Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced of his own significance as an artist, Schiele achieved more in his abruptly curtailed youth than many other artists achieved in a full lifetime. His roots were in the Jugendstil of the Viennese Secession movement. Like a whole generation, he came under the overwhelming influence of Vienna’s most charismatic and celebrated artist, Gustav …

Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children’s games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born and it was there that he spent the first ten years …

Al menos dos generaciones de aficionados a la música en España llevan las canciones de Enrique Urquijo prendidas en el alma. Cosidas a conciencia, con hilo de cobre, pues veinte años después del fallecimiento del inolvidable músico siguen formando parte de sus vidas. Cautivó con una voz torturada, melodías infecciosas y letras de trago amargo, tan exacerbadamente honestas que el oyente reconocía en ellas sus propios momentos de flaqueza. Creador infatigable, lideró dos grupos (Los Secretos, gran institución del pop-rock español, y en sus últimos años, paralelamente, Los Problemas), y abarcó un buen número de estilos musicales, del power pop …

Vincent van Gogh (Groot-Zundert, Brabant, 1853 – Auvers-sur-Oise, 1890) La vie et l'oeuvre de Vincent van Gogh sont si étroitement liées qu'il est quasiment impossible de voir ses toiles sans y lire le récit de sa vie : van Gogh est en effet devenu l'incarnation du martyr souffrant et incompris de l'art moderne, l'emblème de l'artiste marginal. Le premier article, publié en 1890, donnait des détails sur la maladie de van Gogh. L'auteur de l'article voyait le peintre comme un «génie terrible et dément, souvent sublime, parfois grotesque, toujours à la limite du cas pathologique ». On sait très peu …

El verano de 1816, cinco personas, entre ellas los famosos poetas Lord Byron y Percy B. Shelley, se confinaron en una villa próxima al lago Lemán y se entregaron a un juego literario consistente en idear el cuento más espantoso que se pudiera imaginar. Aquella noche Mary Shelley, con solo diecinueve años, concibió una historia aterradora y maravillosa, cuyo objetivo radicaba en «que el lector tuviera pavor a mirar a su alrededor, que le helara la sangre y que acelerara los latidos de su corazón»: Frankenstein

En los años 80, el rock argentino vivió quizá su mayor efervescencia: Los Abuelos de la Nada, Sumo, Charly, Fito, Soda Stereo, Los Twist, Virus empezaban a atravesar fronteras de todo tipo. Y las fotografías de Andy Cherniavsky  también. "Veo desfilar los años 80 todos los días en mis trabajos, como si fuera un libro de historia; los músicos más importantes pasaron ante mis ojos y sigo atada de alguna manera a todos ellos por su talento y mi admiración por su música", escribe en Acceso directo, sus memorias de aquellos años energéticos, rebeldes, divertidos, inigualables. "Y a través de …

Poet, draughtsman, engraver and painter, William Blake’s work is made up of several elements – Gothic art, Germanic reverie, the Bible, Milton and Shakespeare – to which were added Dante and a certain taste for linear designs, resembling geometric diagrams, and relates him to the great classical movement inspired by Winckelmann and propagated by David. This is the sole point of contact discernible between the classicism of David and English art, though furtive and indirect. Blake is the most mystic of the English painters, perhaps the only true mystic. He was ingenious in his inner imagination, and his interpretations of …

After staying in Milan for his apprenticeship, Michelangelo da Caravaggio arrived in Rome in 1592. There he started to paint with both realism and psychological analysis of the sitters. Caravaggio was as temperamental in his painting as in his wild life. As he also responded to prestigious Church commissions, his dramatic style and his realism were seen as unacceptable. Chiaroscuro had existed well before he came on the scene, but it was Caravaggio who made the technique definitive, darkening the shadows and transfixing the subject in a blinding shaft of light. His influence was immense, firstly through those who were …

Egyptian art is perhaps the most impersonal that exists. The artist effaces himself. But he has such an innate sense of life, a sense so directly moved and so limpid that everything of life which he describes seems defined by that sense, to issue from the natural gesture, from the exact attitude, in which one no longer sees stiffness. His impersonality resembles that of the trees bowing in the wind with a single movement and without resistance, or that of the water which wrinkles into equal circles all moving in the same direction. From afar, Egyptian art seems changeless and …

Amb motiu del 125è aniversari del naixement del poeta, Tusquets recupera una obra de joventut sobre la seva generació.Catalans de 1918 recull cinc narracions, o assajos, que porten el nom d'un poeta o filòleg (Pompeu Fabra, Josep Carner, Joaquim Folguera, Salvat-Papasseit, Carles Riba), amics de l'autor i que tenen en comú el més gran interès per la llengua. Constitueixen la primera generació d'escriptors catalans que, segons Gabriel Ferrater, «va preferir la seva expressió personal per damunt de, diguem-ne, l'expressió d'una idea de servei al país i d'organització col·lectiva». Però aquest llibre també pot llegir-se com el diari d'un artista adolescent …

Léonard de Vinci (Vinci, 1452 – Le Clos-Lucé, 1519). Léonard passa la première partie de sa vie à Florence, la seconde à Milan et ses trois dernières années en France. Le professeur de Léonard fut Verrocchio, d'abord orfèvre, puis peintre et sculpteur. En tant que peintre, Verrocchio était représentatif de la très scientifique école de dessin ; plus célèbre comme sculpteur, il créa la statue de Colleoni à Venise. Léonard de Vinci était un homme extrêmement attirant physiquement, doté de manières charmantes, d'agréable conversation et de grandes capacités intellectuelles. Il était très versé dans les sciences et les mathématiques, et …