André Kertész, a master photographer of the twentieth century, was a pioneer in photographic composition and photojournalism who gained critical acclaim for his image distortions. Born in Hungary, he moved from Paris to New York during World War II. In 1963, he returned to Paris…

Henri Lebasque (French, 1865-1937): Jeune Fille Lisant et Vase de Fleurs, c.1915 (Oil on canvas) - Hailed as the painter of “joy and light” by the critics and curators of the Louvre during his lifetime, Lebasque’s primary concern was the simple expression of sensuous surface. Lebasque began his studies with Bonnat at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. Within a short time however he renounced the strictures of this formal training and joined Bonnard and others at the Le Barc de Boutteville…

Pablo Picasso (Spanish, 1881-1973): Girl with a Mandolin (Fanny Tellier), 1910 (Oil on canvas, Museum of Modern Art New York) - “…is not only one of the most beautiful, lyrical and accessible of all Cubist paintings, but is also a valuable document of the period…Picasso saw the work as unfinished, allows us an insight into his aesthetic intentions and his technical procedure…Cubist paintings were becoming more abstract in appearance, the artists were still deeply conditioned, at least in the early stages of their works, by the material existence and the physical appearance of their subjects….” - John Golding

Amedeo Modigliani (Italian, 1884-1920): The Cellist, 1909 (Oil on canvas) - Artist Kurt Stoermer admired the painting’s “extremely subtle technique,” which, through an artistic differentiation of colours, allowed the musician to merge into his instrument and showed him in a curious state of reverie… Modigliani makes painting sing, like he makes music visual. Painting music is like playing painting as cello. Like composer and cellist disappear in the music, the painter disappears in his painting. Creativity is cruel – it creates reality like a future life which comes because of and instead of its creators…

Géza Vörös (Hungarian, 1897-1957): Woman with a Book, 1943 (Oil on canvas) - The École de Paris is not an art movement or a learning institution, but instead is more indicative of the importance of Paris as a center of Western art in the early decades of the 20th century…

A pupil of Ede Balló, Vörös' artistic but cool, reserved and decorative pictures confess to the influence of the objectivity of Neo-Classicism and the elegant sensuousness of the École de Paris. In Szentendre, his painting acquired a new hue. His witty solutions revealed a keen sense of observation and fine humour, while his former sterile shades of colour gave way to a warm, soft colour spectrum…

Edvard Munch (Norwegian, 1863–1944): The Sun, 1909 (Oil on canvas) - Illuminated by the sunrays are the water of the ocean, the bare rocks of a Northern landscape, and a slim strip of verdant green that separated land and sea. A clean, straight horizon line divides the waters from sky. The great sun is all-pervasive, shinning from the heavens upon land and sea, its rays reaching out to all eternity Inhuman itself, it is the source of all life…

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938): Street, Berlin, 1913 (Oil on canvas, The Museum of Modern Art, New York) - Kirchner is renowned for his many Berlin street scenes, and this particular work is perhaps his most well known from that category, if not his entire catalog. His jagged, angular brushstrokes, acidic colors, and elongated forms all charge the street atmosphere on the canvas and achieve something very rebellious for its time and exemplify the stylistic break with tradition that the members of Die Brücke sought. As a founding member of the group, Kirchner set out to establish a new order of painting, one that visibly renounced Impressionistic tendencies and the need to accurately portray figurative forms. In Street, Berlin, Kirchner created a stunningly askew rendition of an alienated, urban street procession. Without regard for realistic depiction of form, he bent and contorted his narrow figures like they were blades of grass in a meadow. Another uniquely modern feature of Street, Berlin was Kirchner's choice to position two prostitutes (identifiable by their signature plumed hats) as the painting's (somewhat off-center) focal point…

Édouard Manet (French, 1832-1883): On the Beach, 1873 (Oil on canvas, Musée d'Orsay) - At Berck-sur-Mer, Manet had his wife and his brother pose for him on the beach; grains of sand are mixed with the paint. Suzanne, well protected against the sun and the wind by a muslin veil and a voluminous summer dress, is absorbed in her book. Eugène is gazing out to sea. Both seem to be absorbed in their own worlds. This isolation gives the painting an indefinable melancholic feel…

“Shadow dancer. With otherworldly grace, Scott brings to life the costume of Giselle.”

Amber Scott dances on the beach - Photograph by Will Davidson – (From editorial „Heavenly Creatures” styled by Jillian Davidson for Vogue Australia’s November 2012 issue. Celebrating the 75th anniversary of the Australian Ballet)

Claude Monet (1840-1926): Flowers on the riverbank at Argenteuil, 1877 (Pola Museum of Art, Japan) - Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting…

József Rippl-Rónai (1861-1927): Parisian Woman, 1891 - József Rippl-Rónai was a Hungarian painter. He first introduced modern artistic movements in the Hungarian art… In 1884 he travelled to Munich to study painting at the Academy. Two years later he obtained a grant which enabled him to move to Paris and study with Munkácsy, the most important Hungarian realist painter. In 1888 he met the members of Les Nabis and under their influence he painted his first important work…

Claude Monet (1840-1926): Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise) 1872 - Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting… The term "Impressionism" is derived from the title of his painting Impression, soleil levant (Impression, Sunrise), which was exhibited in 1874 in the first of the independent exhibitions mounted by Monet and his associates as an alternative to the Salon de Paris. Impression, Sunrise depicts the port of Le Havre, Monet's hometown, and is his most famous painting of the harbor…

Impressionism can be considered the first distinctly modern movement in painting. Developing in Paris in the 1860s, its influence spread throughout Europe and eventually the United States…

Vincent van Gogh (Dutch, 1853-1890): Self-portrait as a painter, 1888 (Oil on canvas, Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam) - Van Gogh depicts himself as an artist, with all the necessary equipment: palette, brushes, and a canvas on a wooden easel. Contrasting colors, such as the blue of the smock and the orange-red of the beard, are set right next to each other in order to strengthen their effect…

Géza Vörös (Hungarian, 1897-1957): Reading Woman, (Ecole de Paris. Oil on canvas)

“A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen by morning light, at noon and by moonlight.” - Robertson Davies

Róbert Berény (Hungarian, Fauvism, 1887-1953): Woman Playing Cello, 1928 (Oil on canvas, Hungarian National Gallery, Budapest) - When Berény returned to Hungary in 1928, he became a leading member of a group of artists whose main aim was to produce art that would draw on tradition, while retaining qualities of abstraction and timelessness…