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...
For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the...
Audubon’s ambitious project to paint all the birds of North America resulted in a work that represents one of the greatest advances in ornithology. Not only did he identify new species, he also...
A timeless theme that cannot be ignored, love has always fascinated artists. Painters, sculptors and even architects have drawn inspiration from and illustrated it. Ever new, love has led artists to...
If sensuality had a name, it would be without doubt Utamaro. Delicately underlining the Garden of Pleasures that once constituted Edo, Utamaro, by the richness of his fabrics, the swan-like necks of...
Pierre-Auguste Renoir was born in Limoges on 25 February 1841. In 1854, the boy’s parents took him from school and found a place for him in the Lévy brothers’ workshop, where he was to learn to paint...
Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he...
Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The...
Influenced by the masters of Antiquity, the genius of Michelangelo and Baroque sculpture, particularly of Bernini, Auguste Rodin (1840-1917) is one of the most renowned artists in history. Though...
Leonardo’s early life was spent in Florence, his maturity in Milan, and the last three years of his life in France. Leonardo’s teacher was Verrocchio. First he was a goldsmith, then a painter and...
Degas was closest to Renoir in the impressionist’s circle, for both favoured the animated Parisian life of their day as a motif in their paintings. Degas did not attend Gleyre’s studio; most likely he...
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. He...
Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill...
For Claude Monet the designation ‘impressionist’ always remained a source of pride. In spite of all the things critics have written about his work, Monet continued to be a true impressionist to the...
In 1905 Georgia travelled to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she enrolled at the Art Students’ League in New York City, where she studied with William Merritt...
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...
Rembrandt is completely mysterious in his spirit, his character, his life, his work and his method of painting. What we can divine of his essential nature comes through his painting and the trivial...
Even today, the splendid appearance of angels remains undiminished. Images of these heavenly and powerful messengers convey protection, innocence and calm, and have been an inspiration to religious...
The final book of the Bible, known both as The Book of Revelation and The Apocalypse of John, is a prophesy of the events that will occur at the end of time. During the Middle Ages, in a society...
Throughout time, artists have maintained a close relationship with the animal world, which has proved to be an inexhaustible source of inspiration. First, they received inspiration directly from their...
Hieronymus Bosch was painting frightening, yet vaguely likable monsters long before computer games were ever invented, often including a touch of humour. His works are assertive statements about the...
Pieter Brueghel was the first important member of a family of artists who were active for four generations. Firstly a drawer before becoming a painter later, he painted religious themes, such as...
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...
Since The Turkish Baths (1863) by the French painter Ingres, the Far Eastern woman has, to many, been a symbol of out of reach or forbidden pleasures. Seafaring explorers, military adventurers and...
Mega Square Herbarium is based on the work of Basilius Besler, the famous plant expert who, for the first time in history, described, painted and engraved over a thousand species of plants. His...
Mega Square In Praise of the Backside celebrates the most sensual part of the female body. The insightful text by Hans-Jürgen Döpp discusses the backside as a feature that stands for both powerful...
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....
Just as there is a fundamental difference in the use of the words “naked” and “nude”, the unclothed body can evoke a feeling of delight or shame, serving as a symbol of contradictory concepts – beauty...
