How Pavel Tretyakov competed with the emperor to create the most famous art gallery in Moscow
Before the revolution, patronage of the arts was considered not only charitable, but also beneficial for the donor himself, and the point here was not taxes at all. According to…

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What snacks are hidden by "Madonna della Loggia" Botticelli
Madonna della Loggia, one of the most discussed works by Sandro Botticelli, will leave his native Uffizi and go on a tour of Russia with three stages: - from September…

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Creativity for the Mentally Ill: A Book That Changed History
Sometimes you can hear such a statement that in order to create a masterpiece, you must be either a genius or a madman. Tarragon - the hero of the play…

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slightly upturned

7 beloved women by Pablo Picasso

“If he had not become an artist, he would have become Don Juan,” once said a friend of Pablo Picasso, the French playwright Jacques Cocteau. And it’s hard to disagree with him. You can write a lot about the views of the artist (creative, smoothly flowing into sharply political), family and friends (who have had a significant impact on his success), but this review will focus on the role of women in the work of Pablo Picasso.
In many ways, the stages of the artist’s work (blue, pink, cubic, etc.) were accompanied by the woman who was next to him during his life. To be more precise, it was the woman who led him to one or another stage of the creative path with the totality of her styles and directions. As Picasso himself admitted: “Life is extended by work and women.” Continue reading

“Love Letter” by Jan Vermeer: Why the lute is central to the picture

Cristobal Balenciaga once said that “a good fashion designer should be an architect for patterns, a sculptor for form, an artist for design, a musician for harmony, and a philosopher for fit.” And it is not surprising that in the 20th century he ruled high fashion with innovative clothing inspired by unusually traditional Spanish sources. The Basque fashion designer took replicas from regional clothing, folk costumes, bullfights, flamenco dances, Catholicism and, of course, from the history of painting. And in the end, he created what conquered the world for centuries.

The Balenciaga collection is full of stocky silhouettes, stooped shoulders and neat trouser lines. But the fashion house today, under the leadership of Demna Gvasalia, represents a completely different aesthetic than what Cristobal himself did during his lifetime. “They cannot be compared,” explains Eloy Martinez de la Pera, curator of the new Balenciaga and Spanish Painting exhibition in Madrid, which combines ninety works of the Balenciaga couture with 56 masterpieces of Spanish painting that inspired the designer. “Balenciaga’s story ended when he stopped making clothes. His story was extremely personal, but today Balenciaga has a completely different story, and it is also worth telling. ” And in order to truly recognize Cristobal himself, it is important to know the key elements of Spanish art that shaped his aesthetic vision. Continue reading

“Love Letter” by Jan Vermeer: Why the lute is central to the picture

At the first glance at Jan Vermeer’s famous painting “Love Letter”, the name seems far-fetched, because the letter itself is hardly noticeable. But the lute in the hands of a woman plays a much more significant symbolic role. What does the letter contain? And what does the lute matter in the picture?

Genre painting
The paintings, which allow the observer to look at the everyday life of the depicted people, were especially popular in the XVII and XVIII centuries. They are called genre paintings, and Dutch genre art occupies an undeniable place at this stage in the history of art. A particularly popular topic was symbolism. Pictures depicting love letters can be attributed to a separate category of genre painting. Artists such as Jan Vermeer, Gabriel Metsu and Samuel van Hoogstrate have contributed to the world of art with canvases of this plot. Continue reading

Was there a boy, or what they argue about for many years, looking at Chardin’s picture “Prayer before dinner”
He was called the "artist of animals and fruits." He had a significant influence on Henri Matisse and Paul Cezanne. In art, this artist sought naturalness and humanity as opposed…

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How the main romantic of Germany Caspar Friedrich spoke about God with atmospheric landscapes
Caspar David Friedrich is one of the leading figures in the German romantic movement. His mysterious, atmospheric landscapes and seascapes proclaimed human helplessness against the forces of nature and did…

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Giuseppe Arcimboldo - a phenomenal artist of the 16th century
This year marks almost 430 years since the death of Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist known for his original portraits of fruits, vegetables, flowers and fish. Giuseppe so skillfully portrayed…

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