neptune
Giovanni Battista Piranesi was an 18th-century Italian painter, engraver, architect, and archaeologist who represented Neoclassicism and Romanticism. He was famous for creating a lot of original etchings with images of antique architecture monuments.
Giovanni Piranesi created hundreds of drawings and drafts in which he depicted the reconstructed ruins of ancient Roman buildings. His works are still used as teaching aids in the education of architectural students in many prestigious European universities. Piranesi periodically printed voluminous books with dozens of his own engravings depicting modified ancient architectural masterpieces - "graphic fantasies". His works were in demand among professional architects, who borrowed Piranesi's original ideas for their designs.
The peak of Piranesi's career came in the 1760s when, in recognition of his merits, he became an honorary member of the Guild of St. Luke and received from the Pope the title of Knight of the Golden Spur.
More than 700 of the master's original etchings have survived, printed in scholarly works.
Alfred Jensen was an American abstract painter associated with the Abstract Expressionist movement. Jensen's work often incorporated complex systems of symbols and numerals, which he believed could be used to represent the structure of the universe.
Jensen spent much of his childhood in Europe before immigrating to the United States in the 1920s. He studied at the Art Students League in New York and began his career as an artist in the 1930s, creating figurative paintings that were influenced by the work of Picasso and other European modernists.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Jensen began exploring abstraction and began incorporating his interest in numerology and symbolism into his work. He developed a complex system of symbols and numerals, which he believed could be used to represent the underlying structure of the universe. His paintings often featured grids, mandalas, and other geometric forms, and he believed that his art could serve as a kind of visual language that could help unlock the mysteries of the universe.
Jensen's work was exhibited widely in the United States and Europe, and he was the recipient of several awards and honors throughout his career.
Jensen's unique approach to abstraction and his interest in numerology and symbolism have made him an important figure in the development of abstract painting in the mid-20th century.