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Jansson (March 18, 1862 - June 15, 1915) could be described as the first gay Swedish painter. His academic painting career started fairly conventionally as he began studies in 1878 at Slojdskolan (later known as the Technical School). However upon meeting painters returning from France, he joined a Swedish avant-garde movement known as the Opponents who showed their work independently. Jansson stayed with the group which later became known as the League of Artists to its conclusion.
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The United States has debated immigration since the country's founding, and the Statue of Liberty—a potent symbol for immigrants—is often invoked as an argument for why we should usher in those who seek safety and opportunity with open arms. A little-known fact about Lady Liberty adds an intriguing twist to today's debate about refugees from the Muslim world: according to the Smithsonian Institute the statue itself was originally intended to represent a female Egyptian peasant as a Colossus of Rhodes for the Industrial Age. That might be surprising to people more familiar with the statue’s French roots than its Arab ones.
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Leonardo da Vinci liked to think that he was as good at engineering as he was at painting, and though this was not actually the case (nobody was as good at engineering as he was at painting), the basis for his creativity was an enthusiasm for interweaving diverse disciplines. With a passion both playful and obsessive, he pursued innovative studies of anatomy, mechanics, art, music, optics, birds, the heart, flying machines, geology, and weaponry.
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Truly vibrant red was elusive for many years: until a mysterious dye was discovered in Mexico and how a crushed bug became a sign of wealth and status. Although scarlet is the colour of sin in the Old Testament, the ancient world’s elite was thirsty for red, a symbol of wealth and status. They spent fantastic sums searching for ever more vibrant hues, until Hernán Cortés and the conquistadors discovered an intoxicatingly saturated pigment in the great markets of Tenochtitlan, modern-day Mexico City. Made from the crushed-up cochineal insect, the mysterious dye launched Spain toward its eventual role as an economic superpower and became one of the New World’s primary exports, as a red craze descended on Europe. .
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Emiliano Zapata was one of the leaders of the Mexican Revolution before he was assassinated in 1919, at 39. Many Mexicans still consider him a hero. The painting "The Revolution" shows a naked shoe, with heels and pink overcoat, on a sexually excited horse Zapata’s “feminization” has inflamed the admirers of the revolutionary leader. Among the protesters were many communal farmers who admire Emiliano Zapata – who was a poor peasant – for his fight against land appropriation by the rich landowners.
