Vincent van Gogh
Vincent Willem van Gogh was born March 30, 1853, in Groot-Zundert, son of a Dutch Protestant pastor. Early in life he displayed a moody, restless temperament that was to thwart his every pursuit. By the age of 27 he had been in turn a salesman in an art gallery, a French tutor, a theological student, and an evangelist among the miners at Wasmes in Belgium. In 1886 van Gogh went to Paris to live with his brother Theo van Gogh, an art dealer, and became familiar with the new art movements developing at the time. In 1888 van Gogh left Paris for southern France, where began to use the swirling brush strokes and intense yellows, greens, and blues. Just after completing his ominous Crows in the Wheatfields (1890), he shot himself on July 27, 1890, and died two days later.
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz y Picasso was a Spanish painter and sculptor, generally considered the greatest artist of the 20th century. He was unique as an inventor of forms, styles and techniques, as a master of various media, and as one of the most prolific artists in history.
Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci, born on April 15, 1452, in the small Tuscan town of Vinci, near Florence. He was a Florentine artist, one of the great masters of the High Renaissance, who was also celebrated as a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. His profound love of knowledge and research was the keynote of both his artistic and scientific endeavors. His innovations in the field of painting influenced the course of Italian art for more than a century after his death, and his scientific studies - particularly in the fields of anatomy, optics, and hydraulics - anticipated many of the developments of modern science.
Rembrandt
Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was a Dutch baroque artist who ranks as one of the greatest painters in the history of Western art. He possessed a profound understanding of human nature that was matched by a brilliant technique- not only in painting but in drawing and etching- and his work made an enormous impact on his contemporaries and influenced the style of many later artists. Perhaps no painter has ever equaled Rembrandt's chiaroscuro effects or his bold impasto.
Salvador Dali
Salvador Dali was born into a middle-class family, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid, where he mastered academic techniques. He pursued his personal interest in Cubism and Futurism and was expelled from the academy for indiscipline in 1923. Dali devoted himself with passionate intensity to developing his method, which he described as "paranoiac-critical".
Michelangelo
Michelangelo, a Florentine, born on March 6, 1475 in the small village of Caprese near Arezzo. He was one of the most inspired creators in the history of art, and the most potent force in the Italian High Renaissance together with Leonardo da Vinci. As a sculptor, architect, painter, and poet, he exerted a tremendous influence on his contemporaries and on subsequent Western art in general.
Wassily Kandinsky
Wassily Kandinsky was born in Moscow in 1866, considered to be the founder of abstract art, his work was exhibited throughout Europe from 1903 onwards, and often caused controversy among the public, the art critics, and his contemporaries.
Raphael
Raffaello Santi was born in Urbino on April 6, 1483 and received his early training in art from his father, the painter Giovanni Santi. He was an Italian Renaissance painter who is considered one of the greatest and most popular artists of all time.
Gustav Klimt
Gustav Klimt was born on July 14, 1862, in Baumgarten, Austria, the second seven children, the son of a poor jewelry engraver. It was only at the age of fourteen, after he entered the University of Plastic Arts in Vienna, that he began developing his talent as an artist. He studied at the University until graduating at the age of twenty, at which time he had been commissioned to create several decorative works, making use of his training in modernist craftsmanship.
Pierre Auguste Renoir
Pierre Auguste Renoir, born in Limoges on February 25, 1841, was a French impressionist painter noted for his radiant, intimate paintings, particularly of the female nude. Recognized by critics as one of the greatest and most independent painters of his period. Many of his later paintings had bold rhythmic style.