Kahlil Gibran | I am neither an artist, nor a poet / Non sono né un artista né un poeta..

Non sono né un artista né un poeta.

Ho trascorso i miei giorni scrivendo e dipingendo,

ma non sono in sintonia

con i miei giorni e le mie notti.

Sono una nube,

una nube che si confonde con gli oggetti,

ma ad essi mai si unisce.

I am neither an artist, nor a poet.

I have spent my days writing and painting,

but I am not in accord

with my days and my nights.

I am a cloud,

a cloud that mingles with objects,

but never becomes united with them.

Johannes Gabriel Jentzsch (German painter🎨, 1862-1930) - The Duet, 1923

Alda Merini | Yesterday I suffered pain / Ieri ho sofferto il dolore..

Ieri ho sofferto il dolore,
non sapevo che avesse una faccia sanguigna
le labbra di metallo dure,
una mancanza netta d'orizzonti.

Yesterday I suffered pain,

I did not know it had a bloodied face,

hard lips of metal,

a total lack of horizons.

Edouard Hamman (Belgian painter, 1819-1888) - Disillusion, 1851

Richard Bergh | Nordic Summer Evening, 1899-1900

A man and a woman gaze pensively at a quiet evening landscape. The glassy water of the bay reflects the soft twilight.

The light falls on the pair from the left.

The woman is wearing a long white dress, while the man, his arms crossed and resting a foot on the balustrade, is dressed in a dark suit. Quietly, the couple contemplate Nature.

The landscape reflects the calmness of their mood - or is there something more going on under the surface?

Is there not a sense of psychological or erotic tension between the two?

Between human civilization and Nature there is a boundary, here represented by the balustrade, with its human-like openings. The rowing boat in the centre of the image, moored to a jetty, may have a symbolic meaning. Perhaps it stands for the ties of marriage, for the juxtaposition of security and liberty, or a longing to escape culture for a while.

Richard Bergh (Swedish painter, 1858-1919)

Sven Richard Bergh was born in Stockholm at the end of 1858. He was the son of the Johan Edvard Bergh, who formerly spent time as a lawyer before devoting his life to his landscape painting and becoming an art teacher. His mother was also an artist and so their son was introduced to art at a very early age.

The family were wealthy and mixed with the cultural elite of Stockholm. Bergh studied at the Royal Swedish Academy of Arts in Stockholm.

He travelled on many occasions to France, often to escape the exacting academicism of that art establishment, where he visited the artist’s colony at Grez-sur-Loing just south of Fontainebleau. The colony was modelled on another famous Parisian artist colony at Barbizon, which was set up some thirty years earlier.

Pablo Neruda | Non t’amo come se fossi rosa di sale..

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Non t’amo come se fossi rosa di sale, topazio

o freccia di garofani che propagano il fuoco:

t’amo come si amano certe cose oscure,

segretamente, tra l’ombra e l’anima.

Clemente Tafuri🎨 (Italian painter, 1903-1971)

Judith Leyster | Baroque Era painter

Judith Leyster (1609–1660) is the most famous female painter of the Dutch Golden Age.

Unlike many contemporary female artists, who concentrated on meticulously painting true-to-life flowers and insects, she ventured into more ambitious figure-based projects.

Competing with Frans Hals, Leyster chose remarkably similar themes: portraits, children playing, dancing musicians and a drinking actor.

She is also known for her innovative and evocative night scenes, in which she experimented with the subtle effects of light and dark.

Judith Leyster | Two Children with a Cat, 1629

Ivan Shishkin | Peredvizhniki Art movement

Ivan Ivanovich Shishkin (Ива́н Ива́нович Ши́шкин; 25 January 1832 - 20 March 1898) was a Russian landscape painter closely associated with the Peredvizhniki movement - a group of Russian realist artists who formed an artists' cooperative in protest of academic restrictions; it evolved into the Society for Travelling Art Exhibitions in 1870.

Shishkin (1832-1898) was born in Yelabuga of Vyatka Governorate (today Republic of Tatarstan), and graduated from the Kazan gymnasium.

Then he studied at the Moscow School of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture for four years.

After that, he attended the Saint Petersburg Imperial Academy of Arts from 1856-1860, and graduated with the highest honours and a gold medal.