Max Ernst 1891-1976 | Pioneer of the Dada art and Surrealism

Max Ernst was a german painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and poet. A prolific artist, Ernst was one of the primary pioneers of the Dada movement and Surrealism. Ernst was born in Brühl, near Cologne, the third of nine children of a middle-class Catholic family. His father Philipp Ernst was a teacher of the deaf and dumb and an amateur painter. A devout Christian and a strict disciplinarian, he inspired in his son a penchant for defying authority, while his interest in painting and sketching in nature influenced Max Ernst to take up painting himself. In 1909 Ernst enrolled in the University of Bonn, studying philosophy, art history, literature, psychology and psychiatry. He visited asylums and became fascinated with the art of the mentally ill patients; he also started painting this year, producing sketches in the garden of the Brühl castle and portraits of his sister and himself. In 1911 Ernst befriended August Macke and joined his Die Rheinischen Expressionisten group of artists, deciding to become an artist. In 1912 he visited the Sonderbund exhibition in Cologne, where works by Pablo Picasso and post-Impressionists such as Vincent Van Gogh and Paul Gauguin profoundly influenced his approach to art. His own work was exhibited the same year together with that of the Das Junge Rheinland group, at Galerie Feldman in Cologne, and then in several group exhibitions in 1913.

Pablo Picasso 1881-1973 | The Cubist Portraits

The total number of artworks he produced has been estimated at 50.000, comprising 1.885 paintings, 1.228 sculptures, 2.880 ceramics, roughly 12.000 drawings, many thousands of prints, and numerous tapestries and rugs. At the time of his death many of his paintings were in his possession, as he had kept off the art market what he did not need to sell. In addition, Picasso had a considerable collection of the work of other famous artists, some his contemporaries, such as Henri Matisse, with whom he had exchanged works. Since Pablo Picasso left no will, his death duties to the French state were paid in the form of his works and others from his collection. These works form the core of the immense and representative collection of the Musée Picasso in Paris. In 2003, relatives of Picasso inaugurated a museum dedicated to him in his birthplace, Málaga, Spain, the Museo Picasso Málaga.

Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was exceptionally prolific throughout his long lifetime. One of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is widely known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage, and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. Among his most famous works are the proto-Cubist Les Demoiselles d'Avignon 1907, and Guernica 1937, a portrayal of the German bombing of Guernica during the Spanish Civil War. Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse and Marcel Duchamp are commonly regarded as the three artists who most defined the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the 20th century, responsible for significant developments in painting, sculpture, printmaking and ceramics. His revolutionary artistic accomplishments brought him universal renown and immense fortune, making him one of the best-known figures in 20th century art.

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904 | Prolific american painter

Martin Johnson Heade was a prolific american painter, known for his salt marsh landscapes, seascapes, portraits of tropical birds such as humming birds, as well as lotus blossoms and other still lifes. 

His painting style and subject matter, while derived from the romanticism of the time, is regarded by art historians as a significant departure from that of his peers. Heade was born in Lumberville, Pennsylvania, the son of a storekeeper. 

He studied with Edward Hicks, and possibly with Thomas Hicks. He travelled to Europe several times as a young man, became an intinerant artist on American shores, and exhibited in Philadelphia in 1841 and New York in 1843.

Richard Burns | American prolific painter

Like many successful artists, Richard Burns was bitten by the art "bug" at a very early age. After years of spending countless hours drawing and sculpting in clay, he decided to make art his life's work while a junior in college. After attending Northern Arizona University, he transferred to Cal. State University Northridge where he majored in art and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in 1978. Painting mainly with acrylics, Rich works to bring his love and appreciation for nature to life through his art. A member of the Nature Conservancy, he has done paintings to benefit various funds and charities founded to raise money to protect the environment and endangered species. He is known the world over for his wildlife art, but along the way, Rich became fascinated by cottages and lighthouses and started adding a great many of these to his collection.

Gary Benfield 1965 | English prolific painter | The Horses

Gary Benfield's artistic style is unique. A pencil in one hand and a paint brush in the other, he approaches the canvas and uses both at the same time, just letting 'what happens, happen.' What's happened so far is quick success and what appears to be the beginning of a very impressive career. Benfield is ambidextrous by training, not by nature. A competitive cyclist since his youth, he has broken his arms multiple times. Over the years he learned to compensate. Today this literal two-fisted ability is one of the things which makes his style so unique.

Martin Johnson Heade 1819-1904 | Prolific american painter

Martin Johnson Heade born in Bucks county, Pa. He began his career as a portrait-painter, studied in Italy, traveled in the west, and then settled in Boston as a landscape-painter. This brought him into relations with Rev. James C. Fletcher, who induced him to visit Brazil with a view to preparing an illustrated work on hum-ruing-birds. The difficulties then existing in prop­erly chromo-lithographing his fine designs caused the abandonment of the work, but the pictures were purchased by Sir Morton Peto and taken to London. Mr. Heade has painted many western and tropical scenes, also views on the Hudson and the Massachusetts coast, which are characterized by rich effects of color and light, and by poetic sentiment. His studio is in New York city. Among his best-known works are "High Tide on the Marshes", "Nicaragua., Off the California Coast" (which was exhibited at the Centennial ex­hibition at Philadelphia in 1876), and "South American Scene." He has recently sent to exhibi­tions of the Academy "On the St. John's River, Florida " (1885), and "Sunset, Florida" (1886).

Gary Benfield 1965 | English prolific painter

Benfield was born on 1965 in Birmingham. He studied art at Stourbridge College of art and at Wrexham College of Art. In 1986 Benfield became a professional freelance illustrator. After leaving the academic world he set up his own studio near London and concentrated on drawing and painting figures. Within a few years his work was collected throughout Europe and his reputation firmly established. Benfield has a natural talent for depicting things as seen. His work is spontaneous and is reflected by his drawn lines and dashes of color. The figures dissolve in and out of their backgrounds and move across the paper. He paints rapidly and discards most of his paintings and drawings, keeping only those he feels are perfected in their conception rather than overwork those that he feels are not correct. His pictures represent a discrete world of objects which combine figures, mythology, nature, still life and despite the casual appearance of his compositions, all this imagery is highly organized, after long observations one finds the hidden symmetry of the graphic design. For Benfield, the world around him is a continuous sequence of contained fortuitous events. Objects and figures intertwine in his mind, they dance, they fuse and the one adopts the color and life of the other. We are drawn into an intimate world of his imagery, where sensuality and delight in life’s form are combined in flight of frolic and fantasy. Benfield is considered to be one of the most renowned contemporary artists in the art world today.

Peter Paul Rubens 1577-1640 | Flemish Baroque painter

Peter Paul Rubens was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an exuberant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and history paintings of mythological and allegorical subjects. In addition to running a large studio in Antwerp which produced paintings popular with nobility and art collectors throughout Europe, Rubens was a classically-educated humanist scholar, art collector, and diplomat who was knighted by both Philip IV, king of Spain, and Charles I, king of England.