Ulrike Becks-Malorny

It was never a sure thing that James Ensor, the great Belgian painter of macabre and ghoulish scenes, would become a nationally revered figure. James Ensor was unusual in many ways. Apart from his training in Brussels, he spent his entire long life in Ostend, seemingly the opposite of cosmopolitan. Later on he was expelled by the group Les XX for a...

He was the founding father of modern art, the grand master who pointed painting forward on its way from Impressionism to the 20th century: Paul Cezanne (1839-1906). In Paris, but above all in Provence, Cezanne quested tirelessly for "a harmony parallel to Nature"-discovering it in still lives of apples, in bathers, or in the renowned landscapes of...