From men in bowler hats, floating in the sky, to a painting of a pipe above the caption "this is not a pipe", Rene Magritte created an echo-chamber of object and image, name and thing, reality and representation. Like other Surrealist works, Magritte's paintings combine a precise, mimetic technique with abnormal, alienating configurations which defy the laws of scale, logic, and science: A comb the height of a wardrobe, rocks that float in the sky,...

It was as a revolutionary and troublemaker that Picasso, Dali and Andre Breton described the husband of Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, but he was also responsible for creating a public art that was both highly advanced and profoundly accessible. From 1910 Rivera lived in Europe where he absorbed the influence of Cubism. After the Mexican revolution, however, he returned to his homeland and harnessed the lessons of the European avant-garde to the needs...

El Greco (1541-1614) was born Domenikos Theotokopoulos in Crete in 1541. He arrived in Venice in 1566, where his work was greatly influenced by Titian and Tintoretto. Later he made an offer to the Pope to paint over Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" in the spirit of the Counter Reformation, which so incurred the wrath of Roman artists that a career in Italy was no longer conceivable. El Greco then settled in Spain, in Toledo, where he received numerous...

"Discover how scenes of daily life and delicate dabs of color shocked the art world establishment. In this introduction to Impressionism, we explore the artists, subjects, and techniques that first brought the easel out of the studio and shifted artistic attention from history, religion, or portraiture to the evanescent ebb and flow of modern life. As we tour the theaters, bars, and parks of Paris and beyond, we take in the movement's radical innovations...