PABLO PICASSO "For those who know how to read, I have painted my autobiography" In all his painting work,

Picasso seemed to despise the existing rules of composition, real-life accuracy and handling of space. It looks like a joy for him to play with his models, colors and canvas. All the figures are deformed, misshapen, some of them looking like having masks for faces. The paintings are made of bold lines and angular planes, adding a sort of violence to the composition. Colors seem to be used to suggest the various forms, adding new means of expression in painting. Les Demoiselles d'Avignon was the first full-blown example of analytical Cubism, an attempt to depict three dimensions without the use of perspective. It is characterised by an emphasis on formal geometrical criteria rather than the use of colour. Growing tired of conventional painting objectives and techniques, he found a new means of artistic expression for the new society in which he was living. Thus, he created a new style Picasso's figures are broken into fragments and geometric shapes, occupying various planes, with no unifying point of view and no fixed perspective. Thus, he tried to reveal a more profound reality Picasso was the founder of Cubism, in which he deconstructed the conventions of space, which were dominant since Renaissance. He also invented collage the abandonment of the idea of the picture as a window on objects in the world, the objects having now metaphorical means. Picasso was always eager to place himself in history, and some of his greatest works, such as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (1907), refer to a wealth of past precedents - even while overturning them. As he matured he became only more conscious of assuring his legacy, and his late work is characterized by a frank dialogue with Old Masters such as Jean-Auguste Dominique Ingres, Diego Velazquez, Francisco Goya, and Rembrandt van Rijn.

AMEDEO MODIGLIANI "What I am searching for is neither the real nor the unreal, but the subconscious, the mystery of what is instinctive in the human race." Modigliani was a modernizer of two themes of the art history: the portrait and the nude. The nudes of Modigliani are noticeably devoid of the modesty and mythological subtext present in many earlier works. The single-figure portraits are a unique combination of specificity and generalization, revealing the subjects' personalities and psychological insights, the use of recurring motifs - long necks and almond-shaped eyes - lending them uniformity. This seems to be the artist's signature's style. He was fascinated with the human form and physiognomy. The artist is not interested in recording facts or persons for posterity, but rather to capture the image of a person at a given moment in the artist's life. He uses facial expressions or the position of the hands to capture something of their personality The single-figure pieces have been called visions of humanity. The monochromatic tones and structural concerns of his earlier portraits have become less important than the inherently expressive, harmonious, curvilinear compositions, closer to the sinuous lines of the caryatid drawings of 1913. They suggest melancholy, their calm being so much in contrast with the artist's tumultuous and chaotic personal life. A possible interest in African tribal masks is almost obviouus in his portraits. In both his painting and sculpture, the sitters' faces resemble ancient Egyptian painting in their flat and mask-like appearance, with almond eyes, small mouths, twisted noses, and long necks. The eyes ("mirrors of the soul"), which play an important role in the work of the Symbolist painters are significant characteristics in Modigliani's later development as a painter. Whether closed as in sleep, open or blind, they are always a visionary organ. Like the Italian Renaissance works he admired so much, Modigliani's portraits have the kind of distancing effect that invites the viewer to go beyond the surface of the image in order to discover its secrets. This effect is given by the expressive eyes, which, when blank or painted in a single colour, suggesting that the sitter is absorbed in his or her thoughts. The work of the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi was perhaps the single most important influence on Modigliani's creative development. Although Modigliani is best known as a painter, he focused on sculpture early on in his career. The sculpture Modigliani created influenced his work as a painter, this leading to abstraction and linearity. In stylistic terms he was an oddity: contemporary with the Cubists, but not part of their movement, he forms a bridge between the generation of Toulouse-Lautrec and the Art Deco painters of the 1920s.

GIUSEPPE ARCIMBOLDO Due to his strange presentation of the human figure, there is a debate among art critics that Arcimboldos paintings are the work of a deranged mind. A more likely explanation, however, is that the paintings arebelong to the Renaissance era in which he lived, which was fascinated with riddles, puzzles, and the bizarre. Archimboldo is best known for his composite heads. Strange yet scientifically accurate, the unusual heads are grotescque compositions of fruits, vegetables, flowers, fish, birds and books arranged in an original manner so as to resemble human portraits. His paintings contained allegorical meanings, puns, and jokes that were appreciated by his contemporaries but lost upon audiences of a later date. Fonteo sees the connection between the Elements and the Seasons partly in terms of common features or pairs of features - cold/ warm and wet/dry - which can be combined in four different ways so that the following correspondences can be established: "Summer is hot and dry, like Fire. Winter is cold and wet, like Water. Air and Spring are both hot and wet, and Autumn and the Earth are cold and dry." We experience a strange impression of chaos and confusion, but this is only superficial; it is likely an apparent harmony emphasizing the characteristics of the subject painted

EDWARD HOPPER The man's the work. Something doesn't come out of nothing This offers a clue to interpreting the work of an artist who was not only intensely private, but who made solitude and introspection important themes in his painting. He is the portrayer of the commonplace, yet making the ordinary poetic. Early in his life as a painter, the artist tended to represent himself as homely, ungraceful and skinny. He also captured images of immigrants or women dominating men in comic situations. In his later life, he depicted mostly women as figures in his paintings. Depicted both in rural and urban scenes, his paintings reflected the artist's personal vision of modern American life Hopper paid particular attention to geometrical design and the careful placement of human figures in balance with their environment. He was a slow and methodical artist. The effective use of light and shadow to create mood is also central to Hoppers methods. Bright sunlight (as an emblem of insight or revelation), and the shadows also play symbolically powerful roles in Hopper paintings such as Early Sunday Morning (1930), Summertime (1943), Seven A.M. (1948), and Sun in an Empty Room (1963). His use of light and shadow effects have been compared to the cinematography of film noir The sources used by Hopper are the common features of American life (gas stations, motels, restaurants, theaters, railroads, and street scenes) and its inhabitants and also seascapes and rural landscapes. Regarding his style, Hopper defined himself as an amalgam of many races and not a member of any school Hopper's figures (either singles or groups) are perceived in interaction with their environment. His primary emotional themes are solitude, loneliness, regret, boredom, and resignation. He expresses the emotions in various environments, including the office, in public places, in apartments, on the road, or on vacation. The recurring images in Hopper's works is the view of a body of water: seascapes and nautical scenes, lighthouse, harbors, rivers, bridges. Water symbolizes here the freedom and the escape. His empty places and solitary figures repeatedly suggested loneliness. "It's probably a reflection of my own, if I may say, loneliness. I don't know. It could be the whole human condition."He felt a frustration in human relationship that he communicated in his arthis theatres are often semideserted, with a few patrons waiting for the curtain to go up or the performers isolated in the fierce light of the stage. Morbidity and his characteristic pessimism are also indicated by Hopper's predilection for painting watercolors of houses surrounded by dead trees: Dead Trees (1923), Dead Tree and Side of Lombard House (1931), House with Dead Tree (1932) and Four Dead Trees (1942).

Giorgio de Chirico "To become truly immortal a work of art must escape all human limits: logic and common sense will only interfere. But once these barriers are broken it will enter the regions of childhood vision and dream." The founder of the Metaphysical art movement, Giorgio de Chirico was an Italian (Born in Volos, Greece) surrealist painter, whose work implied a metaphysical questioning of reality De Chirico is best known for the paintings he produced between 1909 and 1919, his metaphysical period, which are memorable for the haunted, brooding moods evoked by their images. His poetic characteristics are given by the feeling condensed through metaphor and association. The choice of topiccs show the strong influence of Friedrich Nietzsche's works. Reality and dream worlds mingle, he paints fantastic ideal architecture and city and landscapes views, strictly following the rules of perspectives. His scenes are not conventional cityscapes but rather haunted streets we might encounter in dreams. They seem to be symbols arranged in disordered collections. Key to de Chirico's work is his love of the classical past. For de Chirico, the themes and motifs of the Greek and Roman Classics remained contemporary even in the modern world. However, he recognized that the clash of the past and present produced strange effects suggesting sorrow, disorientation, nostalgia. His paintings are characterized by a visionary, poetic use of imagery, in which themes such as nostalgia, enigma and myth are explored His abrupt stylistic changes, however, have obscured the continuity of his approach, which was rooted in the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, and this has often led to controversy Morbid, introspective and unpleasant, de Chirico belonged to the company of the convalescents: Cavafy, Leopardi, Proust. The city was his sanatorium, and as a fabricator of images that spoke of frustration, tension and ritualized memory, he had no equal.

SANDRO BOTTICELLI His graceful pictures of the Madonna and Child, his altarpieces and his life-size mythological paintings, such as Venus and Mars, were immensely popular in his lifetime. In his mythological works, such as The Birth of Venus (in the Uffizi, Florence) and Venus and Mars , he successfully combined a decorative use of line (possibly owing much to his early training as a goldsmith) with elements of the classical tradition, seen in the harmony of his composition and the smooth contours of his figures Botticelli's early works followed the then popular style in Florence which placed importance on the human figure rather than on space. His characters are displayed as melancholic and thoughtful. After 1490, during his mature creation period, Botticelli focused on paintings with several small figures, so that the entire picture seemed more alive. Many works are examples of this new method, such as the Calumny of Apelles, the Crucifixion, the Last Communion of St. Jerome and the Nativity, which used an old design of Fra Angelico and an inscription referring to current predictions of the end of the world. The task with which Botticelli was charged at Rome was to take part with other leading artists of the time (Ghirlandaio, Cosimo Rosselli, Perugino and Pinturicchio) in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel at the Vatican. His share in the decoration of the walls with subjects from the Old and the New Testament consists of three frescoes, one illustrating the history of Moses (several episodes of his early life arranged in a single composition); another the destruction of Korah, Dathan and Abiram; a third the temptation of Christ by Satan (in this case the main theme is relegated to the background, while the foreground is filled with an animated scene representing the ritual for the purification of a leper). These three frescoes may be taken as the central and most important productions of his career. Botticellis style evolved into one that was very distinct. His portraits seemed to have a melancholy or sad characteristic to them. Sandro stressed line and detail using them to bring his characters alive as if acting out a scene. He mingled Christianity and pagan ideas which may have included mythology. One theme that Botticelli used over and over again was the idea of a very sad young girl that was detached from what was going on around her. This theme appeared in many of his portraits throughout his career. Another theme Botticelli liked were the roles male and females played in society. Sometimes Sandro would show traditional roles, but other times, he showed females as the dominant, most important figure. He is famous for his Madonna paintings.In these pictures the fascination lies more in the expression of the Mother and Child and in the look on the faces of the half-grown boy-angels than in the unaffected simplicity of the pose and composition.Two of these pictures, circular in form (called tondo, round) have become very famous. Both are in Florence; one is the "Magnificat". and in the other the Child is holding a pomegranate. A circular canvas at Berlin which depicts the Madonna enthroned and surrounded by angels carrying candles is characterized by deep religious feeling. The look of melancholy on the face of the Mother of God had a strange attraction for the painter.