Alain Picard, 1974 | Figurative /Landscape painter

Alain J. Picard is an award-winning artist, instructor, author and speaker. His acclaimed pastel and oil paintings have been exhibited throughout the US, Europe, China and the UK.

Alain travels internationally as an art instructor, demonstrator, speaker and artistic advocate for the vulnerable.

Alain Picard earned a BA in illustration from Western CT State University and went on to study at the Art Student's League in New York City. Picard cites Sargent, Degas, and Sorolla among his artistic influences. A love of light and beauty are immediately apparent in his pastel and oil paintings.

Claude Monet | Failing sight

Monet's second wife, Alice, died in 1911, and his oldest son Jean, who had married Alice's daughter Blanche, Monet's particular favourite, died in 1914.

Their deaths left Monet depressed, as Blanche cared for him.

It was during this time that Monet began to develop the first signs of cataracts.

In 1913, Monet travelled to London to consult the German ophthalmologist Richard Liebreich.

He was prescribed new glasses and rejected cataract surgery for the right eye.

The next year, Monet, encouraged by Clemenceau, made plans to construct a new, large studio that he could use to create a "decorative cycle of paintings devoted to the water garden".

Claude Monet and Impressionism

When Durand-Ruel's previous support of Monet and his peers began to decline, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Sisley, Paul Cézanne, Edgar Degas, and Berthe Morisot exhibited their work independently; they did so under the name the Anonymous Society of Painters, Sculptors and Engravers for which Monet was a leading figure in its formation.

He was inspired by the style and subject matter of his slightly older contemporaries, Pissarro and Édouard Manet.

The group, whose title was chosen to avoid association with any style or movement, were unified in their independence from the Salon and rejection of the prevailing academicism.

Monet gained a reputation as the foremost landscape painter of the group.

Claude Monet | Legacy

Speaking of Monet's body of work, Wildenstein said that it is "so extensive that its very ambition and diversity challenges our understanding of its importance".

His paintings produced at Giverny and under the influence of cataracts have been said to create a link between Impressionism and twentieth-century art and modern abstract art, respectively.

His later works were a "major" inspiration to Objective abstraction.

Ellsworth Kelly, following a formative experience at Giverny, paid homage to Monet's works created there with Tableau Vert (1952).

Monet has been called an "intermediary" between tradition and modernism - his work has been examined in relation to postmodernism-and was an influence to Bazille, Sisley, Renoir and Pissarro.

Monet is now the most famous of the Impressionists; as a result of his contributions to the movement, he "exerted a huge influence on late 19th-century art".

Claude Monet | L'idillio di Giverny: tra covoni, giardini e cattedrali

Dopo la mostra organizzata da Petit Monet poté godere del sostegno economico e morale di un pubblico finalmente svincolatosi dalle pastoie della pittura accademica.

La gloria, tuttavia, non offuscò né la sua umiltà né le sue ambizioni pittoriche, finalizzate a rendere «l'immediatezza, l'atmosfera soprattutto e la stessa luce diffusa ovunque».

Volendo indagare in maniera più accurata i problemi della luce e dalle sensazioni di colore, dunque, Monet intraprese le cosiddette serie, nelle quali uno stesso soggetto viene ripreso in decine e decine di tele, in modo tale che l'unico fattore cangiante è proprio la luce: si trattava di un'escogitazione pittorica ottimale per dimostrare come la sola luce riuscisse a generare percezioni visive sempre mutevoli e stimolanti.

Denis Nolet, 1964 | Night Tango in Paris

Denis Nolet*, Canadian painter*, was born in Quebec. Beginning his study of art at the age of nine, Nolet was able to experiment with various styles of painting early on, finding his own unique genre in a fusion of his influences and establishing himself as an artist by the time he was only twenty.

Claude Monet | Stile

Claude Monet è stato il sostenitore più convinto ed instancabile del «metodo impressionista» che vide già riassunto in nuce nelle opere dell'amico Manet.

Per comprendere appieno la carica rivoluzionaria della figura di Monet, tuttavia, è necessario calarla con precisione nell'ambiente storico e artistico francese della seconda metà dell'Ottocento.

La Francia della seconda metà del XIX secolo era una nazione viva, moderna, ricca di magnificenze e di contraddizioni, che in seguito all'offensiva prussiana del 1870 aveva conosciuto un impetuoso sviluppo economico e sociale che, tuttavia, aveva inizialmente mancato di investire le arti figurative.

Nguyen Tuan, 1963 | Figurative sculptor

Born in Vietnam, Nguyen Tuan experienced the fall of Saigon in 1975, survived a failed escape attempt from his native land in 1988, witnessed the death of his close friend in the same escape attempt, and was then cast into a concentration camp.
Almost miraculously, he escaped the camp and fled to the United States where he became captivated with sculpting.
In 1995, Tuan Nguyen received his fine art degree from the Art Institute of Southern California in Laguna Beach, CA.