Fine Art by Felice Varini

Felice Varini is a Swiss artist who was nominated for the 2000/2001 Marcel Duchamp Prize, known for his geometric perspective-localized paintings of rooms and other spaces, using projector-stencil techniques. According to mathematics professor and art critic Joël Koskas, "A work of Varini is an anti-Mona Lisa."

Frank Lloyd Wright

Frank Lloyd Wright (June 8, 1867—April 9, 1959) was one of the most prominent and influential architects of his era. He developed a series of highly individual styles over his extraordinarily long architectural career (spanning the years 1887-1959) and influenced the entire course of American architecture and building. To this day, he remains America's most famous architect.

Frank Lloyd Wright was born in the agricultural town of Richland Center, Wisconsin, United States, on June 8, 1867, of Welsh descent just two years after the end of the American Civil War. His father was a Baptist preacher, but as an adult Wright developed strong Unitarian and transcendental principles. (Eventually, in 1905, he would design the Unity Temple in Oak Park, Illinois.) As a child he spent a great deal of time playing with the kindergarten educational blocks by Friedrich Wilhelm August Froebel (known as Froebel Gifts) given to him by his mother. These consisted of various geometrically shaped blocks that could be assembled in various combinations to form three-dimensional compositions. Wright in his autobiography talks about the influence of these exercises on his approach to design. Many of his buildings are notable for the geometrical clarity they exhibit.
Wright's home in Oak Park, Illinois

Wright began his formal education in 1885 at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School for Engineering, where he was a member of a fraternity, Phi Delta Theta. He took classes part-time for two years while apprenticing under Allan Darst Conover, a local builder and professor of civil engineering. In 1887, Wright left the university without taking a degree (although he was granted an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the university in 1955) and moved to Chicago, Illinois, where he joined the architectural firm of Joseph Lyman Silsbee. Within the year, he had left Silsbee to work for the firm of Adler & Sullivan. Beginning in 1890, he was assigned all residential design work for the firm. In 1893, Louis Sullivan himself unwillingly asked Wright leave the firm after he discovered that Wright had been accepting clients independently from the firm (moonlighting). Wright established his own practice and home in the Chicago suburb of Oak Park, IL. By 1901, Wright's completed projects numbered approximately fifty, including many houses in his hometown. He married the daughter of a wealthy businessman, which raised his social status, and he became more well-known.

Between 1900 and 1917, his residential designs were "Prairie Houses" (extended low buildings with shallow, sloping roofs, clean sky lines, suppressed chimneys, overhangs and terraces, using unfinished materials), so-called because the design is considered to complement the land around Chicago. These houses are credited with being the first examples of the "open plan."

In fact, the manipulation of interior space in residential and public buildings, such as the Unitarian Unity Temple, in Oak Park, are hallmarks of his style. He believed that humanity should be central to all design. Many examples of this work can be found in Buffalo, New York, resulting from a friendship between Wright and an executive from the Larkin Soap Company, Darwin D. Martin. In 1902 the Larkin Company decided to build a new administration building.

His most famous private residence was constructed from 1935 to 1939—Fallingwater—for Mr. and Mrs. E.J. Kaufmann Sr., at Bear Run, Pennsylvania. It was designed according to Wright's desire to place the occupants close to the natural surroundings, with a stream and waterfall running under part of the building. The construction is a series of cantilevered balconies and terraces, using limestone for all verticals and concrete for the horizontals. The house cost $155,000, including the architect's fee of $8,000. Kaufmann's own engineers argued that the design was not sound. They were overruled by Wright, but the contractor secretly added extra steel to the horizontal concrete elements. In 1994, Robert Silman and Associates examined the building and developed a plan to restore the structure. In the late 1990s, steel supports were added under the lowest cantilever until a detailed structural analysis could be done. In March 2002, post-tensioning of the lowest terrace was completed.

It was also in the 1930s that Wright first designed "Usonian" houses. Intended to be highly practical houses for middle-class clients, the designs were based on a simple, yet elegant geometry. He would later use similar elementary forms in his First Unitarian Meeting House built in Madison, Wisconsin, between 1947 and 1950.

Wright is responsible for a concept or a series of extremely original concepts of suburban development united under the term Broadacre City. He proposed the idea in his book The Disappearing City in 1932, and unveiled a very large (12 by 12 feet) model of this community of the future, showing it in several venues in the following years. He went on developing the idea until his death.

His 'Usonian' homes set a new style for suburban design that was followed by countless developers. Many features of modern American homes date back to Wright; open plans, slab-on-grade foundations, and simplified construction techniques that allowed more mechanization or at least efficiency in building are amongst his innovations.

The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City, is a building which occupied Wright for 19 years (1940–59) and is probably his most recognized masterpiece. The building rises as a warm beige spiral from its site on Fifth Avenue; its interior is similar to the inside of a seashell. Its unique central geometry was meant to allow visitors to experience Guggenheim's collection of nonobjective geometric paintings with ease by taking an elevator to the top level and then viewing artworks by walking down the slowly descending, central spiral ramp, which features a floor embedded with circular shapes and triangular light fixtures, in order to complement the geometric nature of the structure. Unfortunately, when the museum was completed, a number of important details of Wright's design were ignored, including his desire for the interior to be painted off-white. Furthermore, the Museum currently designs exhibits to be viewed by walking up the curved walkway rather than walking down from the top level.

Works:

Darwin D. Martin House, Buffalo, New York


The iconic Kaufmann residence (Fallingwater) is now a museum


Hillside Home School, 1902, Taliesin, Spring Green, Wisconsin

Nice Art by Charles Rennie Mackintosh

Charles Rennie Mackintosh, architect, designer and artist is celebrated around the world as one of the most creative figures of the early 20th century.
Charles Rennie Mackintosh was born one of eleven children in the Townhead area of Glasgow, close to Glasgow Cathedral. From these beginnings, he has become one of the most celebrated architects of his generation.
He met Margaret Macdonald, his future wife, at Glasgow School of Art and much of what can be seen in the buildings and collections involves their artistic collaboration. You will also witness his masterful handling of light and space and see many of the well-known pieces of furniture which have themselves become icons.
Mackintosh took his inspiration from our Scottish traditions and blended them with the flourish of Art Nouveau and the simplicity of Japanese forms. Much of his work has survived. It can be seen today alongside that of his close collaborators in the group known as "The Four" and the other artists and designers who collectively created "The Glasgow Style".

Works:

Glass panel, for The Rose Boudoir, International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art, Turin - The design, showing a stylised female figure, is closely related to Mackintosh's contemporaneous graphic designs. Coloured glass was regularly incorporated into Mackintosh's furniture and interiors of the early 1900s as inset panels. With these the light filtering through would create rich and varied effects.


Umbrella stand - The hall at Southpark Avenue was well-equipped for umbrellas with this item and also a free-standing hat and coat stand – perhaps it makes a comment on the Scottish weather. The construction is simple and apparent. This view shows it in the hall of The Mackintosh House.


Desk - This handsome desk contains silvered metal panels by Margaret Macdonald. They show stylised female figures which represent old and new styles of writing. The desk has doors at the sides that give access to shelving and storage for papers and drawings.


Bracket light fitting - These fittings were designed for the bedroom of Mackintosh’s first important house, Windyhill, in 1901. Two examples are displayed in the bedroom of The Mackintosh House, Hunterian Art Gallery.


Clock - The clock was designed as a set with a writing cabinet and accompanying chair for Walter Blackie, at The Hill House, Helensburgh. This is Mackintosh' version and it is displayed in the drawing room of The Mackintosh House, Hunterian Art Gallery. Its appearance changes as you look at it from different angles because of the use of slender, free-standing columns in the base. The numerals are painted on. Notice the discreet use of ivory inlay around the edge of the clock face.


Cheval mirror, for the bedroom - The mirror was described, when it was exhibited at the VIII Vienna Secession exhibition in 1900, as being like an upturned sledge, and it has a powerful presence. The side panels seem to spring up from the base and stretch plant-lie to the top. It formed part of the bedroom suite designed by Mackintosh in 1900 for his new marital home at 120 Mains Street, Glasgow. The suite is now displayed in the bedroom of The Mackintosh House, Hunterian Art Gallery.


Armchair - This is a particularly elegant chair, with its slender arms and legs. It is the only known occasion on which Mackintosh used leather as an upholstery.

Nice Art by Antoni Gaudí

Antoni Gaudí i Cornet (25 June 1852 - 10 June 1926) - sometimes referred to by the Castilian translation of his name, Antonio Gaudí - was an Spanish-Catalan architect who belonged to the Modernisme (Art Nouveau) movement and was famous for his unique style and highly individualistic designs.

Gaudí's first works were designed in the style of gothic and traditional Spanish architectural modes, but he soon developed his own distinct sculptural style. French architect Eugene Viollet-le-Duc, who promoted an evolved form of gothic architecture, proved a major influence on Gaudí. But the student surpassed the master architect and contrived highly original designs - irregular and fantastically intricate. Some of his greatest works, most notably La Sagrada Família, have an almost hallucinatory power.
Arch and spiral staircase.

He integrated the parabolic arch and hyperboloid structures, nature's organic shapes, and the fluidity of water into his architecture. While designing buildings, he observed the forces of gravity and related catenary principles. (Gaudí designed many of his structure upside down by hanging various weights on interconnected strings or chains, using gravity to calculate catenaries for a natural curved arch or vault.)

Using the trencadís technique, Gaudí often decorated surfaces with broken tiles.

The architect's work has been categorized as Art Nouveau architecture, a precursor to modern architecture. But his adoption of biomorphic shapes rather than orthogonal lines put him in a category unto himself (in Latin, sui generis). His style was later echoed by that of Austrian architect Friedensreich Hundertwasser (1928-2000).

Though hailed as a genius, some hypothesize that Gaudí was color blind and that it was only in collaboration with Josep Maria Jujol - an architect twenty seven years his junior whom he acknowledged as a genius in his own right - that he produced his greatest works.

Works:

Nice Art of Alvar Aalto

ALVAR AALTO

Born in Jyväskylä in 1898 and died in Helsinki in 1976. Alvar Aalto is one of the important figures of modern architecture and is the best-known Finnish architect abroad. His work ranges from area plans to designs for individual buildings and furnishings. He created organic buildings that combined different materials, were fragmen-ted or incorporated curves. In collaboration with his wife Aino Marsio-Aalto, he worked in the fields of interior design and furnish-ings. In this period he began to produce pieces, like the stool with three legs, that were remarkably modest but meticulously finished. Aalto's contribution to the standardised construction and socially oriented architectural planning of the modern movement was important for the development of Finnish architecture and society.

Although his early work borrowed from the neoclassic movement, he eventually adapted the symbolism and functionalism of the Modern Movement to generate his plans and forms. Aalto's mature work embodies a unique functionalist/expressionist and humane style, successfully applied to libraries, civic centers, churches, housing, etc.

A synthesis of rational with intuitive design principles allowed Aalto to create a long series of functional yet non-reductionist buildings. Alvar Aalto generated a style of functionalism which avoided romantic excess and neoclassical monotony. Although Aalto borrowed from the International Style, he utilized texture, color, and structure in creative new ways. He refined the generic examples of modern architecture that existed in most of Europe and recreated them into a new Finnish architecture. Aalto's designs were particularly significant because of their response to site, material and form.

Aalto generated a large body of work in Germany, America, and Sweden. Often at work on multiple projects, he tended to intermingle ideas and details within his work. The spectrum of Aalto's work exhibits a sensual detailing that separates him from most of his contemporaries.

Aalto was a master of form and planning, as well as of details that relate a building successfully to its users. His buildings have provided renewed inspiration in the face of widespread disillusionment with high modernism on one hand, and post-modernism on the other.

Aalto died in Helsinki in May 1976.

His works:

STOOL 60 - Birch, natural lacquered or honey-birch. Three legs. Seat options: birch veneer, linoleum, laminate, upholstered or special edition curly-birch



FLOOR LAMP A810 - White painted metal lampshade. Base and stand covered with black leather. Upper part polished brass


The Savoy Vase, also known as the Aalto Vase.

Industrial Design of Lebedev

There is series of industrial design from Art Lebedev Studio:

Clock:


eraser


flycatcher


holder for small items 

@teacup

smiles for kids

buttons

computer mouse