A masterpiece by El Greco has been returned to the rightful owners by The Commission for Looted Art in Europe, and Art Recovery International, representing the art gallery which acquired the looted painting in 2010. The announcement of the restitution of 'Portrait of a Gentleman' to the heirs to the collection of Julius Priester, a notable Viennese industrialist who fled Vienna in March 1938 was made 77 years later in March, 2015.
In 1944 'Portrait of a Gentleman' was seized by the Gestapo in Vienna, as was the entire Julius Priester collection, as part of the large-scale expropriation and persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazis in Vienna after the Anschluss with Germany in 1938.
Henri-Émile-Benoît Matisse (December 31, 1869 – November 3, 1954) was a French artist, known for his use of colour and his fluid and original draughtsmanship. He was a draughtsman, printmaker, and sculptor, but is known primarily as a painter.
Matisse is commonly regarded, along with Pablo Picasso and Marcel Duchamp, as one of the three artists who helped to define the revolutionary developments in the plastic arts in the opening decades of the twentieth century, responsible for significant developments in painting and sculpture. Although he was initially labelled a Fauve (wild beast), by the 1920s he was increasingly hailed as an upholder of the classical tradition in French painting. His mastery of the expressive language of colour and drawing, displayed in a body of work spanning over a half-century, won him recognition as a leading figure in modern art.
New trends emerge in architecture. Old styles are left behind and architects now go for the ultra-modern look, the futuristic style of buildings. They shouldn't be blamed for this, actually we should admire this attitude. It's bold and it must be appreciates because they're looking ahead in the future and setting some landmarks for the young architects that will come.
For us, the humble mortals, they're offering a great spectacle of shapes and colors, leaving us the opportunity to simply gaze at their brilliant work. In the 90′s, many great architects were gathered in Netherlands to rejuvenate the city with modern buildings? Well, it's time for Dubai and Beijing to collect all the architects with vision. They have an intelligent strategy of investing in modern buildings in order to attract tourists and also prepare themselves for the future. Fortunate for them, they have a lot of space to build new architectural wonders, unlike European cities were there isn't place to build even a small boutique.
What began in 2002 as a modest American offshoot of a popular art fair in the Swiss-German border town of Basel has now expanded into a seven day potpourri known as Miami Art Week and held each year somewhere around December 1-7, 2014.This year the hotels are filled and the restaurants are packed, with an improving economy and good weather sales are reportedly brisk. Its adherents seemed to have acquired a private language as the attendees chatter excitedly about something seen at Pulse, Scope, NADA, Spectrum, Pinta, or Red Dot, all names of satellite fairs scattered about the Miami Beach barrier island and across its high-speed bridges to the Wynwood district of Miami which hosts the equally large and exciting Art Miami, as well as the Miami River Art Fair.
