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Klimt's Portrait of a Lady is residing in Piacenza

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A compelling headline in ArtNews today: Stolen Gustav Klimt Painting May Have Been Discovered in an Italian Gallery’s Wall . So, if you've dreamed of visiting Piacenza, Italy, but have held back because the prized Klimt was missing, your dreams may soon come true. A little history of the lady: 1916-17: Gustv Klimt paints his famous Portrait of a Lady. The oil on canvas painting measures 60 by 55 centimetres (24 in × 22 in). It depicts a portrait of a female figure, composed in an unusually lively expressionistic style. 1925: It was acquired by the Galleria Ricci-Oddi in Piacenza, Italy. 1996: X-ray analysis revealed that the portrait was an overpainted version of Klimt's lost work Portrait of a Young Lady (in hat and with scarf), which disappeared in 1917. The original portrait showed a woman with whom Klimt is believed to have had a love affair, but after she died suddenly, he painted over the work. February 22, 1997: The painting was reported stolen, shortly...

100 Years of Bauhaus

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In honour of the 100th anniversary of the Bauhaus school, some interesting resources... For the better part of a century, Walter Gropius’ Bauhaus Dessau has been a mecca for a certain flavor of design lover. People from around the world travel to the modernist building in Weimar, Germany, to pay homage to the school that launched countless design careers. Now, a smaller version of the Dessau is hitting the road in celebration of the Bauhaus’s 100th anniversary this year. A 161-square-foot building-on-wheels designed to look like the iconic workshop wing of the Gropius building - glass facade and sans-serif signage included - will travel to Berlin, Kinshasa, in the Democratic of Congo, and Hong Kong, playing host to workshops and exhibitions that aim to update the Bauhaus’s European-centric teachings for a more global modern age. ... [read more on Curbed] . When architect Walter Gropius founded the Bauhaus school in 1919, his utopian manifesto proclaimed that minimalism and a...

Cat Loving Artists

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Pablo Picasso and his cat, taken by painter Carlos Nadal at Vallauris 1954. The previously unknown photo was donated by his son Alejandro Nadal to the Museu Picasso Barcelona in 2010. What do Emily Barto, Pablo Picasso, Louis Wain and Andy Warhol all have in common? They all loved their cats. If you love art, artists and cats too, you'll likely enjoy these features about well known artists and their cats. Mary Savig, the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art's curator of manuscripts, recently dug through the institution's collection and published Artful Cats, a collection of artists with their cats. Highlights and endearing examples were featured by Artsy in These Smithsonian Archival Photos Show Famous Artists with Their Cats . I was particularly taken with the photographs of Hedda Sterne (outside and gazing skyward with Poussin), Frank Stella in his studio (reclining with Marisol), Beatrice Wood at her pottery wheel observed by one of her Manx cats (so that ...