The Art Institute of Chicago is one of the rare art museums that was founded by artists, rather than by collectors. With the Chicago Academy of Design in 1866, a group of 35 artists started a free art school with

Thomas Mann (1875-1955) won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1929 for his highly symbolic, ironic and epic novels and novellas. A determined social critic, his writings provide biting insights into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual within

The Fêtes galante style was a term specifically created by the French Academy in the early 18th century to describe Watteau’s paintings of country or parkland parties. It was his way of giving his patrons what they wanted, namely, pictures

Film director Martin Scorsese commented in 2005, “If Caravaggio were alive today he would have loved the cinema; his paintings take a cinematic approach… He painted religious subject matter but the models were obviously people from the streets; he had

The city of Salzburg rose from a small Celtic settlement into a powerful economic center because of its trade in salt. The city regulated the collection of tolls and taxes from barges ferrying salt from the northern part of the

In 2021 we commemorate the Quincentenary of the birth of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). He was an enigmatic, rebellious and dangerous individual, and he did affect a paradigm shift in the arts. His paintings probed the physical and emotional

The internationally renowned sculptor John Henry has produced a substantial number of monumental and large-scaled works across the United States, Europe, and Asia. His sculptures resemble huge welded steel drawings, “arranging linear and rectilinear elements that appear to defy gravity

In 1947, with Lucifer, American painter Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) put down his brush, laid his canvas on the floor, and started to apply his paint by drips and spatters. In this canvas, he also added small bits of gravel to