ART TECHNIQUES
Watercolor (from Italia. aquarello) means painting with water based paints. There are several varieties of watercolor techniques: dry-painting on dry paper, with drying each layer of paint before applying the…

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Incorrigible stubborn: brilliant impressionist with a heavy character
Claude Monet is known as one of the founders of impressionism. The artist could magically convey on canvas the impressions of what he saw. Considering his paintings, full of appeasement,…

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Secrets of self-portraits of famous artists: Reflection in the mirror, portrait-bacon and other oddities
Self-portrait in most cases is an instrument of narcissism, an attempt to leave your image in eternity. But if a genius takes up the matter, his image on canvas can…

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Little-known facts about the dark side of the brilliant artist Caravaggio

He was one of the great masters of baroque, and his difficult life in many respects determined his creation, which today is admired throughout the world. And Caravaggio himself believed that painting is not only a matter of reflecting reality, but also turning it into something more: “You must not only look at my paintings, but also feel them.”

The artist was known to contemporaries not only for his works, but also for his controversial nature, and in his life there were many stories – both tragic and anecdotal.

1. Real name
His real name was Michelangelo Merisi, but he was better known as “El Caravaggio” (in honor of the small town in Lombardy, where his family came from). Continue reading

Dumas’ Three Musketeers for Almost 175 Years: Masterpieces Illustrations Drawn in Different Years

Many in adolescence were read by the works of Alexander Dumas, and especially the novel “Three Musketeers”, filled with adventures and historical events of 1625-1628, as well as entertaining illustrations. Next year, the novel will celebrate 175 years, during which artists from different countries have repeatedly illustrated it. One of the best publications is considered an anniversary edition – to the 50th anniversary of the novel with masterpiece illustrations by the French artist Maurice Leloir. But after so many years, contemporary artists also do not bypass the immortal creation of Alexander Dumas. Continue reading

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 “Waiting for Godot” by Samuel Becket, said that “we are all born crazy. And some of them remain … “Yes, and where is the line that separates genius from madness? In 1922, a German psychiatrist published a book in which he showed the work of the mentally ill, and this book made a splash among both the psychiatric society and artists.

The fact that some very talented, and even brilliant people suffered from various mental disorders is not news. So, it is known that Gogol suffered from manic-depressive psychosis, and Leo Tolstoy often had bouts of depression that alternated with numerous phobias. Maxim Gorky was prone to vagrancy and pyromania, and some experts insist that Lermontov suffered from a form of schizophrenia that he inherited from his mother. Continue reading

Unknown portrait of da Vinci brush
It may seem that the legacy of Leonardo da Vinci has many paintings - this artist, who died five hundred years ago, is mentioned too much and too often in…

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VARIETIES OF THE GENRE CITYSCAPE
Cityscape is a genre of fine art in which the main subject of the image are city streets and buildings. In European art, the cityscape, as a separate genre of…

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Solid Charm: Elizabeth Boehm Vintage Postcards
Postcards of Elizabeth Boehm were incredibly popular at the turn of the XIX-XX centuries. They could be seen in the collections of the imperial family, in the Tretyakov Gallery and…

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