Ellsworth Kelly

Ellsworth Kelly (born May 31, 1923) is an American painter and sculptor associated with hard-edge painting, color field painting and the Minimalist school. His works demonstrate unassuming techniques that emphasize the simplicity of form. Kelly often employs bright colors to enhance his works. Ellsworth Kelly lives and works in Spencertown, New York.

Dan Flavin

Dan Flavin (1933-1996) was an American minimalist artist famous for creating sculptural objects and installations from commercially available fluorescent light fixtures.

Arcimboldo

Giuseppe Arcimboldo was an Italian mannerist painter, best known for creating imaginative portrait heads made entirely of such objects as fruit, vegetables, flowers, fish, and books — by painting representations of these objects on the canvas arranged in such a way that the whole collection of objects formed a recognizable likeness of the portrait subject.

Rubens

Sir Peter Paul Rubens (June 28, 1577 – May 30, 1640) was a prolific seventeenth-century Flemish Baroque painter, and a proponent of an extravagant Baroque style that emphasized movement, color, and sensuality. He is well-known for his Counter-Reformation altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, and historical 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 and art collector, as well as a diplomat who was knighted by both Phillip IV, King of Spain, and Charles I, King of England.

Boucher

French painter François Boucher (September 29th, 1703 – May 30th, 1770) was a proponent of Rococo taste, known for his idyllic and voluptuous paintings on classical themes, decorative allegories representing the arts or pastoral occupations, intended as a sort of two-dimensional furniture. He also painted several portraits of his illustrious patroness, Madame de Pompadour.

Caravaggio

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, (September 29th, 1571 – July 18th, 1610) was an Italian artist active in Rome, Naples, Malta and Sicily between 1593 and 1610. His intensely emotional realism and dramatic use of lighting had a formative influence on the entire Baroque era; artists in the following generation heavily under his influence were called the "Caravaggisti". Famous while he lived, Caravaggio was forgotten almost immediately after his death, and it was only in the 20th century that his importance to the development of Western art was rediscovered.

Pontormo

Pontormo was an Italian Mannerist painter and portraitist. His work represents a profound stylistic shift from the calm regularity that characterized the art of the Florentine Renaissance. He is famous for his use of twining poses, coupled with ambiguous perspective; his figures often seem to float in an uncertain environment, unhampered by the forces of gravity.

Hans Holbein the Younger

Hans Holbein the Younger (c. 1498–between November 7th and 29th, 1543) was a German artist and printmaker who worked in a Northern Renaissance style. He is best known as one of the greatest portraitists of the 16th century. He also produced religious art, satire and Reformation propaganda, and made a significant contribution to the history of book design.Holbein's art has sometimes been called realist, since he drew and painted with a rare precision. His portraits were renowned in their time for their likeness; and it is through Holbein's eyes that many famous figures of his day are now seen. He also embedded layers of symbolism, allusion, and paradox in his art, to the lasting fascination of scholars.

Albrecht Dürer

Dürer, (May 21st 1471 – April 6th 1528) was a German painter, printmaker and theroist from Nuremberg. Dürer's introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, have secured his reputation as one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance. This is reinforced by his theoretical treatise which involve principles of mathematics, perspective and ideal proportions.

Christo and Jeanne-Claude

Christo and Jeanne-Claude are a married couple who created environmental works of art. Their works include the wrapping of the Reichstag in Berlin and the Pont-Neuf bridge in Paris, the 24-mile-long artwork called 'Running Fence' in Sonoma and Marin counties in California, and 'The Gates' in New York City's Central Park.
Sadly, Jeanne-Claude died at aged 74, on November 18, 2009, from complications of a brain aneurysm.