Meeting Benches World art in all forms

René Magritte was a surrealist artist from Belgium. His reputation became well known for his various witty and thought-provoking images which are categorized as surrealism. Like the other artists and poets associated with the Surrealist movement, he sought to overthrow what he saw as the oppressive rationalism of bourgeois society. For him the painting challenges the correspondence of the image, …

He was born on May 11, 1904, in Figueres, Spain. From an early age, Salvador Dalí was encouraged to practice his art, and would eventually go on to study at an academy in Madrid. In 1923, Dalí was suspended from the academy for criticizing his teachers and allegedly starting a riot among students over the academy’s choice of a professorship. …

TRACKS – Poetry, by Sigbjørn Obstfelder Death does not makes me more afraid. They get constantly so many comrades. I will find the way, quietly following their fresh tracks. BURNED SHIPS – Poetry, by Henrik Hibsen Turn the prow of the ship from the north, the gods look bright, the played tracks. The fires of lands frost went out into …

Hunger, it tells the story of an unnamed vagrant who stumbles around the streets of Norway’s capital looking for food. The great shock that the Nordic literature procured in the Europe of the late nineteenth century, is related to a novel by Knut Hamsun, Hunger (published in 1890). A young writer, passes a period of winding reflections in the city …

CHRISTIAN KROHG 1/3 – Inspired by the ideas of the realists he chose motives primarily from everyday life, Christian Krohg – in the 1880s and 1890 – he was a central figure in the debates about Norwegian culture, also developing an interest in naturalism and socially engaged art. In 1873, he moved to Karlsruhe, where he enrolled in the workshop …

Gustav Klimt, an Austrian symbolist painter and one of the most prominent members of the Vienna Secession movement, a successful painter of architectural decorations in a conventional manner. He was born near Vienna, and lived in poverty while attending the Vienna School of Arts and Crafts. In 1888, he received the Golden Order of Merit, from Emperor Franz Josef. In …

He was a Spanish painter (but also sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright), who spent most of his adult life in France. Pablo Picasso, is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, and demonstrated extraordinary artistic talent in his early years, painting in a naturalistic manner through his childhood and adolescence. He showed a passion and a skill for …

Henri Matisse, a revolutionary and influential artist of the early 20th century (known for the expressive color and form of his Fauvist style). He had a major creative breakthrough in the years 1904-05. A visit to Saint-Tropez in southern France inspired him to paint bright, light-dappled canvases. Although his subjects were traditional (nudes, figures in landscapes, portraits, interior views), his …

Editor of the magazine “The new guide” and director of “The quarterly magazine”, Albert Verwey founded and directed “The movement”, the creative container that fueled the new post-symbolist trends. He also taught at the University of Leiden. As contemplative poet, he has given us amazing pages, picking up his literary inspiration in timeless books: “Land” in 1896, “The Way of …

Everyone loves to travel, but not everyone loves to travel the same way. All you have to do is have the time of your life. Meeting Benches. The way to making the world a better place is easy. 900 paintings and more than a thousand drawings, a misunderstood genius in life and a profound influence in the art of the …

PIETER DE HOOCH 1/3 – He was a contemporary of Jan Vermeer, and was a Dutch Golden Age painter famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway. There is no document to prove that De Hooch and Vermeer were friends or had any professorial relations, but the similarities between their paintings must imply that there …

Yes, Langston Hughes was a prolific writer. In the forty-odd years between his first book in 1926 and his death.He received a scholarship to Lincoln University (in Pennsylvania). In 1923, he traveled to the Africa, visiting Senegal and Nigeria, the Cameroons, Belgium Congo and Angola, and later visiting Europe (Italy and France, Russia and Spain). One of Hughes’ finest essays …