Kahlil Gibran | I am neither an artist, nor a poet / Non sono né un artista né un poeta..

Non sono né un artista né un poeta.

Ho trascorso i miei giorni scrivendo e dipingendo,

ma non sono in sintonia

con i miei giorni e le mie notti.

Sono una nube,

una nube che si confonde con gli oggetti,

ma ad essi mai si unisce.

I am neither an artist, nor a poet.

I have spent my days writing and painting,

but I am not in accord

with my days and my nights.

I am a cloud,

a cloud that mingles with objects,

but never becomes united with them.

Johannes Gabriel Jentzsch (German painter🎨, 1862-1930) - The Duet, 1923

Alda Merini | Yesterday I suffered pain / Ieri ho sofferto il dolore..

Ieri ho sofferto il dolore,
non sapevo che avesse una faccia sanguigna
le labbra di metallo dure,
una mancanza netta d'orizzonti.

Yesterday I suffered pain,

I did not know it had a bloodied face,

hard lips of metal,

a total lack of horizons.

Edouard Hamman (Belgian painter, 1819-1888) - Disillusion, 1851

Pablo Neruda | Non t’amo come se fossi rosa di sale..

I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,

or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,

in secret, between the shadow and the soul.

Non t’amo come se fossi rosa di sale, topazio

o freccia di garofani che propagano il fuoco:

t’amo come si amano certe cose oscure,

segretamente, tra l’ombra e l’anima.

Clemente Tafuri🎨 (Italian painter, 1903-1971)

Pierre-Auguste Renoir | Two Vases of Chrysanthemums, 1884

• "If you paint the leaf on a tree without using a model, your imagination will only supply you with a few leaves; but Nature offers you millions, all on the same tree. No two leaves are exactly the same. The artist who paints only what is in his mind must very soon repeat himself".


• "Se dipingi una foglia su un albero senza usare un modello, la tua immaginazione potrà' fornirti solo alcuni tipi di foglie; ma la natura ti offre milioni di foglie, tutte sullo stesso albero. Non ci sono due foglie esattamente uguali. L'artista che dipinge solo ciò che nella sua mente molto presto ripeterà se stesso".

Pierre-Auguste Renoir🎨

Audrey Hepburn: "Paris is always a good idea"

• Paris is always a good idea. - Audrey Hepburn
• If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast. - Ernest Hemingway
• Parigi! Maledetta e cara Parigi! Sirena sfrontata! È dunque proprio una verità che bisogna fuggirti come una furia o adorarti come una dea? - Edmondo De Amicis
• In Parigi mi guardavano allibiti quando parlavo loro in francese; non sono mai riuscito a far comprendere a quegli idioti la loro lingua. - Mark Twain

Gustav Klimt | Aforismi

• "Nessun settore della vita è tanto esiguo e insignificante da non offrire spazio alle aspirazioni artistiche".

• "Sono bravo a dipingere e disegnare; lo credo io stesso e lo dicono anche gli altri, ma non sono sicuro che sia vero. Di sicuro so soltanto due cose:

1. Di me non esiste alcun autoritratto. Non m'interessa la mia persona come "oggetto di pittura", m'interessano piuttosto le altre persone, specie se di sesso femminile, ma più ancora le altre forme. Sono convinto che la mia persona non abbia nulla di particolare. Sono un pittore che dipinge tutti i santi giorni dalla mattina alla sera. Figure e paesaggi, ritratti un po' meno.

Fantasy Photography

"Io porto la mia macchina fotografica ovunque vada. Avere un nuovo rullino da sviluppare mi dà una buona ragione per svegliarmi la mattina" - Andy Warhol.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Painting

I have been here before,

but when or how I cannot tell:

I know the grass beyond the door,

the sweet keen smell,

the sighing sound, the lights around the shore.

Claude Monet | Figures / Portraits

• I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint...
• No one is an artist unless he carries his picture in his head before painting it, and is sure of his method and composition.
• Eventually, my eyes were opened, and I really understood nature. I learned to love at the same time.
• I have never had a studio, and I do not understand shutting oneself up in a room. To draw, yes; to paint, no.
• I do have a dream, a painting, the baths of La Grenouillere for which I've done a few bad rough sketches, but it is a dream. Renoir, who has just spent two months here, also wants to do this painting.

Édouard Manet: "I need to work to feel well"

⦁ There is only one true thing: instantly paint what you see. When you've got it, you've got it. When you haven't, you begin again. All the rest is humbug.

⦁ No one can be a painter unless he cares for painting above all else.

⦁ Color is a matter of taste and of sensitivity.

Édouard Manet: "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity"

• "Color is a matter of taste and sensitivity".

• "Every new painting is like throwing myself into the water without knowing how to swim.".

• "I paint as I feel like painting; to hell with all their studies".

Pablo Picasso: "To draw you must close your eyes and sing"

"To draw you must close your eyes and sing".

"I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else".

"I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money".

"It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction".

"The hidden harmony is better than the obvious".

"We don't grow older, we grow riper".

Claude Monet | The Rain (La pluie), 1886-1887

"The Rain (La pluie)" was created in 1886-1887 by French impressionist painter Claude Monet (1840-1926).

• "Color is my daylong obsession, joy, and torment".
• "I'm not performing miracles, I'm using up and wasting a lot of paint.."

Pablo Picasso: "Love is the greatest refreshment in life"

All children are artists. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.

Painting is a blind man's profession. He paints not what he sees, but what he feels, what he tells himself about what he has seen.

Youth has no age.

Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not.

Love is the greatest refreshment in life.

A Lonely Road Is That I Walked | Poem by Pablo Picasso

I walk a lonely road, the one and only one I' ve ever known.

I don't know where it goes, but I keep walking on and on.

I walked the lonely and un trodden road for I was walking on the bridge

of the broken dreams.

Goodbye! | Poem by Pablo Picasso

I was thrown away to fend for myself in the stars unknown. Yet, there is no light there. You promised that eternity would not tear us apart. Yet, here I am, uncared for. I wanted to share my being with you. Yet, time after time, you refused me. Maybe I need you too much. Maybe you are my survival. I don't know why I still want you.

The light of the full moon is dull, for your face is not there to emphasise it. The glory of the sun is gone in waste, for you are not there to reflect it. You say it is only a matter of time. I ask, what is time? What is meaning in this world now.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Joan of Arc, 1882

Joan of Arc is the last painting upon which Rossetti worked, being finished within a few days of his death on 9 April 1882.

"Joan of Arc" is currently on display at the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, England.

Rossetti was working on this painting while staying at a friend’s house at Birchington-on-Sea in an attempt to combat his declining health.

He passed away just a few days after completing it at just 53 years old.

It was found simply sitting on his easel.

This piece is based on a watercolor that he made almost twenty years prior.

Rossetti used Jane Morris, the artist, William Morris‘s wife, as his model for this piece.

This word had Merlin said from of old:-

That out of the Oak Tree Shade,

In the day of France's direst dule,

God's hand should send a Maid.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti | Book arts

Literature was integrated into the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood's artistic practice from the beginning (including that of Rossetti), with many paintings making direct literary references.

For example, John Everett Millais' early work, Isabella (1849), depicts an episode from John Keats' Isabella, or, the Pot of Basil (1818).

Rossetti was particularly critical of the gaudy ornamentation of Victorian gift books and sought to refine bindings and illustrations to align with the principles of the Aesthetic Movement.

Rossetti's key bindings were designed between 1861 and 1871.

When I See You | Poem by Pablo Picasso

I have always walked forth, not wanting anything more than what I had already had. I did not need anything at all. I had scoffed at everyone when they said that my life was incomplete.

That was till I had met you. You were the only one who had ever raised the felling of loneliness in me. you were the only one who ever made me realize that my life was always incomplete; and had always been.

My Love Has Withered Away | Poem by Pablo Picasso

I have walked through starless nights not caring what the world cared for

Amidst sighs of desperation and exasperation, i 'ave walked; only for you

you were always like the fresh mist of dawn

Yet, like the honey of the bee.