#Death

Romanticism

Goya’s Ghosts: The Disasters of War Print Series

Francisco Goya (1746-1828) is considered to be the founder of the national genre in Spain. He was talented in many areas: portraits, historical...

Elizaveta Ermakova 17 June 2023

Lucas Cranach The Elder, The Suicide of Lucretia, 1525-30, Staatliche Museen, Kassel, Germany. Wikimedia Commons (public domain). Ancient Rome

A Woman with A Knife: The Story of Lucretia

If you see a woman with a knife in a painting – think of Lucretia. She was an ancient Roman heroine whose fate played a vital role in the...

Zuzanna Stańska 11 June 2023

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: A Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet

Who nowadays doesn’t appreciate Gustave Courbet‘s striking realism? We all do, but as happens with many geniuses, Courbet was not appreciated by...

Magda Michalska 10 June 2023

Contemporary Art

Damien Hirst’s Butterflies: From Tea-trays to Mandalas

Damien Hirst – a prominent Young British Artist (YBA) and now a billionaire – creates sculptures, paintings, and drawings. In all of...

Isla Phillips-Ewen 30 April 2023

Bizarre

James Ensor’s Fighting Skeletons

Do you know the late Victorian and avant-garde painter James Ensor? Often likened to Edvard Munch is his ability to convey the miseries of human...

Sarah Mills 13 April 2023

Aleksandra Waliszewska, Untitled, 1997-2022, Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw, Poland. Contemporary Art

The Dark Arts of Aleksandra Waliszewska

Rather unsettling, quite macabre, and more than slightly erotic, the paintings and illustrations by Polish artist Aleksandra Waliszewska are...

Marta Wiktoria Bryll 23 March 2023

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Madonna by Edvard Munch

The Norwegian painter Edvard Munch realized the colored lithograph Madonna in 1895. He is considered the precursor of Expressionism, therefore his...

Maia Heguiaphal 12 December 2022

Bizarre

Art Only Exists Because Death Exists. Skulls in Art

Dia De Los Muertos is celebrated every year across Mexico. A far cry from the Western commercial horror-fest of Halloween, it is a glorious...

Candy Bedworth 2 November 2022

Painting

11 Famous Funeral Paintings of Western Art

Funeral practices are deeply ingrained in all cultures. Varied traditions around the globe reflect widespread beliefs and values. On this day when we...

Zuzanna Stańska 1 November 2022

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Death and Life by Gustav Klimt

Death has been a fascinating theme for artists since the beginning of time. It was imagined as a personified force, also known as the Grim Reaper, a...

Zuzanna Stańska 11 July 2022

Women Artists

The Truth is in the Soil: The Elegiac Odyssey of Ioanna Sakellaraki

No phenomenon pertaining to human existence is as infallible and foundational as death. Expectedly, an occurrence that has this kind of defining...

Erol Degirmenci 13 January 2022

Atala. Luis Monroy Josué, Last Moments of Atala, 1871,Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Mexico. Literature

Atala: The Tragedy that Transcended Pages

In the 19th century, Europeans went crazy for one story: Atala, or the Story of Two Lovers in the Desert. It is a novel by René de Chateaubriand...

Jimena Escoto 3 January 2022