Munch

Alfons Mucha's is an art of seduction. His graceful women, delicate colors, and decorative style add up to an unashamed act of temptation. Mucha (1860-1939), whose work is indissolubly linked with the Art Nouveau style, was one of the most fascinating artistic personalities of the turn of the 20th century. He was not only a painter and graphic artist, but also took an interest in sculpture, j...

Die Schonheit der Natur und menschliche Einsamkeit sind bestimmende Themen im Werk von Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840). Haufig positioniert er eine klein dimensionierte menschliche Figur in einer weiten Landschaft, wie auf seinen beruhmten Gemalden Monch am Meer und Der Wanderer uber dem Nebelmeer. Lange Zeit wurden die Bedeutung und der Einfluss des grosen Kunstlers der Romantik unterschatzt. ...

The arresting pictures of Frida Kahlo were in many ways expressions of trauma. Through a near-fatal road accident at the age of 18, failing health, a turbulent marriage, miscarriage and childlessness, she transformed her afflictions into revolutionary art. In literal or metaphorical self-portraiture, Kahlo looks out at the viewer with an audacious glare, rejecting her destiny as a passive victim...

The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and friezes, his work is de...

The creations of Jeff Koons (born 1955) are at once immediately accessible and eloquently art historical. From basketball tanks to flower puppies, his instantly recognizable work frolics with banal imagery as much as it integrates cultural references such as Surrealism and Pop Art. Koons' art revels in visual pleasure, but also in the power to affront. He has made his name as much for stai...

Hailed the "Prince of the Impressionists", Claude Monet (1840-1926) transformed expectations for the purpose of paint on canvas. Defying the precedent of centuries, Monet did not seek to render only reality, but the act of perception itself. Working "en plein air" with rapid, impetuous brush strokes, he interrogated the play of light on the hues, patterns, and contours and the way in which these v...

Resisting interpretation or classification, Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was a prominent advocate for the artist's consummate freedom of expression. Although identified as a key protagonist of the Abstract Expressionist movement, first formed in New York City, Rothko rejected the label and insisted instead on "a consummated experience between picture and onlooker." Following a repertoire of fig...

Alvar Aalto (1898-1976) made a unique modernist mark. Influenced by both the landscape and the political independence of his native Finland, he designed warm, curving, compassionate buildings,wholly set apart from the slick, mechanistic, geometric designs that characterized much contemporary European practice. Whether a church, a villa, a sauna, or a public library, Aalto's organic structures te...

Filling notebook after notebook with sketches, inventions, and theories, Leonardo da Vinci not only stands as one of the most exceptional draftsmen of art history, but also as a mastermind and innovator who anticipated some of the greatest discoveries of human progress, sometimes centuries before their material realisation. From the smallest arteries in the human heart to the far-flung constell...