Anish Kapoor, 1954 | Sky Mirror | Steel sculptures

Sir Anish Mikhail Kapoor, CBE, RA is a British-Indian sculptor specializing in installation art and conceptual art.

Born in Mumbai, Kapoor attended the elite all-boys Indian boarding school The Doon School, before moving to the UK to begin his art training at Hornsey College of Art and, later, Chelsea School of Art and Design.

His notable public sculptures include Cloud Gate (2006, also known as "The Bean") in Chicago's Millennium Park; Sky Mirror, exhibited at the Rockefeller Center in New York City in 2006 and Kensington Gardens in London in 2010; Temenos, at Middlehaven, Middlesbrough; Leviathan, at the Grand Palais in Paris in 2011; and ArcelorMittal Orbit, commissioned as a permanent artwork for London's Olympic Park and completed in 2012.

Igor Medvedev / Медведев Игорь, 1961

Игорь Медведев was born in Novopskov, Ukraine.

In 1985 he graduated from the Moscow Institute of Electronics Techniques, physio-chemical faculty.

His first personal exhibition took place in the Youth Dramatic Theatre in 1990.

Thereafter he was regularly exhibited by the leading galleries in Vilnuce, Kaunas: Juste, Contemporary Art Center, Russian House and others.

Berthold Woltze | Genre painter

Berthold Woltze (born 24 August 1829 in Havelberg; died 29 November 1896 in Weimar) was a German genre painter, portrait painter, and illustrator.

Berthold Woltze was a professor at Weimar Saxon Grand Ducal Art School.

In the period from 1871 to 1878 he published numerous of his works in the Gartenlaube newspaper.

One of his most famous works is Der lästige Kavalier (The Annoying Gentleman).

He was the father of the architectural painter Peter Woltze (1860-1925).

Samuel Palmer | Romantic / Visionary painter

Samuel Palmer RWS Hon.RE (Hon. Fellow of the Society of Painter-Etchers) (1805-1881) was a British landscape painter, etcher and printmaker.

He was also a prolific writer.

Palmer was a key figure in Romanticism in Britain and produced visionary pastoral paintings.

Palmer painted churches from around age twelve, and first exhibited Turner-inspired works at the Royal Academy at the age of fourteen.

He had little formal training, and little formal schooling, although he was educated briefly at Merchant Taylors' School.

Giuseppe de Sanctis | Genre painter

Giuseppe De Sanctis (1858-1924) was an Italian painter, primarily of portraits and cityscapes.

He was born in Naples. His father, Cesare, was a businessman who loved music, art and the theater.

He was, in fact, a close friend of Verdi, who attended Giuseppe's baptism.

As a result, contrary to the experience of many other aspiring artists, his family encouraged his desire to become a painter.

Gilberto Geraldo, 1962 | Figurative painter

Born in Sao Paulo, Gilberto Geraldo started his dedication towards paintings and drawings by the age of 11 with a clear goal of becoming an artist.

By the age of 16, he was made a member of the Artists Association of Sao Paulo.

Nevertheless he was not intimidated by the premature and ascending success of his career, moving on into his studies and researches, searching for the excellence of his art.

Zaha Hadid, the great Dame of Architecture

Dame Zaha Mohammad Hadid DBE RA (Arabic: زها حديد Zahā Ḥadīd; 31 October 1950 - 31 March 2016) was an Iraqi-British architect, artist and designer, recognized as a major figure in architecture of the late-20th and early-21st centuries.

Born in Baghdad, Iraq, Hadid studied mathematics as an undergraduate and then enrolled at the Architectural Association School of Architecture in 1972.

In search of an alternative system to traditional architectural drawing, and influenced by Suprematism and the Russian avant-garde, Hadid adopted painting as a design tool and abstraction as an investigative principle to "reinvestigate the aborted and untested experiments of Modernism [...] to unveil new fields of building".

Tim Fu | AI Futurist Architecture Designer

Tim Fu is a renowned Canadian architectural designer, specialised in advanced computation and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Emerging from Zaha Hadid Architects, he has founded Studio Tim Fu, a high-tech design practice pioneering the integration of AI into visionary design.

As an active educator, he has run workshops at Harvard GSD, PA Academy, and lectured in various universities and conferences globally.

Greg Beecham, 1954 | Wildlife artist

Greg Beecham has been painting full time since 1978.

He has specialized in wildlife art.

Greg’s vision is to "sculpt with paint" - that is to paint in such a way that there is not only the illusion of dimension, but genuine depth to the paint itself.

He believes that if he can speak with paint more than detail, that the net result will be a life expressing realism.

Gertrude Fiske | Impressionist painter

Gertrude Horsford Fiske (1879-1961) was an American visual artist, figure painter, still life painter and landscape painter.

Fiske was part of the Boston School of painters in the early 20th century.

She was the first woman appointed to the Massachusetts State Art Commission in 1929.

Fiske was born in Boston and was the daughter of a prominent local lawyer.

J Louis, 1992 | Dynamic Impressionist painter

The artist J Louis paints exquisite, abstracted forms creating a vibrant story that cleverly directs viewers toward personal introspection.

J Louis considers himself a Dynamic Impressionist, constructing what he calls "moments of fleeting light, abstracted space and cleverly posed subjects".

"I have always been fascinated by visual harmony", J Louis explains, "by figures that give voice to an emotional and spiritual dialogue".

Fillide Giorgi Levasti | Post-Macchiaioli painter

Fillide Giorgi Levasti (Florence, 1883-1966) was, undoubtedly, one of the most important women painting in Italy in the 1900s.

Deeply influenced by the Macchiaioli movement, Giorgi Levasti (1883-1966) became a student of Giovanni Fattori, attending the Scuola Libera del Nudo at Florence’s Academy, where she made anatomical drawings from live models.

Eléonore Sieulle | Expressionist painter

Eléonore Sieulle: "I focus on expressiveness and emotional feeling and I rely on the momentum of my hand.

Through the speed of execution, I try to establish the immediacy of a movement and make apparent the primitive power of instinct.

Through drawing, I want to draw what is invisible to the naked eye. Drawing is the right to tumult.

Pavel Shumov, 1964 | Impressionist painter

Павел Шумов was born in Yalta.

He graduated from the art school named after F.Vasiliev in Yalta(1978), the secondary art school named after B.Ioganson of the St.Petersburg Academy of Arts of Russia named after I.Repin (1983).

He is a member of the National Union of Artist of Ukraine since 2002, a member of the International Arts Fund since 2005, a member of Union of Arts of Russia since 2014, a member of International Association of Art AIAP UNESCO.

Alexandra Manukyan, 1963 | Surrealist symbolism painter

Alexandra Manukyan was born and raised in Armenia.

She graduated from Fine Art College, and subsequently State Pedagogical University, where she majored in Teaching Fine Arts.

Upon Immigrating to Los Angeles in 1990, Alexandra's focus turned towards fashion.

She graduated from fashion school and worked in the industry as a designer for two decades.

Osho Rajneesh: "Se l'amore diventa profondo, resti in silenzio"...

• "Fa' di ogni passo una tua scelta. Crea te stesso e assumitene l'intera responsabilità".

• "La vita ha due polarità: l'essere e il fare. L'essere è la tua natura: è sempre con te, non devi fare nulla per averlo. È qualcosa che esiste già, che sei fin da ora; non è qualcosa che possiedi. Non esiste nessuna distanza: sei già il tuo essere. Il fare è una conquista".

• "Il problema autentico è risvegliare nell'individuo quel tanto di consapevolezza capace di generare in lui il desiderio di divenire libero, intelligente, autorealizzato e pienamente consapevole".

• "L'ego è uno sforzo costante per andare controcorrente".

Rene Magritte

Vincent van Gogh's suicide letter

Vincent van Gogh was an influential artist during the nineteenth century.

Widely believed to have been struggling with depression and insanity, he went out to a nearby field and shot himself in the chest, before stumbling back to his house where his brother Theo cared for him for two days, before he finally died.

Although he had sent a letter to Theo only three days earlier, he was carrying another letter to his brother on his person at the time of his suicide, largely seen as a suicide note.

Van Gogh severed his own ear with a razor in 1888 | The Courtauld Gallery London

Vincent van Gogh | Studies of heads

Van Gogh considered the modern portrait to be the most important genre for painters.

"What I’m most passionate about, much more than all the rest in my profession - is the portrait, the modern portrait.

I seek it by way of colour, and am certainly not alone in seeking it in this way’, wrote Vincent to this sister Willemien in 1890.

Vincent van Gogh | Head of a woman | Van Gogh Museum

Rosa Schweninger | Genre painter

Rosa Schweninger (1849-1918) was an Austrian painter.

She came from a Viennese artist family; she was the daughter of the painter Carl Schweninger the Elder (1818-1887) and sister of the painter Carl Schweninger the Younger (1854-1903).

After her first painting lessons with her father, she studied painting from 1869 to 1871 at the University of Applied Arts Vienna, under Friedrich Sturm (1822-1898).

Aimé-Jules Dalou | La Belle Époque sculptor

Aimé-Jules Dalou (1838-1902) was a 19th-century French sculptor, admired for his perceptiveness, execution, and unpretentious realism.

He was one of the founders of the Société Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and was the first president of the sculpture section.

Kobayashi Noriyuki, 1986 | Nihonga style painter

Kobayashi Noriyuki / 小林範之, a contemporary Nihonga (Japanese-style) painter from Funabashi, Chiba Prefecture, Japan.

Working from the belief that one thread connects all life, Noriyuki Kobayashi forms his subject matter with thin gold lines that intersect to create a woven pattern full of life.

The geometrically sublime results are graceful landscapes and dynamically posed animals that race across the sky.

Kobayashi's utilization of traditional materials and techniques mixed with vibrant subjects celebrates the brilliance and interconnected nature of all living things.

Kehinde Wiley, 1977 | Symbolist painter

The Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco describe Kehinde Wiley:

An Archaeology of Silence as "the senseless deaths of men and women around the world... transformed into a powerful elegy of resistance".

Kehinde Wiley is an American portrait painter based in New York City, who is known for his highly naturalistic paintings of Black people, frequently referencing the work of Old Master paintings.

He was commissioned in 2017 to paint a portrait of former President Barack Obama for the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery, which has portraits of all previous American presidents.

Zygmunt Bauman | Amore liquido / Liquid Love

"Amore liquido: Sulla fragilità dei legami umani" è un libro del 2003 di Zygmunt Bauman (Sociologo e filosofo polacco, 1925-2017) che discute le relazioni umane nel mondo liquido moderno (postmoderno).

Il libro fa parte di una serie di libri scritti da Bauman, come Liquid Life e Liquid Times.

Joe Webb | Embrace blue

Mary Whyte, 1953 | Watercolor painter

Mary Whyte is an American figurative artist known internationally for her watercolors of contemporary people.

Her works are in private, corporate, university and public collections nationwide, and have been featured in numerous media outlets including CBS Sunday Morning, PBS and NPR.

The author of seven books including We the People: Portraits of Veterans in America, Whyte’s work has also been featured in many international publications, including periodicals and books in China, Russia, France, Germany, Canada and Taiwan.

Elizabeth Okie Paxton | Modern still life / Interior painter

Elizabeth Okie Paxton (1878-1972) was an American painter, married to another artist William McGregor Paxton (1869-1941).

The Paxtons were part of the Boston School, a prominent group of artists known for works of beautiful interiors, landscapes, and portraits of their wealthy patrons.

Her paintings were widely exhibited and sold well.