Viatcheslav Plotnikov, 1962 | Glamour of Monte Carlo

Viatcheslav Plotnikov was born in Russia. Since a young boy, Plotnikov knew which road his professional life would take. He couldn't of course have foreseen the good fortune he would have, but was however reassured and encouraged by his teachers of the art school: they recognised in him a great pictorial energy and sensed his talent.

Plotnikov was sustained by an intense desire to know and by an unshakeable will to perfect his work: he knew how important it was to master every technique and every style, because from this knowledge he would have been able to germinate a new art.

The neoclassicism would have represented the foundations of a new structure. The dedication and great passion he put into his studies slowly guaranteed the acquisition of a fascinating new knowledge: his character was strengthened internalising the example of the great painters of the past.

Pablo Neruda | The Kiss / Il Bacio / El beso

I'll send you a kiss in the wind

and I know you feel,

you turn around without seeing me, but I'll be there

We are made ​​of the same stuff

of which dreams are made ​​of

I would like to be a white cloud

in an endless sky

to follow you everywhere and loving every moment.

If you are a dream, do not wake me

I would live in your breath

while you watch mad about you

Your dreams will be dreaming of me

I love you because you see reflected

in everything that is beautiful

Tell me where are you tonight

in my dreams again?

O Capitano! Mio Capitano! / O Captain! My Captain! | Walt Whitman, 1865

After Abraham Lincoln’s🎨 assassination in 1865, Walt Whitman (American🎨 poet, essayist and journalist, 1819-1892) wrote “O Captain My Captain”. The poem is written in a form of an elegy and is aimed to honor the sixteenth president of the United States.

The entire poem itself provides extended metaphor that implies comparisons between seemingly dissimilar things, for the U.S. after the Civil War and the killing of the President Lincoln.

O Captain! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;

The ship has weather'd every rack, the prize we sought is won;

The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,

While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:

But O heart! heart! heart!

O the bleeding drops of red,

Where on the deck my Captain lies,

Fallen cold and dead.

Thomas Eakins 1844-1916 | Sketch for the Portrait of Walt Whitman, 1887

Bill Mack, 1949 | Relief sculptor

The impact of Bill Mack's art is achieved not only by his dramatic portrayal of the human form, but also by the utilization of a wide variety of materials with which to execute his artistic vision.

The final work emerges as a classic example of the interplay of form and materials.

For over 35 years, American sculptor Bill Mack has created sculpture in relief and in the round for government, corporate and private collections.

His art hangs in galleries in four continents and he has had exhibits in Tokyo, England, France and Germany.

In reference to his interest in relief sculpture, Mack states, A lot of sculptors have no reason to do it and they just don't develop in that direction.

Andrey Belle, 1957 | Abstract / Mixed media painter

Aндрей Белле was born in Minsk, Bielorussia. Since his birth, he lived and studied in Leningrad, now St Petersburg. From 1975-1977, he served in the Soviet Army. In 1977, he went straight from the army into the V. I. Mukhina Leningrad Higher School of Commercial Art.

He began to exhibit his work while still at the institute. Upon graduating and being professionally assigned to the Lot Central Research Institute, he started work as an independent artist - a painter and graphic artist.

Troy Brooks, 1972 | Pop-Surrealist painter

Toronto-based artist Troy Brooks is a contemporary surrealist painter known for his elaborate oil paintings dominated by towering women enveloped in a landscape of visual metaphor.

His heroine plays out intimate scenes, usually caught in moments where something transformative has or is about to happen.

Giulio Romano | Renaissance / Mannerist painter

Giulio Romano🎨, also known as Giulio Pippi, (c. 1499 - 1 November 1546) was an Italian painter🎨 and architect. A pupil of Raphael🎨, his stylistic deviations from high Renaissance🎨 classicism help define the 16th-century style known as Mannerism🎨.

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

• Giulio Romano | Mannerist painter🎨

Ambrosius Benson | Northern Renaissance painter

Ambrosius Benson (c. 1495/1500, in Ferrara or Milan - 1550, in Flanders) was an Italian painter who became a part of the Northern Renaissance.

While many surviving paintings have been attributed, there is very little known of him from records, and he tended not to sign his work.

He is believed to be responsible for mainly religious art, but also painted portraits on commission.

He sometime painted from classical sources, often setting the figures in modern-dress, or a contemporary domestic setting.