The art minute

Formerly a powder magazine, now fragmented and in search of stability, the Balkans are trying to exist elsewhere than in the column of armed conflicts. Contemporary Art is an outlet for a whole generation of artists who prefers to leave prejudices in the past.

Bullrings, picadores and their banderillas, bullfighters… undeniably, bullfighting is one of the most recurring themes of Pablo Picasso’s work.

If Albi saw the birth of one of the greatest painters of the nineteenth century, Montmartre have revealed it to the eyes of the whole world. Enlivened by the Parisian evenings, the work of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec remains in history as one of the most striking representations of the French frivolity of the Belle Epoque.

Mythical abandoned Queens factory, considered for 20 years as the world temple of street art and hip hop culture, Five Pointz was destroyed, in the name of real estate, one night of November 2013. Flashback on the amazing story of a place where all paradoxes reigned.

A crazy life, at a crazy speed, divided between artistic success, excesses and personal demons, to end up with amnesia. Light, then shadow. Caravaggio revolutionized painting, inspiring artists even more than 400 years after his death.

If the history of Art is made of a lot of colors, some creators have built their artistic corpus on a tint that is pegged to them. Klein blue or Soulages outrenoir (ultra-black) are some of the mythical pigments. Although less famous, Turner's yellow is just as much.

Founded in 1904 and extinct four years later, without ever really elaborating doctrine or school, Fauvism is a movement that brings together artists committed to creating a new pictorial language, mainly based on color.

A little more than 50 years ago, Alberto Giacometti disappeared by losing his fight against cancer at the age of 64 years. Already popular during his lifetime, he is today the most illustrious contemporary sculptor in the world. His filiform artworks are sold for millions.

Painted and drawn nearly a hundred times, as much in oil as in watercolor, more than a simple subject, the Sainte-Victoire mountain has become a full character in the work of Paul Cézanne.

From Auguste Rodin to Michelangelo through César, Jean Dubuffet or Alberto Giacometti, the world of sculpture has given birth to many sacred monsters of contemporary Art. Alongside these artists with their flashy names, other sculptors have succeeded in drawing on their talent, but also and aboe all on their originality. This is the case of Chris Gilmour.

For half a century, artists suffuring from mental illness work in the Artistic center in Gugging, Austria. In the wake of Jean Dubuffet, some of them became Art brut celebrity, changing their home into a reknown factory for this specific movement.

Iconic American artist of the 20th century mixing abstract expressionism and the new realism, Larry Rivers is considered as the grandfather of Pop art.

Aya Takano is one of those aesthetes who make the Contemporary Art as accessible as it enigmatic. The artist has settled in an open breach between noble Art and popular creation.

In the same workshop, the three brothers put a single signature on their canvases: Le Nain. Without ever knowing what brush stroke belongs to what painter, the Le Nain brothers maintain the mystery around the composition of their canvases and still remain an inexhaustible source of questions

Repositioning Art at the heart of society, blurring borders and building a cultural network throughout South America, and even elsewhere, here are the ambitious challenges of Bienalsur, the new biennial that lasts until December in no less than sixteen countries and thirty-two cities.