Paul Klee began a career as a musician, but his soul yearned to let out the painter hiding within. Paul Klee is an artist that did not neglect his artistic calling, and worked hard for many years to find his style.

Paul Klees’s path to artistic recognition was quite a difficult one. His parents prepared him to become an accomplished violinist. Some people made connections between Klee’s musicality and his painting. In fact, as a musician Klee worked reproductively and traditionally, but as a painter he was radical. Legend has it that his grandmother Frick introduced him to pencils and paints. However, he had to pass the age of 25 years old in order to acquire his own style. Until then he maintained himself through music, which was the only job he knew best at that time.

“I only liked what I was not allowed to do, drawing and writing,” wrote Klee in his diaries. At first, his parents were skeptical about his new passion, that of a painter. Moreover, because of uncertainty, Klee joined the art field only by drawing, painting was quite unfamiliar to him. For this reason, he studied assiduously colors and their power over the viewer. Moreover, his lack of exprience contributed to the fact that he was refused to enter the Munich Academy in 1888. The director at the time advised him to get more practice in drawing figures at a private school. This was his next plan to achieve his goal. However, in order to do that he had to overcome the considerable opposition from his parents. In the end, he decided to attend the Knirr’s private school.

During his three years in Munich, he became professiant in the drawing art field and had also taken an interest in the techniques of etching. However, he had no skill in painting. What helped him most in his career was his ability to laern on his own, and studying the Old Masters.

By 1910 he hadn’t had any great success. One or two pictures had been displayed in big exhibitions, and one exhibition in Switzerland with fifty-six pictures. At that moment, Klee could not sustain himself, financially speaking, only by painting. For this reason, he began to study the impressionist’s colors. Tones are those which took his attention. The representation of light helped him in the attempts of understanding the connection between light and darkness.

This resulted in him developing his black watercolors. After working at these problems, he started spending more time on oil painting. He wanted to learn a natural way in terms of colors, though he often turned back to drawing. Moreover, his aim was not the representation of outer reality, but for imagination to give rise to the emergence of the picture from the first laser of the paint applied on canvas. As Klee said: “Art does not reproduce the visible, but makes visibile.” The artist was also inspired in his art by the customs he had in his childhood. When he was nine, he would trace with his fingers the patterns on the marble tables in his uncle’s restaurant until he could recognize shapes and figures. The 1911 earned Klee many acquaintances in the field, including the artist Wassily Kandinsky.

In the same year, after an exhibition with the modern artists, in which he didn’t participate, Klee expressed his support to ‘primitive art’: “There are indeed very early form of art around more likely to be found in ethnological museums and at home in the nursery, for children can paint this as well. The more helpless these children are, the more educative their art is, for even at this stage, there is corruption – when children start to absorb, or even imitate, developed works of art.” Thus, supporting the idea that a true artist is the one who settles on canvas what he feels in his soul and not after he succumbs to the ideas proposed by artists past and that the pure art is that of children, who are not yet corrupted by studying art.

În 1912, Klee found his way to the abstract paining, and started studying the problem of simultaneous contrast. He was also inspirited by Robert Delaunay’s essay “On Light.” However, at this time, Klee failed in creating what he thought naturally and spontaneously were in art. We may say that although in 1912, he already had several exhibitions, Klee was still not proud of the level that had he been achieved, and he was his own worst critic. Only in 1914, Klee could reveal on canvas what he already had in his mind, but could not explain through colors.

The trip to Tunisia was a turning point, and the moment when Klee could express freely as he wanted. It was as if he had a picture image in his mind but wouldn’t be unable to spread it on canvas. He himself felt this to be so when he wrote in his diary: “Color possesses me. It will always possess me. This is the meaning of this happy hour: color and I are one. I am a painter.” The painting “Mazzaro” was the success of his struggles that he was talking about. Now at last, he was convinced that his experiments with colors had led the way to true art form he always wanted to create.

Edgar Degas introduced a revolutionary idea in the 1800s: craving the reality and giving the impression of a spontaneous event. Before Degas, great painters illustrated the characters without leaving aside any part of their body or face. Unlike his predecessors, Degas portrayed parts of a person and made the painting appear like a snapshot.

Degas wanted to show reality not by confronting it, but by taking a glimpse through the keyhole. The artist thought that the subject’s environment provided the clue to his character. That is why he had begun to place subjects in the atmosphere, by recording images of life in a modern point of view. Degas was using a new approach to composition in order to break with conventions. We can see this approach in the painting “Place de la Concorde,” made in 1876, a portrait of Baron Lepic and his daughters. The person makes a very good impression, and that is accentuated by the mimic of the passer-by. Degas painted only a part of this passer-by. By doing this, he wanted to give us the impression that we take part of a natural activity, surprised by the painter. It proves how acutely Degas’s eye was on the alert for the unanticipated moment. In this painting, the fleeting moment coincides with the artful construction.

A similar approach we can see in the painting “At the Milliner’s“, which he made in 1882. Degas shows a customer examining herself in a new hat. The Milliner is near her, but we can only see a small part of her. The mirror divides the composition and also runs down Milliner, giving the impression that the hat she holds in her hand is actually suspended in mid-air. Degas lets us see only what he thinks is important for our eyes. He once said “An artist has to be able to cut out a great deal away.” So, the artist doesn’t leave unimportant details in his paintings. Rather, Degas shows part of a subject, in order to let the viewer imagine that person, what he looks like or what he might be doing.

Degas’s paintings can also be called snapshots. He explored subjects from all around, and used visual contexts that implied things far beyond what was in the picture. His approach in painting was inspired by the angle of view in photography. He even tried this new art in the late 1895, when he took a photograph of Renoir and Mallarme. His two subjects had to pose for a quarter of an hour in the light of nine oil lamps.

No art could be less spontaneous than mine. Inspiration, spontaneity, temperament are unknown to me. One has to do the same subject ten times, even a hundred times over. In art, nothing should look like chance, not even movement,” said Degas.

So even if the paintings might look like a surprising reality, in fact, he makes a lot of preperations before finishing one. “The Absinth Drinker” is best known of Degas’s coffee house pictures, and the painting that proves the artist’s theory. The couple’s position and the arrangement of the tables establish the picture as a section of a larger view, as if Degas cropped reality and showed us only a part of it. In fact, the whole painting is a result of numerous calculations, even if it looks like a snapshot. The two characters are actually his friends, copper engraver Marcellin Desboutin and actress Ellen Andree, sat as models for his couple cafe. Thus, Degas proves to be an illusionist in the art field. He makes us believe that he was right there in the cafe, capturing the two personas on canvas, where, in fact, he put two of his friends posing for him in his own workshop.

Thus, we may say that Degas tries, through his paintings to fool the eye of the beholder. We imagine that the artist is in the middle of the action, trying to capture reality as it is, but instead everything is based on a strict arrangement of the painter. Thus, Degas tries to capture parts of reality, leaving the viewer to imagine the context. The artist succeeds all of this by using photography techniques in painting, and cropping the reality in a calculated manner. So what everything that apperars to be random in Degas’s works is in fact carefully organized.

As I stepped into the SFMOMA, it was clear that the Steins had an enormous impact on this special landmark of San Franciscan Art. The Stein family, were the center of attention and their influence on the art scene of the entire West Coast did not go unappreciated.

The Steins are responsible in many ways for the turn-of-the century revolution in the visual arts through their adventurous patronage, deep ties to leading minds of the era, and legendary Paris salon gatherings. As powerful `tastemakers`, they had a commitment to the new, a confidence in their inclinations, and a drive to build appreciation for the work they loved. From the moment they first dared to admire Matisse’s scandalous Woman with a Hat (1905)—the “nasty smear of paint” that gave the fauves their name—the family was staking claims for modern art that would heavily influence their peers and transform the careers of several of the most important artists of the 20th century such as Henry Matisse and Pablo Picasso.

The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde reunites the unparalleled modern art collections of author Gertrude Stein, her brothers Leo and Michael Stein, and Michael’s wife, Sarah Stein. Jointly organized by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art (SFMOMA), the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the Réunion des Musées Nationaux-Grand Palais, Paris, this major touring exhibition gathers approximately 200 iconic paintings, sculptures, drawings, prints, and illustrated books not only by Matisse and Picasso, who are each represented by dozens of works, but also by Pierre Bonnard, Paul Cézanne, Juan Gris, Marie Laurencin, Henri Manguin, Francis Picabia, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Félix Vallotton, among others. The Steins Collect premiered at SFMOMA May 21 through September 6, 2011, before traveling to Paris and then New York.

I had a great time touring the SFMOMA, it is a special place in the heart of bustling San Francisco. However, my personal feeling is that although the city of San Francisco owes a debt of gratitude to the Steins, the art in any museum should take center stage. Paying homage to the Steins is good and well, but let us not forget why we are here for… I quickly skimmed through a rich array of archival materials—including photographs, family albums, film clips, correspondence, and ephemera—the exhibition provides on this influential family and went directly to the awesome Modern Art collection the museum has to offer with their powerful Rothko’s, sublime Juan Miro’s and their beautiful Diego Rivera’s. The museum also has an interesting educational annex created in tandem with Google called “Doodle 4 Google” where you can see kids getting involved in the arts. Seeing kids getting immersed in art as they create art in the middle of the SFMOMA was the highlight of my visit. Talk about getting creative!

In conclusion, the SFMOMA is a great visit, but if you have to choose only one modern art museum in San Francisco, then I would suggest peeking into the de Yung at the Golden Gate Park with their Picasso exhibition.

Inc. Magazine just recognized overstockArt.com as one of the nation’s fastest-growing private companies. The Wichita-based online art gallery ranked 840th on the 2011 Inc. 500|5000 list, moving up nearly 266 spots from its placement on the 2010 Inc. 500|5000 list.

The nine-year-old company specializes in home décor with the most comprehensive selection of hand painted reproduction oil paintings, frames, and ceramic art tiles to choose from in the online oil painting industry. overstockArt.com also ranked 33rd out of the 204 companies representing the retail sector. The company’s three year growth rate of 368 percent was one of the largest contributing factors to its high ranking. This is the second year in a row the overstockArt.com’s first appearance on the prestigious list.

“We are incredibly honored to be recognized among the nation’s elite private companies,” said Sasson. “overstockArt.com’s growth is directly attributable to the talent and commitment of our team, the high quality of our art and the degree of confidence customers have as they shop with us.”

As an Inc. 5000 honoree, overstockArt.com shares a prestigious pedigree with such notable alumni as Intuit, Zappos, Under Armour, Microsoft, Jamba Juice, Timberland, Visa, Clif Bar, Patagonia, Oracle, and scores of other powerhouses.

The 2011 Inc. 5000 list measures revenue growth from 2007 through 2010. More than seven million businesses applied for selection. Winners are awarded a listing with other leading companies at Inc.com, a feature in the September 2011 issue of the magazine, and an invitation to an honoree ceremony. For more information about Inc. 5000 please visit www.inc.com/inc5000.

Diego Rivera murals are the embodiment of poetry on walls. The narrator no longer uses words to tell the history of his country, but the colors, the shadows, or in a word, his art.

Although he learned from the great artists of the world, studying Italian Renaissance painters works, but also the Mexicans, testing cubism for a short period of time, in his youth, Rivera could detach all and create his own style. Thus, he was able to remark from the many artists of the ’30s.

Diego Rivera is the artist who put the history of his country on walls. Combining styles that he studied in his youth, he was able to achieve the representation of history in a unique manner. However, his work is seen inseparably linked with the Socialist Realism. This political standpoint influenced most of his murals. Rivera was inspired by the idea of a Mexico waking from colonial sleep and giving the land to the people. He used the Marxist theory for choosing his themes for the murals. That is why the Mexican people are most represented in his operas.

Rivera’s first historical mural is Political vision of the Mexican People, started in January 1923 and finished in 1928, on The Ministry of Education walls. His works depict the past as well as the present and show that the man can creatively change society for a better future.

Rivera took pride in his people, and his art depicts Mexican people doing their every-day activities: the sacrificial offerings, the mine workers or the women carrying fruits. Thus, he immortalized the present times he was living in.

The Ministry of Education mural is considered to be his most successful work. The Mexican poet Octavio Paz writes about it: “It is surpassed perhaps only by the chapel in Chapingo.” He not only shows the good part of the every-day life, but also its negative, or better to say its struggles. The Proletarian Revolution which was the victory over capitalism is best shown in the mural The Arsenal – Frida Kahlo distributes arms, made in 1928. In this mural, Rivera includes his wife’s and friends portraits.

One of Rivera’s greatest history mural is the one made at the National Palace in Mexico City. He had been commissioned in 1929 to paint the three arched areas of the stairwell. Here he painted Epic of the Mexican People. The opera is made by three thematically linked murals depicting the history of Mexico from the Conquest to 1930. On one of the murals, named Mexico Today and Tomorrow he points to the future in accordance with the Marxist ideals. Yet again his political beliefs are included in his painting themes.

Diego Rivera not only painted his country history, but also America’s. He was asked repeatedly to make murals for institutions and business man in the U.S. In these works, he included the industrial life of the ’30s. Such fresco is The Making of a Fresco, painted on the Stern family houses wall in California, or “Detroit Industry” on the Detroit Institute of Arts walls.

Although he had a great success in America, his political beliefs stopped his ascent in that country when he painted the mural Man, the controller of the Universe. This is the first time in Rivera’s artistic life when his political faith stood in the way of his creativity. The mural was commissioned by the Rockefeller family for the Center in New York. Rivera made several sketches approved by the commissioning committee. However, he decided to make a portrait of Lenin with other communist ideologues as representatives of the new society. This drew bitter reactions from the conservative press. Rivera refused to paint out the portrait, so the Rockefeller brothers decide to destroy the mural. However, in the same year, Rivera receives the opportunity to make an almost identical mural in the Palace of the Fine Arts in Mexico City.

Besides the fact that human history is told through shadow and color in fine art, we can follow the itinerary of Diego Rivera’s life by admiring his work.

His own history is “written” in his paintings. His progress from youth to maturity, both in terms of development of personality and character and in the style he adopted in his work can be studied just by looking at his murals. In all his work, he let’s us see his beliefs, mostly his political ideas, but also the way he represents Mexican and American history. Thus, his inner development is translated through colors on walls. We can also say that we can know the artist’s thoughts just by looking at his paintings.

overstockArt.com released today a major update to its overstockArt.com Oil Paintings iPhone application, adding a customizable gallery option. The application, first released in May, already gives users the unique opportunity to decorate their walls with its interactive “View in a Room” feature customized for mobile devices. The update allows users to save their favorite art to a personal art gallery and create masterpieces from their favorite photos.

overstockArt.com Oil Paintings is a free iPhone application. The update is now available to current users, and new users can download the app from the App Store. iOS 3.1.3 or later required.

The app is an extension of the gallery’s innovative “View Art in Room” web application. “Our application provides a fresh new way to access overstockArt.com’s vast collection of oil paintings,” said David Sasson, CEO of overstockArt.com. “The new addition brings the world of art right into the palm of your hand.”

The full features of the overstockArt.com Oil Paintings mobile application allow users to:

• Create a personal gallery with the new “My Art Gallery” feature. Select fine art from overstockArt.com’s collection or import images to create a personal gallery.
• Turn photos into hand painted art masterpieces with the retailer’s “Turn Photos into Art” service, now available to use directly on the application.
• Using the built-in camera, users can take a snapshot of their space and visualize oil paintings hanging on their own wall-.
• Browse overstockArt.com’s robust collection of art and learn more about the fine art and artists featured on the site.
• Share images and personal galleries via e-mail, Facebook, text or Twitter.

“We were driven to ramp up our mobile strategy when site analytics showed that 15 percent of our overall traffic is from mobile users, specifically iPhone users,” Sasson stated. “Our application not only gives people a fresh new way to browse through our collection, but it gives mobile users an advantage by allowing them to see the art in their home right on their phone and makes it easy for them to access their favorite paintings with the customizable gallery feature.”

The overstockArt.com Oil Paintings application is available now as a free download from the App Store.