"If you have to ask what is jazz, you’ll never know.” Louis Armstrong Jazz is the music genre which is probably hardest of all to define. We can pretty safely presume the history of jazz started at the end of 19th century in southern parts…

What is impressionism and why we should care? Impressionism is a name of the artistic movement which started in second half of 19th century in France among painters and soon expanded in other countries and other artistic areas. The name wa…

Who was Homer? When we mention his name Iliad and Odyssey immediately come to one’s mind. Homer is without a doubt the most famous poet of antiquity. Unfortunately, we can’t say much about his life and work. Everything is far from facts an…

Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) is by quality and impact of his work compared with Dante, Homer, Shakespeare and other immortals. He was not only an artist, he studied law, just like many other famous writers (Brothers Grimm, Charle…

Jean de La Fontaine (1621-1695) is one of the most famous fabulists of all times. Today his work is associated with children literature, but, just like in many other cases, kids were never his target group. If we read his Fables today, thi…

Edmund Evans (1826-1905) was probably the most important printer in the history of picture books. As a kid, he showed a lot of talent for drawing and dropped school at 14 years to become an apprentice at well established and influential Eb…

Albrecht Durer (1471-1528) Albrecht Durer was the most important Northern Renaissance (cultural movement of Renaissance occurring North of Alps, while original Renaissance started in Italy) artist. He was a painter, an engraver, a printer,…

Frederic Chopin (1810-1839)This famous romantic composer and a superb piano player is of course widely known by is music, but I decided to choose few interesting facts from his personal life to present him in a different light. He was born…

Facts about Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375) 1. He was an illegitimate son of Florentine Boccaccio di Chellino di Buonaiuto and an unknown lady from France. His father deserted the lady but took care of the son. 2. Birthplace of Giovanni Boc…

We tend to look for simple, no more than one line long definition of art, but this in most cases produce rather disappointing results. It seems elusiveness is on major attributes of the art which can be quite paradoxical. On one hand it ‘w…