Carolus-Duran | Academic painter

Charles Auguste Émile Durand, known as Carolus-Duran (Lille 4 July 1837 - 17 February 1917 Paris), was a French painter and art instructor. He is noted for his stylish depictions of members of high society in Third Republic France.

Carolus-Duran studied at the Lille Academy and then at the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris.

In 1861, he traveled to Italy and Spain for further study, especially devoting himself to the pictures of Velázquez.

His dramatic painting Murdered, or The Assassination (1866), was one of his first successes, and is now in the Lille museum.

Abiodun Olaku, 1958 | Waterscape/Cityscape painter

Born in Lagos in Lagos, Nigeria, Abiodun Olaku has his roots in Abeokuta, Ogun state. In his third decade of avid, dedicated and progressive art practice since graduating from the prestigious Yaba College of Technology, Lagos as a painter in 1981, under the supervision and guidance of Prof. Yusuf Grillo, Kolade Oshinowo and late Dr. Isiaka Osunde. Abiodun Olaku has crystallized into one of the ‘exclusive’ masters of his generation.

Nikita Manokhin, 1989 | Palette knife painter

Nikita Manokhin Anatolyevich was born in Mariupol, Donetsk region, Ukraine, in the artists` family.

In 2005 graduated from the Mariupol City Lyceum, language faculty, English speciality.

In 2011 graduated from the Architectural faculty of Donbass National Academy of Architecture and Civil Engineering.

- 'I was born in a small town of Mariupol in Ukraine, in the artists' family. I must admit, I didn't have any affection to arts or painting during my first years. Painting was quite a difficult discipline for me at school, I didn't attend any professional painting classes then. Foreign languages were much more interesting for me, so eventually in 2005 I finished Mariupol City Lyceum, English language faculty.

Archip Ivanovič Kuindži | Landscape painter

Архип Иванович Куинджи ([1842-1910) is considered one of the most talented Russian landscape painters of his generation.

Born in Ukraine, he was associated during the second half of the 1870s with a group of Russian Realist painters known as the Wanderers.

In the 1890s, he was hired to teach landscape painting at the Academy of Fine Arts but was later dismissed for sympathizing with student agitators.

Mosè Bianchi | Genre/Macchiaioli painter

Mosè Bianchi (Monza, 1840-1904) was an Italian painter and printmaker.

Bianchi's family moved from Monza to Milan and he enrolled at the Brera Academy.

Having interrupted his studies to serve in the second war of independence, he returned to attend the school of painting directed by Giuseppe Bertini.