Fattah Hallah Abdel 1970 | Symbolist painter | Touching Egypt

Fattah Hallah Abdel [Галла Абдель Фаттах] was born in Moscow on 1970. Touching Egypt… it is amazing to touch ancient exciting culture, a mixture of wisdom, mysteries, golden sand and dusty winds in snow-covered Moscow. One has just the feeling of that mysterious attractiveness when meets that woman fragile, helpless, amazingly beautiful, her profile reminds portraits of Egyptian empresses. Especially, if you can see her among lambent gold of her pictures. But when you start talking to her it is like the mist clears away and features of a very russian, soft, poetic character come out through a bright, eastern appearance; it is an astonishing combination making this woman even more fascinating. How was such a mixture born? What does it promise? In what creative form such a spirit can be realized? I believe everyone asks these questions who becomes acquainted with Hallah and her works.

She admitted that she had not turned to Egyptian themes in art for many years, but the roots are powerful and sooner or later they reflect in artist’s work, find their form of existence on canvas. Grown up in Russia with traditional values of Russian fine arts at a certain moment Hallah discovered the harmony of ancient Russian icon painting and Egyptian symbolism, their graphical fineness.

It seems that absolutely incongruous notions go together in Hallah’s work: permanency of Ancient Egyptian frescos and reality of modern European painting, ancient brightness of gold and azure and modern relevancy of yellow and blue, hot temper of the south and moderation of the north. However, in Hallah’s work beside “ancient” Egyptian oeuvres there are modern although still a bit fantastic plots. In her hands even portraits have certain magic.

Alex Alemany 1943 | Hyperrealist and Symbolist painter

Alex Alemany was born on 1943 in Valencia. He studied Fine Arts between 1961 and 1966 at the “Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Carlos” in Valencia. Francisco Lozano, Enrique Ginesta, Genaro Lahuerta and Felipe Mª Garin, among others, were his teachers. Alemany’s realism (and in some of his work, his hyper-realism) kept drifting towards an unmistakable style of his own resulting from personal introspection, gradually becoming more and more distant from the coldness of other realist concepts with a strong influence of photography as American realism was. Alemany’s work is the missing link between poetry and painting. Exploring his own sensations, feelings and concepts, he conveys them with the credibility of his precious technique, enabling us to participate in the climate of his painting, and to identify with the things he wants to tell us through his work, metaphoric poetry, subconscious images and oneiric world.

Ricardo Fernandez Ortega 1971 | Mexican surrealist painter

Ricardo Fernandez Ortega was born in 1971 in Durango, Mexico. The surreal paintings by Ortega invites us to travel to another time, his style reminds us of the greatest classical masters, however, his painting is modern.

Bellor 1911-2000 | Simbolista belga

Bellor, è il nome d'arte del pittore simbolista belga René Miessen 1911-2000. Si iscrive all'Accademia di Belle Arti della sua città natale Arlon all'età di 15 anni. In seguito si trasferisce a Bruxelles e inizia a lavorare nelle aziende di pubblicità, dove ha fatto una carriera importante. Ma la sua vera passione era la pittura. All'età di 45 anni si trasferisce a Parigi dove si è iscritto al circolo simbolista e sviluppa questo stile unico. Si ritirò dal mercato dell'arte nel 1984 ma ha continuato a dipingere con passione fino all'età di 88 anni.

Henri Fantin-Latour 1836-1904 | French painter and lithographer

Ignace Henri Jean Fantin-Latour born in Rhone-Alpes, France, studied at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He is best known for his flower paintings and group portraits of his friends Parisian artists and writers. His work strongly influenced the symbolist movement of the late 19th Century. Whistler brought attention to Fantin in England. In addition to his paintings, Fantin-Latour created ingenious lithographs demonstrating the music of some of the great classical composers. In 1876 he married a fellow painter, Victoria Dubourg, after which he spent his summers on the country estate of his wife's family at Bure, Orne in Basse-Normandie, where he died of lyme disease. He was interred in the Cimetiere du Montparnasse, Paris, France. Today, his paintings can sell for as much as $ 2.5 million each.

Victor Wang | China | Symbolist and realist painter

I grew up amongst the sunflower fields in northern China. In my childhood years, I played under the bright, yellow sunflowers with my brothers everyday. China’s Cultural Revolution played an important part in my life. During that time, sunflowers were used as political allegories to depict how citizens of China should follow Mao who represented the sun, since sunflowers follow the sun’s movements. People eventually inferred the deception that this symbol masked. After graduating from high school, I was sent to a labor camp in the country for ‘reeducation’ during China’s Cultural Revolution. There, I was subject to grueling farm work. Often, I worked in corn and sunflower fields from sunrise to sunset. Thus, for me, sunflowers evoke both personal joy and sadness. Therefore, to deliver my complex feelings, I use sunflowers as a metaphor to connote my background and emotional stage.Victor Wang is currently a professor of fine arts at Fontbonne University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Manolo Valdés 1942 | Spanish painter and sculptor

Valdés is a spanish artist residing in New York, working in paint, sculpture, and mixed media. He introduced to Spain a form of expression that combined political and social obligations with humor and irony. Manolo Valdés was born in Valencia on March 8, 1942. He entered the Escuela de Bellas Artes de San Carlos in 1957, where he studied two years. In 1964 he established the artists' group Equipo Crónica with Joan Toledo and Rafael Solbes in which he remained until Solbes' death in 1981. He now lives and works in New York and Madrid. Influenced by Rembrandt, Rubens, and Matisse, Valdés creates large works in which the lighting and colors express a sensation of tactility. His work is forceful and decorated with historical art symbols. Along with the works he exhibited as a part of Equipo Crónicas, Valdés had over seventy expositions between 1965 and 1981, as many individual as collective. Valdés has received various awards, including the Lissone and Biella in Milan in 1965; the silver medal in the second International Prints Biennial in Tokyo; an award from the Bridgestone Art Museum in Lisbon; the Alfons Roig Award in Valencia; the National Award for the Fine Arts in Spain; a medal from the biennial International Festival of the Plastic Arts in Baghdad; and in 1993 the Medal of the Order of Andrés Bello in Venezuela.