A symbol of modernity, the Viennese Secession was defined by the rebellion of twenty artists who were against the conservative Vienna Künstlerhaus' oppressive influence over the city, the epoch, and...
Marc Chagall was born into a strict Jewish family for whom the ban on representations of the human figure had the weight of dogma. A failure in the entrance examination for the Stieglitz School did...
Paul Gauguin was first a sailor, then a successful stockbroker in Paris. In 1874 he began to paint at weekends as a Sunday painter. Nine years later, after a stock-market crash, he felt confident of...
Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy...
Van Dyck was accustomed early to Rubens’ sumptuous lifestyle; and, when he visited Italy with letters of introduction from his master, lived in the palaces of his patrons, himself adopting such an...
Whistler suddenly shot to fame like a meteor at a crucial moment in the history of art, a field in which he was a pioneer. Like the impressionists, with whom he sided, he wanted to impose his own...
Ever since its triumph at the Paris Universal Exposition, Art Nouveau has continued to inspire artists. The movement offered an artistic response to the industrial revolution and the creative vacuum...
The art of porcelain manufacturing is linked closely to China and its history, appearing in the 7th century when it became an important symbol of royalty or high status. The masterpieces of the genre...
Flowers are the centerpiece in the majority of pictorial still-lifes. By painting their colours and forms, artists from Brueghel to O’Keeffe have created symbols for both life and mortality. Van...
Reflecting their owner’s taste and serving as an impressive exhibition space for visitors, cabinets of curiosities were a place of interest in the houses of the wealthy in the 16th an 17th centuries....
Encounter one of history’s greatest civilisations through miniatures. In Persian Miniatures, the story of the magnificent Persian Empire is told by way of a small but vibrant artistic tradition. The...
Cézanne transformed a teacup into something alive, raising still-life to the point that it ceased to be inanimate. Wassily Kandinsky said about the French artist: “He painted these things as human...
A jeweler with an established reputation through the world, Louis Comfort Tiffany was the spearhead of the Art Nouveau movement in the United States. At a time and in a country in perpetual growth,...
Art Deco style was established on the ashes of a disappeared world, the one from before the First World War, and on the foundation stone of a world yet to become, opened to the most undisclosed...
La période baroque s’étend du début du XVIIe siècle au milieu du XVIIIe siècle. Réponse des artistes à l’exigence de grandeur solennelle prônée par l’Église catholique de l’après concile de Trente,...
La période de la Renaissance débute en Italie à la fin du XIVe siècle et s’étend sur tout le continent européen jusqu’à la seconde moitié du XVIe siècle. La redécouverte des splendeurs de la Grèce et...
Terme entré dans l’usage courant au cours de la première moitié du XIXe siècle, l’art roman distingue, en histoire de l’art, la période qui s’étend entre le début du XIe siècle jusqu’à la fin du XIIe...
En associant le mot rocaille, référence aux formes alambiquées des coquillages, à l’italien baroco, les Français donnèrent naissance au terme de « rococo ». Apparu au début du XVIIIe siècle, il...
« À chaque âge son art, à chaque art sa liberté. » Voila la devise de la Sécession viennoise, mouvement dissident (1892-1906), qui fut porté par une vingtaine d’artistes éclairés luttant contre...
Vincent van Gogh (Groot-Zundert, Brabant, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890) La vie et l'oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh sont si étroitement liées qu'il est quasiment impossible de voir ses toiles sans y lire...
