Carlo Bossoli | Orientalist painter

Carlo Bossoli (6 December 1815, in Lugano - 1 August 1884, in Turin) was a Swiss-born Italian painter and lithographer, who spent his early career in Russia. He is best known for historical scenes from the Risorgimento.

His father was a stonemason of Italian origin, working in Switzerland. In 1820, his family moved to accept work in Odessa.

Until 1826, he studied with the Capuchins. After graduating, he worked in a shop that sold antiquarian books and prints. It was there that he began to draw and sketch.

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder | Baroque painter

Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder (1573-1621) was a Flemish-born Dutch still life painter and art dealer.

He is recognised as one of the earliest painters who created floral still lifes as an independent genre.

He founded a dynasty of painters who continued his style of floral and fruit painting and turned Middelburg into the leading centre for flower painting in the Dutch Republic.

Frederick Vezin (1859-1933)

Frederick Vezin also Fred or Frederik was an American-born German painter, engraver and lithographer.

His family originally came from Saint-Florentin, Yonne in France. According to Richard Böger, Pierre Vezin (1654-1727) was forced to flee after he gave assistance to the Huguenots, even though he was a Catholic.

He settled down in Hanover as a viola player. For two generations, the Vezin family lived in Hanover and Osnabrück.

In 1813, Charles Henri / Carl Heinrich Vezin (1782-1853) emigrated to the United States and settled in Philadelphia.

Konstantin Razumov, 1974 | Impressionist painter

Born in Moscow, Konstantin Razumov / Константин Разумов studied at the Ilya Glazunov Russian Academy of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, where his historical paintings achieved great acclaim.

Razumov is a brilliant impressionist painter and has painted all kinds of subjects, from figures to landscapes, young ballerinas, children and charming russian ladies in gardens and meadows.

His bright colours, the smoothness of the skin in his figures, the expressive features of his characters, distinguish his paintings.

Wisława Szymborska | First Love / Il primo amore

They say

the first love's most important.

That's very romantic,

but not my experience.

Something was and wasn't there between us,

something went on and went away.

Andre Kohn | The burnt orange beret

Wassily Kandinsky | IV - The Pyramid

Concerning the Spiritual in Art, 1910

And so at different points along the road are the different arts, saying what they are best able to say, and in the language which is peculiarly their own. Despite, or perhaps thanks to, the differences between them, there has never been a time when the arts approached each other more nearly than they do today, in this later phase of spiritual development.

In each manifestation is the seed of a striving towards the abstract, the non-material.

Consciously or unconsciously they are obeying Socrates' command - Know thyself. Consciously or unconsciously artists are studying and proving their material, setting in the balance the spiritual value of those elements, with which it is their several privilege to work.

Tito Conti (1842-1924) | Genre painter

Tito Conti was an Italian 19th Century painter who was born in Florence, mainly of genre costume or historical subjects.

He lived in Florence, where he studied at the Institute of Fine Arts.

He was resident professor at the Academic College of Fine Arts of Florence.

Among his works are: "La Presentazione"; "Il quarto d'ora di Rabelais e La musica" (1876); "Il brindisi alla bettoliera"; "L'addio"; "Portrait of his wife"; "Il sospetto"; "Il Cantastorie"; "Il Moschettiere"; and "Per la passeggiata" (1886, Florence). Among his pupils was Arturo Ricci.

Wassily Kandinsky | V - La Pittura - L'effetto del colore

Lo spirituale nell'arte, 1910

Se si osserva una tavolozza coperta di colori si hanno due risultati:

1 - Si ha un effetto puramente fisico, cioè l'occhio è affascinato dalla bellezza c dalle qualità dei colori. L'osservatore prova un senso di appagamento, di gioia come un buongustaio che gusta una squisitezza. Oppure l'occhio viene stuzzicato, come lo è il palato da un cibo piccante.

O, ancora, può calmarsi e raffreddarsi, come quando un dito tocca il ghiaccio. Sono tutto sensazioni fisiche, che in quanto tali durano poco.

Sensazioni superficiali, del resto, che non fanno molta impressione a chi è insensibile. Proprio come, se si tocca il ghiaccio, si prova solo una sensazione fisica di freddo, che svanisce quando il dito si scalda, così, girato lo sguardo si dimentica l'effetto fisico del colore.

Wassily Kandinsky | Gabriele Munter Kallmunz, 1903