the idea of the victory of love, goodness and charity.

The event is treated as the highest act of human wisdom and spiritual nobility, and it takes place in absolute silence and stillness.

Thomas Gainsborough | Rococo / Romantic painter

Tate, Britain / The portrait and landscape painter Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788)🎨 was born at Sudbury, Suffolk, the fifth son of a cloth merchant.

He was apprenticed at the age of thirteen to a London silversmith, and was taught by Hubert Gravelot, a French book-illustrator.

By 1745 he had established his own studio in London. He married Margaret Burr in 1746, and by 1748 had taken up residence in Suffolk.

He moved to Ipswich in 1752, and settled at Bath as a portraitist in 1759.

He took as an apprentice his nephew, Gainsborough Dupont (1754-97) in 1772.

Thomas Gainsborough | The Mall in St. James Park, 1783 | Art in Detail

National Gallery, London / Thomas Gainsborough was, with Reynolds (his main rival), the leading portrait painter in England in the later 18th century. The feathery brushwork of his mature work and rich sense of colour contribute to the enduring popularity of his portraits. Unlike Reynolds, he avoids references to Italian Renaissance art or the Antique, and shows his sitters in fashionable contemporary dress.

Stanhope Forbes | Plein Air /Genre painter

Tate, London / Stanhope Alexander Forbes (1857-1947) Painter of realistic genre, frequently in the open air, historical subjects and landscapes. Born 18 November 1857 in Dublin, son of a railway manager and a French mother. Studied at Lambeth School of Art, the R.A. Schools 1874-1878 and for two years in Paris under Bonnat. Influenced by Bastien-Lepage and painted in Brittany with La Thangue 1880. Settled in Cornwall 1884 and became a leading member of the ‘Newlyn School’.

Archibald Thorburn | Naturalism wildlife painter

Archibald Thorburn (31 May 1860 - 9 October 1935 Hascombe, Surrey) was a Scottish /British animal painter and bird illustrator, painting mostly in watercolour.

He regularly visited Scotland to sketch birds in the wild, his favourite haunt being the Forest of Gaick near Kingussie in Invernesshire. His widely reproduced images of British wildlife, with their evocative and dramatic backgrounds, are enjoyed as much today as they were by sportsmen and birdlovers of a century ago.

Peacock and Peacock Butterfly

Rembrandt | Self-Portrait, 1658

Of the many self-portraits Rembrandt painted over a lifetime, this is perhaps the greatest, not only for its poignant revelations of the self, but for his sure handling of paint.

The initial effect on viewers is daunting, as though they are confronting an ill-tempered monarch.

The strange costume he wears is timeless.

In place of a crown, he wears a large velvet artist's beret.

Rembrandt | Self-Portrait, 1658 | Frick Collection, New York

Laura Knight | Avant-Garde painter

Dame Laura Knight (1877-1970) was one of the most popular and pioneering British artists of the twentieth century. Her artistic career took her from Cornwall to Baltimore, and from the circus to the Nuremberg Trials. She painted dancers at the Ballets Russes and Gypsies at Epsom races, and was acclaimed for her work as an official war artist.

Knight used portraiture to capture contemporary life and culture, and her paintings are remarkable for their diverse range of subjects and settings.

Lucien Fontanarosa | Post-Impressionist /Expressionist painter

Lucien Fontanarosa (1912-1975) was born to Italian parents in Paris where his father worked as a tailor. Fontanarosa grew up in Paris and also in Padua, Italy. He showed interest in art as a child, and spent his free time sketching the streets of Paris as a boy along the banks of the Seine. He took classes in these early years in Classical Art at the Academie Julian.