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Félix González-Torres was a Cuban-born American visual artist. He lived and worked primarily in New York City between 1979 and 1995 after attending university in Puerto Rico. González-Torres was known for his minimalist installations and sculptures composed of everyday materials such as strings of lightbulbs, clocks, stacks of paper, or packaged hard candies. In 1987, he joined Group Material, a New York-based group of artists whose intention was to work collaboratively, adhering to principles of cultural activism and community education, much of which was influenced by the artist's experience as an openly gay man. González-Torres is known for having made significant contributions to the field of conceptual art in the 1980s and 1990s. His practice continues to influence and be influenced by present-day cultural discourses.
Paul Storr was an English goldsmith and silversmith working in the Neoclassical and other styles during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. His works range from simple tableware to magnificent sculptural pieces made for royalty.
Vittoriano Viganò was an Italian architect and designer based in Milan. He graduated from the Polytechnic University of Milan in 1944, and had there a long career as a Professor in Interior Architecture and Urban Planning. He also worked as an Art Director of Arteluce for several years. Viganò always kept his eyes open to new emerging currents, and became known as a skilful interpreter of rationalist and brutalist architecture.
Gerardus Mercator, birth name Gheert Cremer was a Flemish geographer and cartographer, best known for the map projection that bears his name.
Gerardus Mercator was the first to use this equiangular cylindrical projection for drawing a navigational chart of the world on 18 sheets (1569). The Mercator projection is remarkable in that it does not distort angles and shapes and only keeps distances at the equator. It is currently used for nautical navigational and aeronautical charts. Although modern historical cartographic research has established that this projection was used as early as 1511, it is only by Mercator that it has become widely used.
The Besançon illuminator was a French miniaturist painter from Besançon who worked in that city in the 1440s-1470s, decorating mainly the Books of Hours.
