Elli Michler | Ti auguro Tempo

Non ti auguro un dono qualsiasi,

ti auguro soltanto quello che i più non hanno.

Ti auguro tempo, per divertirti e per ridere;

se lo impiegherai bene potrai ricavarne qualcosa.

Anton Dieffenbach | Pittore di genere

Anton Heinrich Dieffenbach (1831-1914) è stato un pittore paesaggista e di genere Tedesco, noto per i suoi ritratti di bambini.

Si trasferì a Strasburgo con i suoi genitori nel 1840 e prese lezioni da un artista locale di nome Charles Duhamel.

Grazie alla raccomandazione di Duhamel, poté recarsi a Parigi e studiare con lo scultore James Pradier.

William Bouguereau / Franz Liszt | Liebestraum (Dreams of Love)

Liebesträume (German for Dreams of Love) is a set of three solo piano nocturnes (S.541/R.211) by Franz Liszt published in 1850.

Originally the three Liebesträume were conceived as lieder after poems by Ludwig Uhland and Ferdinand Freiligrath.

In 1850 two versions appeared simultaneously as a set of songs for high voice and piano, and as transcriptions for piano two-hands.

Arthur Schopenhauer: "Music is the melody whose text is the world"

• "For an author to write as he speaks is just as reprehensible as the opposite fault, to speak as he writes; for this gives a pedantic effect to what he says, and at the same time makes him hardly intelligible".

• "A man can be himself only so long as he is alone, and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom, for it is only when he is alone that he is really free".

Antonio Nunziante

Rudi Hurzlmeier, 1952 | Cartoonist / Illustrator

Rudi Hurzlmeier (born in Mallersdorf Abbey, in Bavaria) is a German cartoonist, painter and author.

Hurzlmeier has been dedicated to comic art since the early eighties.

His works have also been acclaimed by classical art critics.

In 2010 he was awarded the German Caricature Prize in Dresden, the most important award for cartoonists in Germany.

Bertolt Brecht | Of all the works of man / Tra tutte le opere

Of all the works of man I like best

Those which have been used.

The copper pots with their dents and flattened edges

The knives and forks whose wooden handles

Have been worn away by many hands: such forms

Seemed to me the noblest.

Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564) | Crouching Boy, 1524 | Hermitage, St. Petersburg

7 masterpieces at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Frederick Carl Frieseke | The House in Giverny, 1912

When Frieseke first settled at Giverny in 1906, he stayed at Le Hameau (the hamlet) on the rue du Pressoir.

The two-story cottage surrounded by high walls on three sides enclosing a garden was next door to the home of Claude Monet and had previously been occupied by the American artist Lilla Cabot Perry.

The house shown in The House in Giverny, however, is most likely the Whitman house, the second of Frieseke's three Giverny residences.

Its green shutters and the distinctive open lattice-work of green trellises laden with flowers appear in a number of Frieseke's paintings, including Lilies, Tea Time in a Giverny Garden (both Daniel J. Terra Collection) and Hollyhocks, c. 1912-1913 (Carmen Thyssen-Bornemisza Collection).

The intimacy of Frieseke's small painting and his interest in decorative pattern links the artist more closely with the Nabi painters Vuillard and Bonnard than to his neighbour Monet or with Renoir, the French Impressionist he most admired.

The artist stated his creed published in a 1914 interview: "My one idea is to reproduce flowers in sunlight.

I do not suggest detail by form, as I have to keep it as pure as possible or the effect of brilliancy will be lost.

Of course, there is a limit to the strength of pigments, and one can but relatively give the impression of nature. I may see a glare of white light at noon, but I cannot render it literally [...]

I usually make my first notes and impressions with dashes of tempera, then I paint over this with small strokes in oil to produce the effect of vibration, completing as I go". | Source: © Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum

Frederick Carl Frieseke (American, 1874-1939) | The House in Giverny, 1912 | Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Felix Nussbaum | The Folly Square / La piazza della follia, 1931

"The Folly Square" / "Der tolle Platz" was created in 1931 by German-Jewish surrealist painter Felix Nussbaum (1904-1944).

It is part of the collection of the Berlinische Galerie.

Turbulent goings - on at Pariser Platz in Berlin: young artists unload their paintings outside the Prussian Academy of the Arts while its distinguished professors file through the door.

In the background we see Max Liebermann, the president of the Academy, on the roof of his house right next to the Brandenburg Gate.

He is working on a self-portrait held for him by Victoria, the goddess of victory.

She has torn herself off the Victory Column on the right of the frame, but in mid-flight she loses the laurel wreath which, since Ancient times, has been the mark of distinction for success.

Felix Nussbaum | The folly square, 1931 | Berlinische Galerie

In the foreground, in the centre of the beige-grey painting: a group of young artists in pale smocks with paintings.

More paintings are being unloaded from a vehicle on the right.

Left: professors dressed in black form a long queue three abreast.

In the background, Max Liebermann stands on a half-crumbling building.