10 most famous artists. From Leonardo da Vinci to Salvador Dali

Their names are like a sign of quality. They are familiar even to those who are infinitely far from the world of art. Each of them was a special phenomenon of its time.

Someone has the role of a discoverer, someone beckons with its mystery, someone surprises with realism - so different, but unique.

These artists have become a symbol of the era, country, style.

Leonardo da Vinci. Great and mighty.

The works of this artist, inventor, musician, anatomist and, in general, the “universal man” still amaze us.

Thanks to his paintings, world painting has reached a new qualitative level. He moved towards realism, comprehending the laws of perspective and understanding the anatomical structure of a person.

He depicted ideal proportions in the drawing “Vitruvian Man”. Today it is considered both an artistic masterpiece and a scientific work.

The most recognizable work of genius - "Mona Lisa".

Here we can see the main achievement of Leonardo in painting. Sfumato, that is, a blurred line and superimposed shadows in the form of haze. Hence such a living image. And the feeling that the Mona Lisa is about to speak.

Today, the name of the mysterious Mona Lisa is brutally covered in caricatures and Internet memes. But that didn't make her any less beautiful.

Read about the work of the master in the article "5 masterpieces of Leonardo da Vinci".

Also read about the recently found masterpiece of the master in the article "Savior of the World" Leonardo. 5 interesting details of the picture».

Hieronymus Bosch. Mysterious and mysterious.

Half-humans, half-mutants, huge birds and fish, unprecedented plants and crowds of naked sinners... All this is mixed and woven into multi-figured compositions.

Hieronymus Bosch is very recognizable. And his most famous work is the triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights".

There is no other artist who uses so many details to express ideas. What ideas? There is no consensus on this matter. Dissertations and books were devoted to Bosch, they were looking for interpretations of his characters, but they did not come to any one opinion.

At the Garden of Earthly Delights, the right wing is dedicated to Hell. Here the master set as his goal to frighten both the peasant and the educated contemporary with depressing visions that await after death. Well... Bosch succeeded. Even we are a bit uncomfortable...

But Bosch has evolved over the course of his career. And by the end of his life, multi-figured, large-scale works were replaced by a very close approximation to the heroes. So they barely fit into the frame. Such is the work of Carrying the Cross.

Regardless of whether Bosch considers his characters from afar or close, his message is the same. Show human vices. And reach out to us. Help us save our souls.

Read about the master in the article "5 masterpieces of Hieronymus Bosch".

Raphael. Subtle and inspiring.

The most famous representative Renaissance strikes with harmonious compositions and lyricism. Writing beautiful people is not as difficult as correctly placing them on the canvas. Here in this Rafael was a virtuoso.

Perhaps not a single master in the world influenced his colleagues as much as Raphael did. His writing style will be mercilessly exploited. Its heroes will wander from one century to another. And lose their relevance only at the beginning of the 20th century. In the age of modernism and avant-garde.

Remembering Raphael, we first of all think of his beautiful Madonnas. During his short life (38 years), he created 20 paintings with her image. And it never happened again.

The most famous - "Sistine Madonna".  We see not a dry iconographic heroine, but a tender mother, full of dignity and spiritual purity.

Just look at the mischievous angels! Such a true portrayal of childish spontaneity, full of charm.

The most expensive work of Raphael was, surprisingly, the sketch “The Head of a Young Apostle”. It was sold at Sotheby's for $48 million.

The Italian painter, who was valued by his contemporaries for his softness and naturalness, is truly priceless today.

Read about the master in the article Raphael's Madonnas. 5 most beautiful faces.

Rembrandt. Real and poetic.

Rembrandt portrayed the world as it was. Without embellishments and varnishes. But he did it in a very emotional way.

On the canvases of Rembrandt - twilight, from which, illuminated by golden light, figures protrude. Beautiful in their naturalness. These are the heroes of his painting “The Jewish Bride”.

The fate of the greatest Dutch painter is like a springboard - ascend from obscurity to wealth and popularity, only to fall down and die in poverty.

He was not understood by his contemporaries. Who preferred beautiful everyday scenes with cute, carefully written details. Rembrandt wrote human feelings and experiences, which was not at all fashionable.

It is a great miracle that the most famous works, such as The Return of the Prodigal Son, are in Russia, in Hermitage. Where can you come to admire, understand, feel.

Read about the painting in the article "The Return of the Prodigal Son" by Rembrandt. Why is this a masterpiece?

Goya. Deep and bold.

Goya began his career with youthful ardor and idealism. He even became a court painter at the Spanish court. But soon he was fed up with life, seeing the greed of the world, stupidity, hypocrisy.

Just look at his group "Portrait of the Royal Family", where Goya did not even try to smooth out the empty facial expressions and the repulsive arrogance of the royal family.

Goya created many paintings that reflect his civil and human position. And the world knows him primarily as a bold truth-seeking artist.

The simply incredible work "Saturn devouring his son" can serve as proof.

This is a cold-blooded, most honest interpretation of the mythological plot. This is what the crazy Kronos should have looked like. Who is scared to death that he might be overthrown by his children.

Ivan Aivazovsky. Grandiose and dedicated to the sea.

Aivazovsky is rightfully in the ranking of the most famous artists. His "The Ninth Wave" striking in its scale.

The greatness of the elements, hopelessness. Can a handful of sailors survive the storm? The morning sun with its warm rays seems to give a subtle hope.

Aivazovsky can be called the most important marine painter of all time. No one wrote the nature of the sea element in such a variety of ways. No one has depicted so many naval battles and shipwrecks.

At the same time, Aivazovsky was also a documentary filmmaker, thoroughly depicting ship equipment. And a bit of a visionary. Indeed, in fact, the Ninth Wave is written incorrectly - on the high seas, a wave never bends with an “apron”. But for greater entertainment, Aivazovsky wrote it just like that.

Read about the work of the master in the article “Paintings by Aivazovsky. 7 marine masterpieces, 3 lions and Pushkin”.

Claude Monet. Colorful and airy.

Monet is considered the most prominent representative impressionism. He was devoted to this style all his long life. When the main characters are light and color, the lines disappear and the shadows may well be blue.

His "Rouen Cathedral" shows how an object changes when you look at it through the sun's rays. The cathedral trembles, lives in the rays.

Monet experimented a lot with strokes in order to convey not so much nature as impressions from it. And that was where he saw the truth. Why photographically repeat a landscape or object?

In recent years, the old artist painted his garden. We can also look at one of the most picturesque corners of this garden in the painting “White Water Lilies”. It is stored in Pushkin Museum in Moscow.

Vincent Van Gogh. Crazy and sympathetic.

He not only quarreled with Gauguin and cut off his earlobe. Van Gogh is a brilliant artist, appreciated only after his death.

He was a man who did not know such concepts as the "golden mean" and compromise. When he was a shepherd, he gave the last shirt to the poor. When he became an artist, he worked day and night, forgetting about food and sleep. That is why in 10 years he created such a colossal legacy (800 paintings and 2 drawings).

At first, Van Gogh's paintings were gloomy. In them, he expressed boundless sympathy for the poor people. And his first masterpiece was just such a work - "The Potato Eaters".

On it we see people tired of hard and monotonous work. So tired that they themselves became like potatoes. Yes, Van Gogh was not a realist and exaggerated the features of people in order to convey the essence.

But viewers love Van Gogh for his bright, pure colors. His paintings became colorful after meeting the Impressionists. Since then, he has painted many bouquets, summer fields and flowering trees.

Nobody before Van Gogh expressed his emotions and feelings with the help of color. But after him - many. After all, he is the main inspirer of all expressionists.

It is even surprising how the master, who is in a deep depression that will lead him to suicide, wrote such a cheerful work as "Sunflowers".

Read about the master in the article “5 Van Gogh masterpieces”.

Pablo Picasso. Different and seeking.

This famous womanizer became famous not only for the frequent change of muses, but also for the frequent change of artistic directions. At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, he created many works in the "African style", when instead of faces he painted masks of exotic tribes. Then there was cubism, and also abstractionism and surrealism.

The pinnacle of his work can be called the emotional "Guernica" (see above), dedicated to the city destroyed by the war. A symbol of suffering and barbarism.

It was Picasso who came up with the idea of ​​combining full face and profile in portraits, breaking objects into simple figures, assembling them into amazing forms.

He changed the entire landscape of fine arts, enriching it with revolutionary ideas. How could someone before Picasso paint a portrait of the famous patron Ambroise Vollard like that?

Salvador Dali. Outrageous and ruthless.

Who is he? A crazy artist, a freak of his time or a competent PR man? Salvador Dali made a lot of noise with his surrealism.

His most famous painting is "The Persistence of Memory", where the author tried to show the departure from linear time:

But there were also very deep themes in his works, for example, war and destruction. They were also very intimate. Sometimes Dali, in his desire to surprise, went too far.

Once, on one of his paintings at an exhibition, the artist wrote in ink “Sometimes I spit on a portrait of my mother with pleasure.” After this trick, Dali's father did not speak to him for several years.

But we also remember him for his endless love for his muse, his wife Galya. It can be seen in many of his paintings. Even in the image of the Mother of God in the painting “Madonna of Port Lligata”.

Yes, Dali was a believer. True, he became it already being a mature person, under the influence of the events of the Second World War.

Dali is a total shocker. He invented a taxi in which it always rains and an aphrodisiac tuxedo with hanging glasses of liquor. Quite enough to forever remain in the history of art.

To sum up

There were thousands of artists in the world. But only a few were able to become so famous that almost every inhabitant of the Earth knows them.

Some of them lived 500 years ago, like Leonardo, Raphael and Bosch. And someone worked in the XNUMXth century, like Picasso and Dali.

What unites them all? They all, each in their own way, changed the time in which they lived. As the art critic Alexander Stepanov said, only a mediocre artist lives in step with his time.

We are waiting for the next genius of the same scale. Maybe he's already doing it right now. Jeff Koons? No wonder his Inflatable Dog was placed in Versailles not so long ago. Or Damien Hirst? Or the artist duo Recycle group? What do you think?..

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