Garnet Ruskin Wolseley (1884-1967)

Garnet Ruskin Wolseley was a British landscape, figure and portrait painter. Born in London in 1884 he trained at the Bushey School of Painting winning a scholarship to Slade School of Fine Art.

He moved to Newlyn, Cornwall, in 1908 and became good friends with Harold and Laura Knight, the latter influencing his early work.

He painted mostly landscapes around Newlyn and the Lamorna Valley exhibiting regularly at the Royal Academy.

Vincent van Gogh | Le pont de Trinquetaille, 1888

The fifteen months that Van Gogh spent at Arles in 1888-1889 represent a pivotal moment in his career, "the zenith, the climax, the greatest flowering of Van Gogh's decade of artistic activity", according to Ronald Pickvance.

Freed from the pressures of urban life and inspired by the brilliant Provençal light, the artist integrated the results of months of experimentation and produced one modern masterpiece after another. With its bold composition and expressive palette, "Le pont de Trinquetaille" epitomizes his mature style.

Anthony Hopkins: "Lascia andare le persone che non sono pronte ad amarti"..

"Let go the people who are not prepared to love you. This is the hardest thing you will have to do in your life and it will also be the most important thing. Stop having hard conversations with people who don't want change.

Stop showing up for people who have no interest in your presence. I know your instinct is to do everything to earn the appreciation of those around you, but it's a boost that steals your time, energy, mental and physical health".

Marc Chagall | La Promenade, 1917

Rose Barton RWS (1856-1929) | Watercolor painter

Rose Mary Barton RWS was an Anglo-Irish artist; a watercolourist who painted landscape, street scenes, gardens, child portraiture and illustrations of the townscape of Britain and Ireland.

Barton exhibited with a number of different painting societies, most notably the Watercolour Society of Ireland (WCSI), the Royal Academy (RA), the Royal Hibernian Academy (RHA), the Society of Women Artists and the Royal Watercolour Society (RWS).

Wassily Kandinsky | V - The psychological working of color

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

Part II: About painting

To let the eye stray over a palette, splashed with many colours, produces a dual result. In the first place one receives a PURELY PHYSICAL IMPRESSION, one of pleasure and contentment at the varied and beautiful colours.

The eye is either warmed or else soothed and cooled. But these physical sensations can only be of short duration.

They are merely superficial and leave no lasting impression, for the soul is unaffected. But although the effect of the colours is forgotten when the eye is turned away, the superficial impression of varied colour may be the starting point of a whole chain of related sensations.

On the average man only the impressions caused by very familiar objects, will be purely superficial.

Wassily Kandinsky | Roses, 1993

Carlo Bossoli | Orientalist painter

Carlo Bossoli (6 December 1815, in Lugano - 1 August 1884, in Turin) was a Swiss-born Italian painter and lithographer, who spent his early career in Russia. He is best known for historical scenes from the Risorgimento.

His father was a stonemason of Italian origin, working in Switzerland. In 1820, his family moved to accept work in Odessa.

Until 1826, he studied with the Capuchins. After graduating, he worked in a shop that sold antiquarian books and prints. It was there that he began to draw and sketch.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder | Baroque painter

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.

He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Frederick Vezin (1859-1933)

Frederick Vezin also Fred or Frederik was an American-born German painter, engraver and lithographer.

His family originally came from Saint-Florentin, Yonne in France. According to Richard Böger, Pierre Vezin (1654-1727) was forced to flee after he gave assistance to the Huguenots, even though he was a Catholic.

He settled down in Hanover as a viola player. For two generations, the Vezin family lived in Hanover and Osnabrück.

In 1813, Charles Henri / Carl Heinrich Vezin (1782-1853) emigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia.

Konstantin Razumov, 1974 | Impressionist painter

Born in Moscow, Konstantin Razumov / Константин Разумов studied at the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where his historical paintings achieved great acclaim.

Razumov is a brilliant impressionist painter and has painted all kinds of subjects, from figures to landscapes, young ballerinas, children and charming russian ladies in gardens and meadows.

His bright colours, the smoothness of the skin in his figures, the expressive features of his characters, distinguish his paintings.

Wisława Szymborska | First Love / Il primo amore

They say

the first love's most important.

That's very romantic,

but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,

something went on and went away.

Andre Kohn | The burnt orange beret

Wassily Kandinsky | IV - The Pyramid

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

And so at different points along the road are the different arts, saying what they are best able to say, and in the language which is peculiarly their own. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the differences between them, there has never been a time when the arts approached each other more nearly than they do today, in this later phase of spiritual development.

In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material.

Consciously or unconsciously they are obeying Socrates' command - Know thyself. Consciously or unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material, setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements, with which it is their several privilege to work.

Tito Conti (1842-1924) | Genre painter

Tito Conti was an Italian 19th Century painter who was born in Florence, mainly of genre costume or historical subjects.

He lived in Florence, where he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts.

He was resident professor at the Academic College of Fine Arts of Florence.

Among his works are: "La Presentazione"; "Il quarto d'ora di Rabelais e La musica" (1876); "Il brindisi alla bettoliera"; "L'addio"; "Portrait of his wife"; "Il sospetto"; "Il Cantastorie"; "Il Moschettiere"; and "Per la passeggiata" (1886, Florence). Among his pupils was Arturo Ricci.

Wassily Kandinsky | V - La Pittura - L'effetto del colore

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Se si osserva una tavolozza coperta di colori si hanno due risultati:

1 - Si ha un effetto puramente fisico, cioè l'occhio è affascinato dalla bellezza c dalle qualità dei colori. L'osservatore prova un senso di appagamento, di gioia come un buongustaio che gusta una squisitezza. Oppure l'occhio viene stuzzicato, come lo è il palato da un cibo piccante.

O, ancora, può calmarsi e raffreddarsi, come quando un dito tocca il ghiaccio. Sono tutto sensazioni fisiche, che in quanto tali durano poco.

Sensazioni superficiali, del resto, che non fanno molta impressione a chi è insensibile. Proprio come, se si tocca il ghiaccio, si prova solo una sensazione fisica di freddo, che svanisce quando il dito si scalda, così, girato lo sguardo si dimentica l'effetto fisico del colore.

Wassily Kandinsky | Gabriele Munter Kallmunz, 1903

Addio a Luciano Ventrone!

The Italian painter Luciano Ventrone died during the night in his house in Collelongo - Aquila, Italia.

Luciano Ventrone was born in Rome in 1942, he attended Liceo Artistico in Rome. After graduation in 1946 he started studying Architecture. In 1968 he left the University and focused on painting.

Even though Luciano Ventrone is internationally recognized as one of the master realist painters of his generation, he believes that his works are really about optics:

"Painting is not about the mere representation of an object, but its color and light", he says.

"The subject cannot be seen as it is but as an abstract element".

Alda Merini | Superb is the Night / Superba è la notte, 2000

The superbest thing it is the night

When the last fears fall

And the soul thrust itself into adventure.

He hushes in your womb

As if reabsorbed into the blood

Daniel Gerhartz | Return To Me

Benito Quinquela Martín (1890-1977)

Argentine painter Benito Quinquela Martín is considered the port painter-par-excellence and one of the most popular Argentine painters. His paintings of port scenes show the activity, vigor and roughness of the daily life in the port of La Boca.

Early years

His birthday could not be determined precisely as he was abandoned on March 20, 1890 at an orphanage with a note that stated "This kid has been baptized, and his name is Benito Juan Martín". From his physical appearance, the nuns who found him deduced that he should be around twenty days old; thus March 1 is regarded as his birthday.

Jesús Helguera (1910-1971)

Mexican painter Jesús Enrique Emilio de la Helguera Espinoza, was born to spanish economist Alvaro Garcia Helguera and Maria Espinoza Escarzarga in Chihuahua, Mexico.

He lived his childhood in Mexico City and later moved to Córdoba in the state of Veracruz.

His family fled from the Mexican Revolution to Ciudad Real, Castilla la Nueva, Spain and thereafter moved to Madrid.

Jesús first gained interest in the arts during primary school and would often be found wandering the halls of the Del Prado Museum.

At the age of 14, he was admitted to the Escuela Superior de Bellas Artes and later studied at the Academia de San Fernando.

Frederick Carl Frieseke (1874-1939)

Frederick Carl Frieseke was born in Owosso, Michigan. After studying for a short while at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students League in New York, Frieseke left for France in 1898, and almost all of his career was spent as an expatriate, with ties to the United States maintained through his New York dealer, William MacBeth, and by occasional visits to America.

Following the pattern of innumerable young Americans, he enrolled at the Academie Julian where he studied with Benjamin Constant (1845-1902) and Jean-Paul Laurens (1838-1921).

He appears to have had at least brief contact with and to have been influenced by James McNeill Whistler, who had recently opened his Academie Carmen in Paris.

He married Eva Graham and in 1871 their daughter Edith was born. Their son, Frederick Carl, was born in Owosso in 1874.

Edvard Munch | The dance of life, 1900

The Dance of Life or Life's Dance is an 1899–1900 expressionist painting by Edvard Munch, now in the National Museum of Art in Norway.

The Dance of Life was a key work in Munch's project "The Frieze of Life".

Munch’s painting shows several couples dancing in a luminous summer night. The central element of the composition is a couple, of whom the woman is wearing a bright red dress that wraps itself around the feet of her dancing partner.

Her loose hair swirling about him, they seem to become a single entity. This couple is flanked by two other women, one of them young and radiant in a white dress, the other pale, with sunken cheeks and dressed in black. It is as if a story were being told about various stages in a woman’s life.

Edvard Munch | The dance of life, 1899-1900 | National Museum of Art Oslo, Norway

Henri Matisse | Canal du Midi, 1898

Canal du Midi belongs to a series of pictures painted by Henri Matisse near Toulouse during the winter of 1898-1899. Matisse, who left Moreau's studio in the autumn of 1897, married Amélie Parayre in January of the following year. After a brief honeymoon in London, the couple sojourned for six months in Ajaccio, Corsica.

Then, in August 1898, Matisse and his wife travelled to Toulouse, and stayed for six months with Amélie's parents.

This was the first time Matisse visited the South and he always remembered it as his first encounter with light and colour. Many of the landscapes he painted during that period, including the one we are commenting on, were probably executed outdoors, directly from the model. Yet the colour in them is not naturalistic.

Wislawa Szymborska | Love at First Sight / Amore a prima vista

They’re both convinced

that a sudden passion joined them.

Such certainty is beautiful,

but uncertainty is more beautiful still.

Since they’d never met before, they’re sure

that there’d been nothing between them.

But what’s the word from the streets, staircases, hallways -

perhaps they’ve passed by each other a million times?

Ron Hicks | Tell me more

Wassily Kandinsky | IV - La Piramide

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Così, lentamente molte arti si avviano a dire quello che hanno da dire, con i loro mezzi specifici.

E nonostante questa separazione, o grazie ad essa, le arti non sono state mai tanto unite come in quest'ultima fase della svolta spirituale.

In tutte si avverte la tendenza all'antinaturalismo, all'astrazione e all'interiorità. Consciamente o inconsciamente ubbidiscono al detto di Socrate: "Conosci te stesso!". Consciamente o inconsciamente, gli artisti si occupano sempre più del loro materiale, lo saggiano, pesano sulla bilancia spirituale il valore interiore degli elementi creativi.

Wassily Kandinsky | Unstable Compensation, 1930

Giacomo Leopardi | Calm after the storm / La quiete dopo la tempesta, 1829

The storm hath passed;

I hear the birds rejoice; the hen,

Returned into the road again,

Her cheerful notes repeats. The sky serene

Is, in the west, upon the mountain seen:

The country smiles; bright runs the silver stream.

Giovanni Segantini | Dopo il temporale / After the thunderstorm

Jane DeDecker, 1961 | Figurative sculptor

Jane DeDecker has been sculpting the human figure for over thirty-five years. She seeks to capture moments that reveal truths about the human condition, that, when stripped down to their essence, are understood intrinsically.

As a figurative sculptor, she communicates emotional experience through lyrical compositions that move the viewer.

DeDecker’s sculptures stop life in mid-sentence - somewhere between inhaling and exhaling - and gives it form. She tells a story through the simple moments that imprint our lives and define us.

Manuel de Gracia (1937-2017)

Spanish painter Manuel de Gracia was born in Mora de Toledo. He started in Madrid practicing in the Círculo de Bellas Artes workshops and he held his first solo exhibition in 1963 in the Sala Toisón, together with Manuel Cano and José Suárez.

Later he exhibited individually at the Eureka gallery and after that he showed this work in Valladolid and Santander.

Wassily Kandinsky | III - The Spiritual revolution, 1910

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

The spiritual triangle moves slowly onwards and upwards. Today one of the largest of the lower segments has reached the point of using the first battle cry of the materialist creed. The dwellers in this segment group themselves round various banners in religion. They call themselves Jews, Catholics, Protestants, etc. But they are really atheists, and this a few either of the boldest or the narrowest openly avow. "Heaven is empty", "God is dead".

In politics these people are democrats and republicans. The fear, horror and hatred which yesterday they felt for these political creeds they now direct against anarchism, of which they know nothing but its much dreaded name.

Carl Frederic Aagaard (1833-1895)

Carl Frederik Peder Aagaard was a Danish landscape painter and decorative artist.

He studied at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and under P. C. Skovgaard. Many of his paintings focused on spots frequented by tourists.

Biography

He was the son of a shoemaker. He had his first painting lessons in Odense but, in order to improve his skills, moved to Copenhagen in 1852 and joined his brother Johan, who was a woodcutter.

Emily Dickinson | I Fear a man of frugal speech / Temo l'uomo di poche parole

Poem 543

I fear a Man of frugal Speech

I fear a Silent Man

Haranguer I can overtake

Or Babbler entertain

Temo un uomo di poche parole

temo un uomo che tace

l'arringatore - posso superarlo

il chiacchierone - posso intrattenerlo.

Danielle Richard | Sometimes in Summer

Wassily Kandinsky | III. La svolta spirituale

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Il triangolo procede lentamente verso l'alto. Oggi una delle più ampie sezioni inferiori ha raggiunto il livello dei primi postulati del "dogma" materialistico. Da un punto di vista religioso i suoi abitanti hanno vari nomi. Si chiamano Ebrei, Cattolici, Protestanti, ecc. In realtà sono atei, come i più audaci (o i più limitati) di loro riconoscono apertamente.

Il "cielo" è vuoto.

"Dio è morto".

Politicamente sono democratici o repubblicani. La paura, il disprezzo e l'odio che un tempo nutrivano per queste tendenze politiche li hanno riversati oggi sull'anarchia, di cui conoscono solo il terribile nome. In economia sono socialisti. Affilano la spada della giustizia per vibrare il colpo mortale all'idra capitalista e tagliare la testa al male.

Wassily Kandinsky | Amsterdam view from the window

Wassily Kandinsky | II - Del movimento, 1910

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Un grande triangolo acuto diviso in sezioni disuguali, che si restringono verso l'alto, rappresenta in modo schematico, ma preciso, la vita spirituale. In basso, le sezioni del triangolo diventano sempre più grandi ed estese.

Il triangolo si muove lentamente, quasi impercettibilmente, verso l'alto e dove "oggi" c'è il vertice, "domani" ci sarà la prima sezione; quello cioè che oggi è comprensibile solo al vertice, e per il resto del triangolo è ancora un oscuro vaniloquio, domani diventerà la vita, densa di emozioni e di significati, della seconda sezione.

Al vertice sta qualche volta solo un uomo. Il suo sguardo è sereno come la sua immensa tristezza. E quelli che gli sono più vicini non lo capiscono. Irritati, lo definiscono un truffatore o un pazzo. Così disprezzarono Beethoven, che visse da solo, al vertice.

Wassily Kandinsky | Various actions