Alfred Mira | Cityscape painter

Italian-born American painter Alfred S. Mira (1900-1980) and his realistic, gritty, intimate Greenwich Village street scenes should be better known. Born in 1900 in Sicily, Italy to a carpenter father, he left school and began working for an interior decorator, dreaming of going to art school but without the 50 cents a day it cost to attend.

He did make a career out of painting though; he listed his address as East 8th Street and his occupation as painter in the 1940 census. And he sold his work at the Washington Square outdoor art exhibit, a heralded event decades ago.

Gino Piccioni (1873-1941)

Gino Piccioni [Foligno (Perugia) 1873 - Biella (Vercelli) 1941] è stato un pittore e scultore Italiano.

Poco nota l’attività di questo pittore che, dopo avere ricevuto la propria formazione a Roma, sotto la guida di A. Vertunni e R. Franzi, soggiornò a lungo in Germania. Dai cataloghi delle esposizioni si desume che dovette concentrare la sua produzione nell'arco di un quindicennio (1899-1912), misurandosi per lo più con temi di paesaggio, non estranei a toni di compiaciuto sentimentalismo.

Angiolo Tommasi | Macchiaioli Art Movement

Angiolo Tommasi (Livorno, 1858 - Torre del Lago Puccini, Lucca, 1923) was an Italian painter, active in the Macchiaioli movement. He was the brother of the painter Ludovico and cousin of the painter Adolfo Tommasi all three were influential for the arts in their native Tuscany in the late 19th and early 20th-centuries. Angiolo painted both genre and landscape themes. The second of the five brothers, Angiolo was born in Livorno.

Angiolo Tommasi | The Emigrants /Gli Emigranti, 1986

Angelo Tommasi is a Naturalistic painter, influenced by Courbet’s realism, and played an active role spreading the technique employed by the Macchiaioli. The monumental painting The Emigrants shows a common situation in Italy after the unification process. The burning and dramatic theme of overseas emigration is vividly depicted by the packed crowds at the Port of Livorno, people who have resigned themselves to their fate and the expectation of embarkation. The painting's extraordinary dimensions contribute to an illustration of the theme of Italian emigration on an almost epic scale.

Akira Tanaka | Abstract Figurative painter

Akira Tanaka /田中阿喜良年譜 (1918-1982) is a Japanese figurative painter who mainly worked in France. We owe him in particular numerous scenes describing the daily life of the Parisians, his main source of inspiration.

Born in Osaka in 1918, Tanaka studied at the School of Fine Arts of Kyoto (1943) before settling permanently in France in 1959 (in direct line with other Japanese artists such as Tsuguharu Foujita or Takanori Oguiss). Starting in 1955, he participates in several exhibitions (in Japan, United States, Australia as well as New Zealand) and receives in 1957 the 1st Prize of the Japanese critics («Grand Shell Prize») and the Grand Prize of the Kodobijutsu show.

Trent Gudmundsen, 1978 | En plein air painter

Raised in a small farming town in eastern Utah, American painter Trent Gudmundsen spent his childhood surrounded by people who worked hard and lived simply, and he was driven from an early age to record his impressions of life in paint.

With little training to go on, he would confidently head out into the pastures and hills near his house to paint whenever he got the chance.

The artist feels indebted to VaLoy Eaton, an award-winning* landscape artist who guided Gudmundsen's passion, and introduced him to the works of various master painters of the past and present.

Jan Rijlaarsdam | Paris painting

Jan Rijlaarsdam (1911-2008) was born in Nieuwkoop, Holland in 1911. He started painting as a young man having attended the Amsterdam Academy of Art. For many years he lived in Hilversum and is regarded as belonging to the "Het Gooi" Artist's Association and the "Het Gooi" school of art. Student of A.G. Hulshof Pol, a wellknown painter and art teacher 1883-1957. Rijlaarsdam also spent a considerable amount of time in Belgium and France. The buildings and street life of Paris were of particular interest to him.

Ingrid Christensen | Figurative Impressionist painter

Award winning and professional oil painter artist, Ingrid Christensen, was born and raised in Golden, a small town in British Columbia, Canada. She studied art and English at UBC in Vancouver and received an Education degree from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, and, for a time, taught in the public school system. But art was always Ingrid's primary passion, and she quit teaching in order to pursue it wholeheartedly.