It was in 1946 that the world first came to hear of a coral atoll in the Marshall Islands called Bikini. The following year, French couturier Louis Reart borrowed the name and applied it to a bathing costume for women. Breaking with decades of borin…
As a one of the foremost painters of the 20th century, Dali, like Picasso and Warhol, can boast of having overturned the art of the previous century and directed contemporary art toward its present incarnation. As irrational as he was surrealist, t…
"Encounter one of history's greatest civilisations through miniatures. In Persian Miniatures, the story of the magnificent Persian Empire is told by way of an artistic tradition on a small but vibrant scale. This unique collection of colourful minia…
Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) was a Russian painter credited as being among the first to truly venture into abstract art. He persisted in expressing his internal world of abstraction despite negative criticism from his peers. He veered away from pai…
Brilliantand cosmopolitan, John Singer Sargent was notorious for his portraits of illustrious men and women of the time. Nevertheless, he is the artist of many important works including oil paintings, watercolours and drawings, all retracing the ste…
Renowned landscapist and precursor to the Impressionist movement, Joseph Mallord William Turner shook up the art world of his time. Hailed as the absolute master of light, he was one of the first to go beyond the limits of figurative art to offer a…
The seascapes of Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) made his name in Russia, his native country where he was a painter of the court of Nicholas I, yet his fame barely extended beyond these borders. Master of the Sublime, he made the ocean the principal sub…
They met in 1928; Frida Kahlo was then 21 years old and Diego Rivera was twice her age. He was already an international reference, she only aspired to become one. An intense artistic creation, along with pain and suffering, was generated by this tor…
Fascinated from a young age by crafting models with her hands, French sculptor, painter, and draughtswoman Camille Claudel (1864-1943) fought to overcome the hurdles placed in the way of female artists and carved a place for herself in the history o…
Beloved Swedish artist Carl Larsson (1853-1919) emerged from poor beginnings to earn an esteemed place in the hearts and minds of his countrymen. Now known the world over for his delicate, luminous pictures of his family and their idyllic life in th…
Through his eclecticism, William Morris (1834-1896) was one of the most emblematic personalities of the nineteenth century. Painter, architect, poet and engineer, wielding the quill as well as the brush, he jolted Victorian society by discarding sta…
Considered one of the founding fathers of abstract art, Whistler is also seen as the initiator of English Impressionism. Adhering to the harmony of shapes and colours, he created his canvases like a musician composes a melody. Whistler lived by the…
A pioneering artist of the Parisian art scene at the end of the 19th century, Emile Bernard overflows with the energy of genius the founding fathers of French Impressionism had set free. His work represents the aesthetically pleasing, some of which…
Street Art is everywhere. Misunderstood and considered illegal for a long time, Urban Art, known as Pressionism, is today deemed an art within itself. From Basquiat to Bando, not forgetting Rammellzee, or even Toxic, this work presents the very firs…
What kind of flowers are in your garden? Now kids can get their hands on the dazzling blossoms that caught the attention of famous artists Children will love these colourful jigsaw puzzles, each made from a well-known painting of flowers. They can e…
Edvard Munch (1863-1944), a Norwegian painter involved in Expressionism, was so attached to his work that he called his paintings his children, which is rather unsurprising given that his paintings were deeply personal. Indeed, Munch expressed much…
A pivotal figure in the Impressionist movement and a participant in every one of their exhibitions, Camille Pissarro (1830-1903) was considered the patriarch of the group. Having been born in the Danish West Indies, travelled in Venezuela, and studi…
Universally celebrated for his rosy and concupiscent nudes, Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) was an artist whose first concern was sensuality in all its forms. This Baroque master devoted himself to a lifelong celebration of the joys and wonders of the…
Since the dawn of Christianity, artists have been fascinated and stirred by the figure of Christ. His likeness appears in frescoes on the walls of catacombs that date from Roman times; he is featured in the stained glass windows of Gothic churches;…
What do artists such as Rembrandt, David, Gauguin, and Hokusai have in common? A virtuosity of the hand, replies Henri Focillon. The viewer often forgets that behind the works, it is first and foremost a hand and its fingers which guide the paintbru…
