Claude Debussy: "Music is the space between the notes"!

(Achille) Claude Debussy (22 August 1862 – 25 March 1918) was a French composer. He is sometimes seen as the first Impressionist composer, although he vigorously rejected the term.

He was among the most influential composers of the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Born to a family of modest means and little cultural involvement, Debussy showed enough musical talent to be admitted at the age of ten to France's leading music college, the Conservatoire de Paris.

He originally studied the piano, but found his vocation in innovative composition, despite the disapproval of the Conservatoire's conservative professors.

He took many years to develop his mature style, and was nearly 40 when he achieved international fame in 1902 with the only opera he completed, Pelléas et Mélisande.

Jacques-Émile Blanche (1861-1942) | Claude Debussy, 1902

Wassily Kandinsky: "Il colore è un potere che influenza direttamente l'anima"!

• "Il colore è il tasto, l'occhio il martelletto, l'anima il pianoforte dalle molte corde.

L'artista è una mano che toccando questo o quel tasto mette in vibrazione l'anima umana".

• "Colour is the keyboard, the eyes are the hammers, the soul is the piano with many strings.

The artist is the hand that plays, touching one key or another purposively, to cause vibrations in the soul".

• "A parallel between color and music can only be relative - just as a violin can give warm shades of tone, so yellow has shades, which can be expressed by various instruments".

• "In generale il colore è un mezzo che consente di esercitare un influsso diretto sull'anima".

Martha Graham: "La danza è un canto del corpo, sia esso di gioia o di pena"!

• "I più grandi ballerini non sono grandi per il loro livello tecnico, sono grandi per la loro passione".

• "Le nostre braccia hanno origine dalla schiena perché un tempo erano ali".

• "Non danziamo con i piedi: danziamo con le ovaie, con l’utero, e con tutto il corpo e l’anima".

• "Io non volevo essere un albero, un fiore o un’onda. Nel corpo di una danzatrice noi, in quanto pubblico, dobbiamo vedere noi stessi, non l’imitazione del comportamento, delle azioni di ogni giorno; non fenomeni della natura, non creature esotiche di un altro pianeta: ma qualcosa, una piccola cosa di quel miracolo che è l’essere umano".

Anna Vinogradova

Dalai Lama: 18 principi della felicità

1. Tieni sempre conto del fatto che un grande amore e dei grande risultati comportano un grande rischio.

2. Quando perdi, non perdere la lezione.

3. Segui sempre le tre "R": Rispetto per te stesso, Rispetto per gli altri, Responsabilità per le tue azioni.

4. Ricorda che non ottenere quel che si vuole può essere talvolta un meraviglioso colpo di fortuna.

5. Impara le regole, affinché tu possa infrangerle in modo appropriato.

Lorenzo Quinn

Fredric Michael Wood, 1944 | Pittore impressionista

Fredric Michael Wood: "Art first came to my attention in a serious way as a boy fortunate to spend many of my formative years in Europe while we were stationed there as a military family.

I was hooked when I discovered an old impressionist oil painting, in a storeroom in our house overseas, of the French countryside, and I stared at it for a long long time trying to imagine how one could paint such a scene! I resolved to get beyond my little drawings and watercolors, and learn to paint like that!

Thanks to childhood, naiveté, I didn't know then how difficult that would be, when, later, much later, I would discover great artists of the past such as John S. Sargent, Joaquin Sorolla, Anders Zorn, and Frank Tenney Johnson, along with illustrators like Howard Pyle and others from the Golden Age of Illustration", as well as contemporary artists, Andrew Wyeth, and John Asarro, and so many others of my contemporaries, whose work would compel, but challenge me so"!

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Terrace at Cagnes, 1905

Suffering from severe rheumatism late in life, Renoir often visited Cagnes, a town in southern France. He rented an apartment in the Maison de La Poste (post office building) and lived there from 1903 to 1907.

We see that building on the right side of this painting. Renoir could view the streets of Cagnes and its orchards from a window in his apartment.

This painting presents, in limpid brushwork, the houses and orchards arranged stepwise on the hill.

The woman seated on the wall is wearing a white hat and a red jacket.

Beside her is a child in a straw hat. | Source: © Artizon Museum, Ishibashi Foundation

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Terrace at Cagnes, 1905 | Bridgestone Museum of Art

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Lise - La femme a l'ombrelle, 1867

Lise, also known as Lise - La femme à l'ombrelle, or Lise with a Parasol, is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Pierre-Auguste Renoir, created in 1867 during his early Salon period.

The full-length painting depicts model Lise Tréhot posing in a forest.

She wears a white muslin dress and holds a black lace parasol to shade her from the sunlight, which filters down through the leaves, contrasting her face in the shadow and her body in the light, highlighting her dress rather than her face.