Without a doubt, Katsushika Hokusai is the most famous Japanese artist since the middle of the nineteenth century whose art is known to the Western world.
He was the son of a citizen in comfortable circumstances, and had been, in Vasari's words, "e;instructed in all such things as children are usually taught before they choose a calling.
Ornans, Courbet's birthplace, is near the beautiful valley of the Doubs River, and it was here as a boy, and later as a man, that he absorbed the love of landscape.
Diego Rodriguez de Silva y Velazquez (June 1599 - August 6 1660), known as Diego Velasquez, was a painter of the Spanish Golden Age who had considerable influence at the court of King Philip IV.
Mantegna; humanist, geometrist, archaeologist, of great scholastic and imaginative intelligence, dominated the whole of northern Italy by virtue of his imperious personality.
Born in 1912, in a small town in Wyoming, Jackson Pollock embodied the American dream as the country found itself confronted with the realities of a modern era replacing the fading nineteenth century.
Michelangelo, like Leonardo, was a man of many talents; sculptor, architect, painter and poet, he made the apotheosis of muscular movement, which to him was the physical manifestation of passion.
The smoothly metallic portraits, nudes and still lifes of Tamara de Lempicka encapsulate the spirit of Art Deco and the Jazz Age, and reflect the elegant and hedonistic life-style of a wealthy, glamorous and privileged elite in Paris between the two World Wars.
From 12 October 2005 to 9 January 2006, the Musee Guimet in Paris will play host to an exceptional exhibition: ‘Treasures of Vietnamese Art… Champa Sculpture’.
Hieronymus Bosch was painting frightening, yet vaguely likable monsters long before computer games were ever invented, often including a touch of humour.
The first appearances of graffiti “tags” (signatures) on New York City subway trains in the early 1970s were discarded as incidents of vandalism or the rough, violent cries of the ignorant and impoverished.
Pioneer of geometric abstract art and one of the most important members of the Russian Avant-garde, Malevitch experimented with various modernist styles.
Poet, draughtsman, engraver and painter, William Blake's work is made up of several elements - Gothic art, Germanic reverie, the Bible, Milton and Shakespeare - to which were added Dante and a certain taste for linear designs, resembling geometric diagrams, and relates him to the great classical movement inspired by Winckelmann and propagated by David.
Kasimir Malevitch (Kiev, 1878 — Saint-Pétersbourg, 1935) était un peintre, un grand théoricien d’art, et surtout le père fondateur du suprématisme, style basé sur les formes géométriques et la recherche de l’abstraction pure.
Gustave Courbet(Ornans, 1819 – La Tour de Peilz, Suisse, 1877)Ornans, sa ville natale, se situe près la ravissante vallée du Doubs, et c'est là que jeune garçon, et plus tard en tant qu'homme, il acquit l'amour du paysage.
Pieter Bruegel, l'Ancien (près de Breda, 1525 – Bruxelles, 1569)Pieter Bruegel fut le premier membre important d'une famille d'artistes, actifs durant quatre générations.
Le Caravage (Michelangelo Merisi) (Caravaggio, 1571 – Porto Ercole, 1610)Après avoir séjourné à Milan durant son apprentissage, Michelangelo Merisi arriva à Rome en 1592.
Andrea Mantegna (1431 Isola di Carturo – 1506 Mantoue)Mantegna, humaniste, géomètre, archéologue, homme d'une grande intelligence et d'une puissante imagination, domina la scène de l'Italie septentrionale grâce à sa personnalité impérieuse.
Fra Angelico (Fra Giovanni da Fiesole) (Vicchio di Mugello,1387 – Rome,1455)Isolé du monde par les murs d'un cloître, ce moine peintre, appartenant à l'ordre des dominicains, voua son existence à la peinture religieuse.
Georgia O’Keeffe (Sun Prarie, Wisconsin, 1887 – Santa Fe, 1986)En 1905, Georgia O’Keeffe suivit des cours à l’ Art Institute de Chicago et débuta sérieusement sa carrière artistique.
Michel-Ange (Michelangelo Buonarroti) (Caprese, 1475 – Rome, 1564)Michel-Ange, comme Léonard de Vinci, avait plusieurs cordes à son arc et était à la fois sculpteur, architecte, peintre et poète.