Mark Ashkenazi | Pop Art painter

Mark Ashkenazi is an Israeli photo artist based in New York City.

He loved art since childhood and everyone around him, including himself, knew that he would become an artist.

Starting artwork at such a young age provided him with the opportunity to learn a lot from other renowned artists.

Oleg Oprisco, 1987 | Surrealist / Conceptual photographer

Ukrainian Fine Art photographer Oleg Oprisco is born in the small town of Lviv, in western Ukraine.

Oprisco is known for his conceptual shots that involve elaborately constructed props and scenes that capture his distinct sense of surreality.

Relying on neutrals and subdued tones rather than a bold color palette, the mysterious, dreamlike images tend to center on a single figure within a quiet and unoccupied landscape.

Georges Maroniez | Genre painter

Georges Philibert Charles Maroniez (1865, Douai - 1933, Paris) was a French painter, specializing in landscapes with figures.

Education and first works

Maroniez was the son of an industrialist who owned a sugar refinery in Montigny-en-Ostrevent.

He displayed artistic talent at an early age, but - although not discouraged - was expected to pursue a more professional career.

Accordingly, he studied law, and afterwards served as a magistrate in, successively, Boulogne-sur-Mer (1891), Avesnes-sur-Helpe (1894) and Cambrai (1897).

Jeremiah Stermer's realistic surrealism

Jeremiah Stermer was born in Baltimore in 1946.

He started his artistic path at the age of 11.

He considers himself a realist / surrealist, meaning that the theme is always surrealistic, but the painting is made in a traditional way.

He states that he draws and paints very naturally, and that he pays the particular attention on the air around the subjects of his paintings and considers the mood as the crucial element of his works.

Ionut Caras, 1978 | Surrealist photographer

Romanian professional photographer and "photo mechanic" Ionut Caras was born and lives in Iasi, Romania.

Caras describes himself as a 'photo mechanic' and has created the series of mindboggling pictures using the computer program.

His passion for photography began seven years ago when Kara discovered the processing of photographs, artistic of composition.

Coco Chanel: "Fashion changes, but style endures"!

Coco Chanel and Romy Schneider

• "Where should one use perfume? A young woman asked. Wherever one wants to be kissed".

• "It’s probably not just by chance that I’m alone. It would be very hard for a man to live with me, unless he’s terribly strong".

And if he’s stronger than I, I’m the one who can’t live with him. … I’m neither smart nor stupid, but I don’t think I’m a run-of-the-mill person".

I’ve been in business without being a businesswoman, I’ve loved without being a woman made only for love".

The two men I’ve loved, I think, will remember me, on earth or in heaven, because men always remember a woman who caused them concern and uneasiness".

Claude Debussy / Paul Verlaine | Clair de Lune, 1869

Clair de Lune is a French poem written by Paul Verlaine (French poet associated with the Symbolist movement and the Decadent movement, 1844-1896) in 1869.

It is the inspiration for the third and most famous movement of Debussy's 1890 Suite bergamasque of the same name.

The poem has also been set to music by Gabriel Fauré.

Lucien Lévy-Dhurmer | Sérénade au clair de lune, Venise | Christie's

Derek Boshier | Pop art painter

Biography from the Tate Gallery

British painter, sculptor, photographer and printmaker Derek Boshier ((1937-2024)) studied painting and lithography at Yeovil School of Art in Somerset (1953-7), Guildford College of Art (1957-9) and the Royal College of Art, London (1959-62), where he was one of the students associated with Pop art.

Boshier juxtaposed contrasting styles within his paintings, but he favoured topical subject-matter such as the space race, political events and the Americanisation of Europe.

Grace Kelly: "I hated Hollywood..."

• "Ho odiato Hollywood. È una città senza pietà, conta solo il successo. Non conosco nessun altro posto al mondo in cui così tante persone soffrono di esaurimenti nervosi, dove ci sono tanti alcolisti, nevrotici e infelici".

• "I hated Hollywood. It's a town without pity. Only success counts. I know of no other place in the world where so many people suffer from nervous breakdowns, where there are so many alcoholics, neurotics and so much unhappiness".

Grace Kelly

Christine Ellger, 1948

Christine Ellger is an accomplished artist whose work spans across various art styles.

With her intricate attention to detail and vibrant color combinations, Christine has gained recognition for her unique approach to art.

According to Ellger, her passion for photography started 11 years ago as a hobby, and now has become a way of life.

Having started with digital photography she successfully mastered all steps of processing the image.

Rabindranath Tagore | Se tu non parli / If you do not speak..

Se tu non parli

riempirò il mio cuore del tuo silenzio

e lo sopporterò.

Resterò qui fermo ad aspettare come la notte

nella sua veglia stellata

con il capo chino a terra

paziente.

Marc Chagall | The Lovers, 1929

Tetyana Erhart, 1965

Тетяна Ерхарт is an internationally renowned professional Ukrainian photographer from Lviv, where she currently lives and works.

- "I started dealing with portrait photography when my children were born.

It was mid of the 1980s and I used a film camera.

There was a long pause in my photo career until the mid of the 2000s when I got my digital camera".

Jeff Stanford, 1955

Photographer and artist and always ready to learn something new.

Studied Art at the University of the Arts In Philadelphia at the most exciting time at the end of the 1970s and begining of the 1980s in the city center.

Met so many amazing artists who have inspired me all my life.

Live now in Stockholm, Sweden.

Marcella Giulia Pace, 1975 | 48 Colors of the Moon

Marcella Giulia Pace was born in Ragusa on the island of Sicily. She teaches at primary school in Cortina d’Ampezzo (Veneto).

In 2011, the italian Ministry of Public Administration presented her with an award for innovation in teaching.

She pursues various passion which are remote from each other only at cursory glance: astronomy, mountains, music, optical illusions as well as skill and logic games.

Madeleine Gross, 1993 | Abstract artist

Madeleine Gross is a Toronto-based artist who combines photography and painting to represent how we live in both reality and fantasy.

She photographs idyllic scenes from across the world - beaches, lakes, snow-covered mountains and medieval cobbled streets - and paints vibrant strokes over selections of the people, objects, and landscapes.

The result is a unique aesthetic: part photo, part painting, photorealism and abstraction in one frame.

Friedrich Nietzsche: "Without music life would be a mistake"

• "Le convinzioni sono nemiche della verità, più pericolose delle menzogne".

• "Un uomo appare ricco di carattere molto più spesso, perché segue sempre il suo temperamento, che non perché segue sempre i suoi principi".

• "È prerogativa della grandezza rendere molto felici con piccoli doni".

Michael Bilotta

Shaun Smith | Ocean Waves

Shaun Smith is a playful water photographer who sees the bright side in the smallest things in life.

Like many surfers before him, Shaun started bringing a camera in the water to shoot his friends and document his own rides, as a way to relive the fun.

Growing up on the coast of California, Shaun started swimming age two, took to bodyboarding at seven and hasn’t stopped since.

"I love the feeling of getting barreled. There's really nothing else like it".

Starting at the Wedge and staring down barrels, Shaun found his style in the mini-waves movement, capturing in ripples the universal beauty of undulating water.

Shaun Smith is obsessed with listening to the call of the ocean, using the lens to record the mood of the sea, the dance of the waves in the wind, like the lonely but not lonely soul of the sea.

Alfred Eberling (1872-1951)

Alfred Rudolfovich Eberling, was a successful painter and photographer in the early 20th century.

A pupil of Ilya Repin, he never deviated from realism (in the broad sense of the word) and left a number of striking works executed in the painterly two-dimensional manner typical of that time.

Eberling’s portraits, entirely in the spirit of salon art in terms of imagery and not devoid of a chocolate-box prettiness, were always marked by refined, often unexpected combinations of colors.

Alfred Eberling | Portrait of Ballerina Tamara Karsavina, 1911

Patrice Murciano, 1969 | New Pop Art

French painter and sculptor Patrice Murciano has had a huge rise to fame because of his amazing and very different creative style.

Murciano was born in Belfort and then moved to Montpellier when very young.

He discovered his passion for art at an early age when he started reproducing characters from comics when he was 6 years old.

At the age of 8, he borrowed his mother’s makeup to draw portraits and female figures.

Douglas Kirkland, 1934 | Hollywood's photographer

Douglas Kirkland is a Canadian photographer based in the United States.

Douglas Kirkland is the legendary photographer who captured Hollywood elite.

Kirkland has been the cutting edge of fashion, photojournalism and portraiture, working for the world’s most reputable magazines for more than 50 years.

As a young photographer in 1961 he was assigned to shoot Marilyn Monroe during several hours in a closed studio one night, captured a stunning portfolio of alluring and intimate images that survive to this day as a testament to her beauty and vulnerability.

Douglas Kirkland | Marilyn Monroe, 1961