It’s Carnival time ~ The history of celebration

Il nome Carnevale deriva dal latino carnem levare, togliere la carne, privazione della carne, ha un origine altomedievale che designa il giorno o i giorni che precedono il principale periodo di penitenza previsto dal cristianesimo: la quaresima. Data l'eminenza di un cosi' lungo periodo di privazioni, che investono tutti i campi, quello alimentare, sessuale, giochi, diventa presto un periodo di durata variabile, da pochi giorni a molte settimane fra gennaio e marzo. In questo periodo si cerca di esaltare tutto cio' che in quaresima non sarà piu' possibile fare: abbondanza alimentare, sospensione di una serie di divieti, in alcuni casi violenza gratuita contro terzi.

Vadim Suljakov 1960 | Urban landscape painter

Вадим Суляков was born in the cultural center of Moscow. His parents gave him an excellent home education and he began painting at the age of seven. He continued with Russia's most rigid and traditional art education. The schools were very strict and difficult, and only a few were chosen to go on to the next level.

Morgan Weistling, 1964 | Romantic painter

Morgan studied art at an early age with his father, a former art student. His parents both met at art school. His father, Howard, a POW in Germany, entertained his fellow American prisoners in Stalag 1 with a daily comic strip that he created and drew to keep morale up. Drawn on scraps of paper found on the prison grounds, he crafted a humorous world of characters that managed to bring a smile to imprisoned soldiers. In the last days of the war and feeling the Russians would be coming, his talents with painting saved his life. Using some paints supplied by the Geneva Convention, he painted a American Flag on the shoulder of his prisoner uniform so that the Russians invading Germany would identify him and not shoot him. It worked.

François Joseph Bosio | Neoclassical sculptor

Baron François Joseph Bosio (19 March 1768 - 29 July 1845) was a French sculptor who achieved distinction in the first quarter of the nineteenth century with his work for Napoleon and for the restored French monarchy.

Born in Monaco, Bosio was given a scholarship by prince Honoré I to study in Paris with the eminent sculptor Augustin Pajou.

After brief service in the Revolutionary army he lived in Florence, Rome and Naples, providing sculpture for churches under the French hegemony in Italy in the 1790s.

William Powell Frith | Victorian Era painter

Frith [1819-1909] was an British painter, specialising in Genre subjects and panoramic narrative works of life in the Victorian Era.

He was elected to the Royal Academy in 1852.

He has been described as the "greatest British painter of the social scene since Hogarth".

Jacques-Laurent Agasse

Born at Geneva, Agasse [1767-1849] studied in the public art school of that city. Before he turned twenty he went to Paris to study in veterinary school to make himself fully acquainted with the anatomy of horses and other animals. He seems to have subsequently returned to Switzerland.

Scott Mattlin, 1955

American painter Scott Mattlin is an artist with a deep and passionate appreciation for beauty in the natural world and within the human spirit. This enthusiastic and sensitive joy is reflected strongly in his artwork. His work is executed in a vibrant, impressionistic style, which - while still retaining its representational roots, incorporates abstract elements, resulting in a uniquely contemporary union.

Vladimir Hozatski, 1955

Well-known in his native Russia, as well as abroad, Hozatski has received numerous accolades for his work. One of the major commissions he received was a request, in 1985, from then-President Mikhail Gorbachev for Hozatski and his father Guenrich to paint the interior walls of the President's Black Sea summer dacha in the Crimea.