Vladimir Kush, 1965 | Flamenco Dancer

Dance is an ecstatic state that changes the dancers, igniting their passion and, one and all, placing them on fire in the flame of love.

The metamorphosis of people into plants or vice versa was widely used in the mythopoetic ideas of the ancients.

"It is only the gods who taste of death," remarked Oscar Wilde, "Apollo has passed away, but Hyacinth, whom men say he slew, lives on. Nero and Narcissus are always with us".

Edward Okun | Symbolist / Art Nouveau painter

Edward Okuń (1872-1945) was a Polish Art Nouveau painter and freemason.

He painted landscapes, portraits, designed covers and llustrated magazines, including the German magazine "Jugend".

Biography

Okuń was born to a noble family and was orphaned early. He grew up with his grandparents on the maternal side.

After inheriting a large fortune, he soon began drawing lessons with great painters. In 1891 he studied at the Warsaw School of Drawing.

From 1891-1893 he studied under the direction of Isidore Jablonski and Jan Matejko at the Jan Matejko Academy of Fine Arts.

He continued his studies in Munich and Paris.

Lydia Velasco, 1942 | Figurative painter

Lydia Velasco was born in the town of Navotas, Philippines. Velasco’s love for the arts is an innate calling she traces back to her childhood.

She pursued Fine Arts major in advertising at University of Santo Tomas and then worked for many years as an artist for an advertising agency wherein her art directors turned out to be H.R. Ocampo and Cesar Legazpi, who are both national artists now.

Velasco is regarded as one of the top women artists in the Philippines today.

Johann Jakob Frey (1813-1865) | Paysages painter

Johann Jakob Frey, a Swiss landscape painter, a native of Basle, studied principally in Italy, and his views of that country are much valued.

He was first taught by his father, the painter and lithographer Samuel Frey (1785-1836). He later studied in Paris (1830) and in Munich (1834), the most vibrant artistic centre in Germany.

After travelling in Italy and Egypt, he settled in Rome where he specialised in landscape painting.

From Egypt, whither he accompanied Professor Lepsius, he brought many excellent sketches of the Pyramids, Labyrinths, ecc.

Diego Rivera (Mexican, 1887-1957)

Diego Rivera, in full Diego María Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez, (born December 8, 1886, Guanajuato, Mexico—died November 25, 1957, Mexico City), Mexican painter whose bold large-scale murals stimulated a revival of fresco painting in Latin America.

A government scholarship enabled Rivera to study art at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City from age 10, and a grant from the governor of Veracruz enabled him to continue his studies in Europe in 1907. He studied in Spain and in 1909 settled in Paris, where he became a friend of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, and other leading modern painters.

About 1917 he abandoned the Cubist style in his own work and moved closer to the Post-Impressionism of Paul Cézanne, adopting a visual language of simplified forms and bold areas of colour.

Bertha Wegmann | Portrait / Figurative painter

Danish painter of German ancestry, Bertha Wegmann (1847-1926) was the first Woman to hold a chair at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts.

At the age of five, her family moved to Copenhagen, where her father became a merchant.

He was an art lover and spent much of his spare time painting.

She showed an interest in drawing at an early age, but received no formal education until she was nineteen, when she began taking lessons from Frederik Ferdinand Helsted, Heinrich Buntzen and Frederik Christian Lund.

Vladimir Makovsky | Academic / Genre painter

Vladimir Yegorovich Makovsky / Влади́мир Его́рович Мако́вский (1846-1920) was a Russian painter, art collector and teacher.

Makovsky was the son of collector, Yegor Ivanovich Makovsky, who was one of the founders of the Moscow Art School. Vladimir had two brothers, Nikolay Makovsky and Konstantin Makovsky, and one sister, Alexandra Makovsky, all of whom were famous painters.

Vladimir studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture, and Architecture.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Pre-Raphaelite painter

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, original name Gabriel Charles Dante Rossetti (born May 12, 1828, London, England-died April 9, 1882, Birchington-on-Sea, Kent) British painter and poet who helped found the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters treating religious, moral, and medieval subjects in a nonacademic manner. Dante Gabriel was the most celebrated member of the Rossetti family.

Early life and works

After a general education in the junior department of King’s College (1836-41), Rossetti hesitated between poetry and painting as a vocation. When about 14 he went to "Sass’s", an old-fashioned drawing school in Bloomsbury (central London), and thence, in 1845, to the Royal Academy schools, where he became a full student.