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PABLO PICASSO



1881-1973 Pablo Picasso was born the son of an art teacher and not surprisingly, displayed enormous talents at a very early age. He was a painter, a sculptor, a ceramist and a graphic artist. In fact, he was a master of any medium or art form he chose to try his hand at. To call Picasso a master artist would be a great understatement, for the man created a staggering number of paintings, sculptures and drawings.



Pablo Picasso, 1881-1973, Spanish painter, sculptor, graphic artist, and ceramicist worked in France. He is the foremost figure in 20th century art, a leader of the School of Paris. He was remarkable for his technical virtuosity and incredible originality. He was admitted to the Royal Academy of Barcelona at 15 and later moved to Paris, where he remained until 1947, then moving to the South of France.



Picasso, along with Georges Braque succeeded in his attempts to create a revolutionary new art form, Cubism. These two artists let the art world know and see that several points of view of an object could be viewed at one time. In addition, they put forward the idea of spatial reconstruction and they expressed perfectly the idea that even though depth could be "faked", painting is a 2-dimensional art form.



His early works show the influence of Toulouse-Lautrec. His production is usually described in series of overlapping periods. In his melancholy blue period such works as The Old Guitarist depicted, in blue tones, the world of the poor. A lighter palette and subjects from the circus characterize his rose period. In 1907, Picasso painted Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, the most significant work in the development of cubism and abstraction, and a herald of analytic cubism. In the synthetic phase of cubism (after 1912), his forms became larger and more representational. In the 1920's he also introduced collage. His second landmark work was Guernica, an impassioned condemnation of war and fascism. In his later years, Picasso turned to creations of fantasy and comic invention. Working consistently in sculpture, ceramics, and the graphic arts, he continued to explore his personal vision until his death at age 93.

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MICHAEL ANGELO BUONARROTI

BORN: March - 6 - 1474
DIE : FEBRUARY - 17 - 1563


Michael Angelo was born in Tuscany, on the 6th of March, 1474. Fascinated by art at an early age, he executed a facsimile of a picture in his thirteenth year, which he presented to the owner instead of the original, who did not discover the deception till a confidant of Michael's began to laugh. He afterwards studied under Ghirlandail, and at fifteen drew an outline round a drawing by his master which showed its defects and his own superiority. Studying in a garden supplied by the celebrated Lorenzo de Medici with antique statues and other forms, he saw a student modelling figures in clay, and emulous of excelling in the same branch, begged a piece of marble, and the use of implements, from one of the workmen employed in making ornaments for Lorenzo's library. With these he imitated an old head, or mask, of a laughing faun, supplying the deficiencies effected by time, by his own invention, and making other additions. Lorenzo saw it, and good humouredly remarked, "You have restored to the old faun all his teeth, but don't you know that a man of such an age has generally lost some?" As soon as Lorenzo departed, Michael broke a tooth from the upper jaw, and drilled a hole in the gum to denote that it had decayed. Lorenzo at his next visit was delighted by this docility, and to encourage Michael assigned him an apartment in his palace for a workroom, seated him at his table, and introduced him to the men of rank and talent who daily resorted to Lorenzo, as the munificent patron of learning and the arts. He justified this distinction by labouring with intense ardour. At seventeen years of age he sculptured in brass the battle of Hercules with the Centaurs; a work of which he said at seventy, "When I see it now, I repent that I did not entirely devote myself to sculpture." His reputation increased with his application, for application brought him nearer to excellence. By the merit of a sleeping cupid from his chisel, which was stained and buried by a dealer to be dug up as an antique, and purchased by cardinal Giorgio under the persuasion that it was one, he was invited to Rome.

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Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet)
1694-1778.


Born 21 November 1694
Paris, France
Died 30 May 1778 (aged 83)
Paris, France
Pen name Voltaire
Occupation Philosopher
Nationality French

François-Marie Arouet (21 November 1694 – 30 May 1778), better known by the pen name Voltaire,

was a French Enlightenment writer, essayist, and philosopher known for his wit, philosophical sport and defence of civil liberties, including both freedom of religion and free trade.

Voltaire was a prolific writer and produced works in almost every literary form, authoring plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, more than 20,000 letters and more than 2,000 books and pamphlets.

He was an outspoken supporter of social reform, despite strict censorship laws and harsh penalties for those who broke them. A satirical polemicist, he frequently made use of his works to criticize Catholic Church dogma and the French institutions of his day.

Voltaire was one of several Enlightenment figures (along with Montesquieu, John Locke, Thomas Hobbes and Jean-Jacques Rousseau) whose works and ideas influenced important thinkers of both the American and French Revolutions.

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ALESSANDRO VOLTA






ITALIAN PHYSICIST

1745–1827
Alessandro Volta, born in Como, Italy, is best known for discovering current electricity and for developing the voltaic pile, which became an invaluable tool in electrochemistry.

Volta was interested in electricity early in his career.
He published his first book on static electricity at the age of twenty-four.
In 1775, Volta announced the discovery of the electrophorus, a new sort of instrument that could store static electricity.
And in 1782, Volta invented another instrument, the condensing electroscope that was an extremely sensitive measuring device capable of detecting the existence of negative charge in water vapor and in the smoke of burning coals.

By this time, Volta was a professor at the University of Pavia in Italy, where he was to teach for forty years.
He had a very good reputation among chemists and scientists throughout Europe. Among his correspondents was Luigi Galvani (1737–1798), a fellow Italian scientist.
Galvani sent Volta a copy of a pamphlet he had written detailing his latest experiments in 1792. Galvani reported that when a partially dissected frog came into contact with two different metals that were grounded, its muscles flexed and legs twitched.
He further reported that there was a relationship between the muscular contraction and the electrical stimulus, which he believed to be proof of the existence of "animal electricity."

Volta at first accepted Galvani's explanation of animal electricity as the reason for the frog's involuntary movements. But after carefully repeating Galvani's experiments, Volta became convinced that the contractions of the frog's legs did not result from animal electricity but were due to some external electricity caused by the two different metals in an arc coming into contact with the moist frog.
He believed that the frog merely assumed the role of a simple and sensitive electroscope.