Viktor Shvaiko, 1965 | Pittore di paesaggi urbani

Nato ad Altai, una delle città più remote e fuori dai sentieri battuti della Russia, Shvaiko è cresciuto circondata dalla bellezza della natura selvaggia.

Con una naturale inclinazione per le belle arti ed un suo forte bisogno di condividere la sua visione della natura, Shvaiko trovò un modo per entrare alla Novoaltaisk Artistic School, una delle due migliori scuole per le arti nell'ex Unione Sovietica.

Frans Hals | Genre painter

Frans Hals (1580-1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter especially famous for portraiture. He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art.

Hals was also instrumental in the evolution of 17th century group portraiture.

Hals was a master of a technique that utilized something previously seen as a flaw in painting, the visible brushstroke.

The soft curling lines of Hals' brush are always clear upon the surface: "materially just lying there, flat, while conjuring substance and space in the eye".

Lord Frederic Leighton (1830-1896)

Il Primo barone Frederic Leighton è stato uno scultore e pittore Britannico e membro della Confraternita dei Preraffaelliti. Le sue opere a soggetto storico, biblico e mitologico sono tra gli esempi più raffinati di arte vittoriana.

Destinatario di numerosi premi e riconoscimenti nazionali ed internazionali, conosceva bene i membri della famiglia reale e la maggior parte dei grandi artisti, scrittori e politici della tarda epoca vittoriana.

Studiò all'University College School di Londra, prima di partire per l'Europa continentale in viaggio di studio.

Oscar Wilde / Daniel Gerhartz

"Beauty is a form of Genius--is higher, indeed, than Genius, as it needs no explanation.

It is one of the great facts of the world, like sunlight, or springtime, or the reflection in the dark waters of that silver shell we call the moon. It cannot be questioned.

It has divine right of sovereignty. It makes princes of those who have it".

Paul Klee (Swiss-born German painter, 1879-1940)

Klee has been variously associated with expressionism, cubism, futurism, surrealism and abstraction, but his pictures are difficult to classify.

He generally worked in isolation from his peers, and interpreted new art trends in his own way.

He was inventive in his methods and technique.

Klee worked in many different media-oil paint, watercolor, ink, pastel, etching, and others.

Zoe Bradley, l'artista di carta

L'artista pluripremiata Zoe Bradley ha scoperto il suo amore per la carta durante la realizzazione di capi sperimentali plissettati a mano per la sfilata A/I 2005 della stilista giapponese Michiko Koshino.

Stava usando la carta come materiale che si è rivelato un momento cruciale nella sua carriera. L'artista esperto di moda aveva lavorato come apprendista con il defunto Alexander McQueen nel 1997, creando alcuni dei pezzi chiave per la sua sfilata prêt-à-porter P/E del 1999, tra cui il corsetto e le gonne a ventaglio in legno punzonato che catturano i titoli dei giornali, così come le gambe protesiche indossate da Aimee Mullins.

Van Gogh | Red Vineyards at Arles, 1888

Author: Vincent van Gogh (1853–1890)
Title: The Red Vineyard
Description: The only painting Vincent van Gogh is certainly known to have sold during his lifetime.
Date: Arles, 4 November 1888
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 75 × 93 cm (29.5 × 36.6 in)
Current location: Pushkin Museum

In October, 1888 Gauguin arrived in Aries and moved in with Van Gogh, who was beside himself with excitement and dream of starting if not an artists' colony, at the very least a shared studio. Van Gogh had met Gauguin two gears previously and was in awe of the slightly older artist, whose own opinion of himself was greatly inflated.

The stay ended in disaster culminating in Van Gogh's self-mutilation, but prior to this the two artists had worked on similar projects, and Gauguin's influence can be seen on Van Gogh's paintings of this time.