Romain de Tirtoff | Art Déco fashion illustrator

Nessun altro stilista ha avuto un'influenza maggiore di Erté nel XX secolo.

Le sue creazioni sgargianti hanno caratterizzato uno dei decenni più opulenti ed iconici della storia: gli anni '20.

Attraversando molti ambiti della cultura visiva, tra cui illustrazioni per riviste di moda, costumi per l'opera e il balletto, scultura e scenografia per il teatro, lo stile inconfondibile di Erté ha segnato l'era moderna.

Max Leiva, 1966 | Figurative sculptor

"I'm fascinated by the human essence, our very condition, our fragility and behavior in society" - Max Leiva.

Max Leiva is a contemporary Guatemalan artist known for his expressive figurative sculptures.

The artist graduate of the country’s National School of Fine Arts, spends his working time between his home country and Mexico.

The globe-trotting artist, who spent time at the University of Silpakorn in Thailand under a UNESCO scholarship, states that Guatemala lacks sufficient foundry facilities required to undertake his work.

George Lundeen, 1948 | Departure / La partenza, 1986

"Departure", installed in the park near the library in Loveland, CO, is a life size bronze sculpture by the American artist, George Lundeen.

According to the artist, "The original piece came from a sketch I did in the Rome train station.

There were a couple of kids across from me on the marble floor.

It became the first life-size piece I ever did".

Romee Kanis, 1953 | Figurative sculptor

Romee Kanis was born in Jutphaas.

Currently she lives in St. Maartensbrug in Zijpe in a farmhouse, where her sculpture garden and her studio are located and she also works in her workshop in Schermerhorn.

At age 18, Romee began in Spain and France with drawing portraits.

On the Place du Tertre in Paris and by working in the major cities of Europe, she got a good look at the people around her.

Sarah Myers, 1980 | Figurative sculptor

Sarah Myers lives and works in Arizona.

As a child her fascination for the artwork in museums - and even for ancient artifacts - formed her feeling that art was the language of a world filled with splendor and possibility.

She continues this today with her love of human expressions, depicting heads, hands, movement, vitality in a range of mediums from line drawing and painting to ceramic sculpture.

Glenna Goodacre | Figurative sculptor

Glenna Goodacre’s (1939-2020) sculptures are immediately recognizable for their unique expression, texture, design and movement.

Beginning as a painter provided a foundation for her first bronzes created in 1969.

She has since created over 600 different works, the most well-known of which is the Vietnam Women’s Memorial installed in Washington, D.C. in 1993.

Her largest piece is the massive Irish Memorial created in 2002 for Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia.

Lorenzo Quinn, 1966 | Figurative sculptor

Contemporary Italian artist Lorenzo Quinn is a leading figurative sculptor whose work is inspired by such masters as Michelangelo, Bernini and Rodin.

Exhibited internationally, his monumental public art and smaller, more intimate pieces transmit his passion for eternal values and authentic emotions.

He is best known for expressive recreations of human hands:

"I wanted to sculpt what is considered the hardest and most technically challenging part of the human body", he asserts.

"The hand holds so much power - the power to love, to hate, to create, to destroy".

Andrey Belle, 1957 | Figurative painter / sculptor

Aндрей Белле was born in Minsk, Bielorussia. Since his birth, he lived and studied in Leningrad, now St Petersburg.

From 1975-1977, he served in the Soviet Army.

In 1977, he went straight from the army into the V. I. Mukhina Leningrad Higher School of Commercial Art.

He began to exhibit his work while still at the institute.

Upon graduating and being professionally assigned to the Lot Central Research Institute, he started work as an independent artist - a painter and graphic artist.

Arturo Martini | Modern sculptor

Arturo Martini, (1889, Treviso - 1947, Milan), Italian sculptor and painter who was active between the World Wars.

He is known for figurative sculptures executed in a wide variety of styles and materials.

Martini was trained in goldsmithing and in ceramics and worked for a time as a potter.

In 1905 he began sculpting; he attended art classes in Italy at Treviso and Venice before traveling to Munich, Germany, where he studied under the academic sculptor Adolf von Hildebrand in 1909.

Emilio Greco | Figurative sculptor

Emilio Greco (1913-1995) - Italian sculptor and draughtsman, mainly of female figures and portrait busts.

Born in Catania, Sicily.

At the age of thirteen entered the workshop of a stone mason, learning to carve crosses and figures for cemeteries; also began making sculpture on his own account and studied briefly at the Palermo Academy 1934.

The Marathon Boy, 340-330 B.C.

The Marathon Boy or Ephebe of Marathon is a Greek bronze sculpture found in the Aegean Sea in the bay of Marathon in 1925.

It is conserved in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens where it is dated to around 340-330 BC.

The Museum suggests that the subject is the winner of an athletic competition.

Massimo Fedele, 1964 | Abstract painter

Massimo Fedele was born in Turin, Italy.

After a few months his family moved to Apulia, in San Vito dei Normanni (Brindisi) where he still lives and works.

After obtaining a diploma from the local Technical and Commercial Institute, he realised he was not on the right track.

Antonio Canova | Paolina Borghese, 1805-1808

The reclining Paolina Borghese as Venus Victrix in the center of the room holds an apple in her hand, evoking the Venus Victrix in the judgement of Paris, who was chosen to settle a dispute between Juno (power), Minerva (arts and science) and Venus (love).

The same subject was painted on the ceiling by Domenico de Angelis (1779), framed by Giovan Battista Marchetti's tromp d'oeil architecture, and was inspired by a famous relief on the façade of the Villa Medici.

This marble statue of Pauline in a highly refined pose is considered a supreme example of the Neoclassical style.

Sleeping Hermaphroditus / L'Ermafrodito dormiente

The ambivalence and voluptuous curves of this figure of Hermaphroditus, who lies asleep on a mattress sculpted by Bernini, are still a source of fascination today.

His body merged with that of the nymph Salmacis, whose advances he had rejected, Hermaphroditus, son of Hermes and Aphrodite, is represented as a bisexed figure.

The original that inspired this figure would have dated from the 2nd century BC, reflecting the late Hellenistic taste for the theatrical.

Department of Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities: Hellenistic Art (3rd-1st centuries BC) Greek, Etruscan and Roman Antiquities - Musée du Louvre.

Henri Matisse | Orientalist Odalisque

In 1917 Matisse relocated to Cimiez on the French Riviera, a suburb of the city of Nice.

His work of the decade or so following this relocation shows a relaxation and a softening of his approach.

This "return to order" is characteristic of much art of the post-World War I period and can be compared with the neoclassicism of Picasso and Stravinsky as well as the return to traditionalism of Derain.

Michelangelo | Bacchus, 1496-1497

Bacchus (1496-1497) is a marble sculpture by the Italian High Renaissance sculptor, painter, architect and poet Michelangelo Buonarroti.

The statue is somewhat over life-size and depicts Bacchus, the Roman god of wine, in a reeling pose suggestive of drunkenness.

Commissioned by Raffaele Riario, a high-ranking Cardinal and collector of antique sculpture, it was rejected by him and was bought instead by Jacopo Galli, Riario’s banker and a friend to Michelangelo.

Along with the Pietà the Bacchus is one of only two surviving sculptures from the artist's first period in Rome.

Paul Gauguin quotes: "Art = a mad search for individualism"

• "L'arte è un'astrazione: spremetela dalla natura sognando di fronte ad essa e preoccupatevi più della creazione che del risultato".

• "When the physical organism breaks up, the soul survives. It then takes on another body".

Gian Lorenzo Bernini, uomo ed artista universale

Oltre ai suoi autoritratti e ad un ritratto fattogli dal Gaulli (Roma, Gall. Corsini), il Bernini è stato descritto fisicamente e moralmente da numerosi autori: basti ricordare lo Chantelou, ed il figlio Domenico, che lo disse "aspro di natura, fisso nelle operazioni, ardente nell'ira".

Egli fu l'artista più intimamente legato al cattolicesimo risorgente nella temperie postridentina, e non può esserci dubbio sulla sua convinzione religiosa; pare che negli anni successivi al 1630 la sua fede si fosse approfondita e che nell'ultimo periodo della sua vita frequentasse assiduamente gesuiti e oratoriani: era amico intimo dei padre G. P. Oliva, gesuita, per il quale disegnò il frontespizio al secondo volume delle Prediche (1664) e ebbe come consigliere spirituale anche un suo nipote, padre Marchesi, oratoriano.

Paul Gauguin | Post-Impressionist painter

Paul Gauguin, in full Eugène-Henri-Paul Gauguin (born June 7, 1848, Paris, France-died May 8, 1903, Atuona, Hiva Oa, Marquesas Islands, French Polynesia) French painter, printmaker and sculptor who sought to achieve a "primitive” expression of spiritual and emotional states in his work.

The artist, whose work has been categorized as Post-Impressionist, Synthetist and Symbolist, is particularly well known for his creative relationship with Vincent van Gogh as well as for his self-imposed exile in Tahiti, French Polynesia.

His artistic experiments influenced many avant-garde developments in the early 20th century.

Pablo Picasso | Periodi artistici

Periodo blu

Partendo dal 1901 lo stile pittorico di Picasso incominciò a presentare tratti originali e nuove soluzioni artistiche; in quell'anno, infatti, ha inizio il cosiddetto «periodo blu», che si protrae sino alla primavera del 1904.

Questa fase artistica picassiana, come già accennato, scaturì in seguito alla morte suicida dell'amico Carlos Casagemas, come affermato dallo stesso maestro andaluso:

«Quando mi resi conto che Casagemas era morto, incominciai a dipingere in blu» - Pablo Picasso