Pablo Picasso | La nascita del cubismo

Dopo un'ulteriore vacanza a Horta de Ebro nell'estate 1909, Picasso una volta ritornato a Parigi decise di allontanarsi dal pur pittoresco squallore di Montmartre e di affittare - insieme con Fernarde e il loro gatto siamese - un appartamento al numero 11 di boulevard de Clichy, nei pressi di place Pigalle.

Qui si dedicò con assoluta e piena dedizione ai propri quadri cubisti, dando vita a opere quali La femme assise (1909) e Ragazza con mandolino (1910) e i ritratti effigianti Georges Braque (1909), Ambroise Vollard (1909-10) e Daniel-Heinrich Kahnweiler (1910).

Con queste tele Picasso, meditando sulla lezione di Cézanne, intendeva studiare il rapporto tra forma e spazio mediante il trattamento schematico dei piani e la scomposizione dei volumi: da queste premesse prese forma una fase che i critici d'arte definiranno «cubismo analitico».

Odilon Redon | Hommage a Goya, 1885 | The series

Homage to Goya (Hommage à Goya) is an portfolio of 6 lithographs on chine appliqué reveal Redon's admiration for the Spanish painter and printmaker, who died in 1828.

Title: Hommage a Goya

Autor: Odilon Redon (1840-1916)

Date: 1885

Style: Symbolism

Genre: Mythological painting

Media: Oil on cardboard, mounted on canvas

Location: Scharf-Gerstenberg Collection, Berlin

Odilon Redon | Apollo's Chariot, 1905-1916 | The Series

In 1878 Redon*, in a study of Delacroix*, praised that artist's ceiling in the Louvre showing the Chariot of Apollo, and in the same year he noted in his journal his admiration for a painting of Phaethon by Gustave Moreau*.

Between 1905 and 1916 Redon* devoted a number of oils, pastels and watercolors to the theme of horses of the sun, driven, according to classical mythology, by the god Apollo or his son Phaëthon.

Tenaya Sims | Figurative painter

Tenaya Sims received a BFA in painting and drawing at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

After working several years as a graphic artist in the video games industry for Activision, he began his classical studies at the Jeff Watts🎨 Atelier in Encinitas, CA.

He then moved to Seattle where he has completed four years of full-time study in the Gage Classical Atelier.

Rosso Fiorentino | Pietà, 1538-1540

This is the only easel painting that can be dated with certainty to Rosso's stay in France in 1530-40.

The cushions beneath Christ's body bear the blue alerions on an orange background of the coat of arms of Constable Anne de Montmorency, from whose château at Ecouen the Pietà was taken to the Louvre in the late 18th century.

The marks visible on the bodies of Christ and St John are due to an initial, reversed composition - vsible under X-ray photography - which Rosso had blacked out.

Rosso Fiorentino | Mannerist painter

Italian painter and decorator, Rosso Fiorentino (1494-1540), original name Giovanni Battista di Jacopo, was an exponent of the expressive style that is often called early, or Florentine Mannerism, and one of the founders of the Fontainebleau school.

Pontormo | Sacra famiglia, 1515 | Art in Detail

Jacopo Carucci🎨 (May 24, 1494 - January 2, 1557), usually known as simply Pontormo🎨, was not only an painter but also an sculptor from the Florentine School.

To him was attributed: The Holy Family, 1515, terracotta, h. 44 cm, exhibit in the Bode-Museum, Berlin, Germany.

For biographical notes -in english and italian- and works by Pontormo see:

• Pontormo | Mannerist painter🎨

Vitaly Tikhov | Social realist painter

Тихов Виталий Гаврилович (1876-1939) was an Ukrainian painter, one of the best and most talented students in Vladimir Makovsky's studio.

In the early 1910s his magnificent, large-format "bath-house" paintings were especially successful and much admired, and for these he was twice awarded the graduation Gold Medal of the Academy of Fine Arts, having studied there on two separate occasions.