• "I believe that the moment is near when by a procedure of active paranoiac thought, it will be possible to systematize confusion and contribute to the total discrediting of the world of reality".
• "If you understand a painting beforehand, you might as well not paint it".
• "We are all hungry and thirsty for concrete images. Abstract art will have been good for one thing: to restore its exact virginity to figurative art".
Le Quattro Stagioni è un gruppo di quattro concerti per violino del compositore italiano Antonio Vivaldi(Compositore e violinista Barocco, 1678-1741), ognuno dei quali dà espressione musicale ad una stagione dell'anno.
Furono composti intorno al 1718-1720, quando Vivaldi era maestro di cappella alla corte di Mantova.
Furono pubblicati nel 1725 ad Amsterdam, in quella che all'epoca era la Repubblica delle Sette Province Unite, insieme ad altri otto concerti, con il titolo Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'invenzione.
Un ritratto anonimo ad olio conservato al Museo Internazionale e Biblioteca della Musica di Bologna, generalmente ritenuto di Vivaldi, 1723
The Four Seasons (Italian: Le quattro stagioni) is a group of four violin concerti by Italian composer Antonio Vivaldi (1678-1741), each of which gives musical expression to a season of the year.
These were composed around 1718-1720, when Vivaldi was the court chapel master in Mantua.
They were published in 1725 in Amsterdam in what was at the time the Dutch Republic, together with eight additional concerti, as Il cimento dell'armonia e dell'inventione (The Contest Between Harmony and Invention).
Orazio Gentileschi | Young Woman with a Violin (Saint Cecilia), 1612 | Detroit Institute of Arts
The Republic (Greek: Πολιτεία, Politeia) is a Socratic dialogue, written by Plato around 380 BC, concerning the definition of justice (δικαιοσύνη), the order and character of the just city-state and the just man ecc..
It is Plato's best-known work, and one of the world's most influential works of philosophy and political theory, both intellectually and historically.
In the dialogue, Socrates discusses with various Athenians and foreigners the meaning of justice and whether the just man is happier than the unjust man.
He considers the natures of existing regimes and then proposes a series of hypothetical cities in comparison, culminating in Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), a utopian city-state ruled by a class of philosopher-kings.
Raffaello | Scuola di Atene - Platone / Raphael - The School of Athens (1509-1511)
"Ho sfondato il muro della spudoratezza con una disciplina da caserma" - confidava Salvador Dalí in una intervista del 1961 alla giornalista e scrittrice italiana Oriana Fallaci (1929-2006), mentre, nelle successive riflessioni tuonava contro gli pseudo moralisti: "Non sono io il pagliaccio ma lo è questa società mostruosamente cinica e così ingenuamente incosciente che gioca a fingere di essere seria per meglio nascondere la propria follia".
William Faulkner’s speech at the Nobel Banquet at the City Hall in Stockholm
December 10, 1950
Ladies and gentlemen,
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man, but to my work - a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before.
So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate with the purpose and significance of its origin.
Under the Nazi regime, both in Germany from 1933 and in German-occupied countries until 1945, Jewish art collectors of Monet were robbed by Nazis and their agents.
Several of the stolen artworks have been returned to their rightful owners, while others have been the object of court battles.
In 2014, during the spectacular discovery of a hidden trove of art in Munich, a Monet that had belonged to a Jewish retail magnate was found in the suitcase of Cornelius Gurlitt, the son of one of Hitler's official dealers of looted art, Hildebrand Gurlitt.
Grazia Maria Cosima Damiana Deledda (1871-1936) was an Italian writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1926 "For her idealistically inspired writings which with plastic clarity picture the life on her native island [i.e. Sardinia] and with depth and sympathy deal with human problems in general".
She was the first Italian woman to receive the prize, and only the second woman in general after Selma Lagerlöf was awarded hers in 1909.
While the East Wind Blows
A short story by Grazia Deledda published on the official website of the Nobel Prize
