“It is a transformation during which imagination collaborates with memory.”
Edgar Degas
Edgar Degas was born in Paris into an influential French banking family. He is considered a master of depicting the human body in motion. His most famous works include scenes from the world of entertainment and ballet, he liked to paint racehorses, and later also the pulse of everyday life.
Edgar Degas mainly used oil on canvas and pastel techniques. He often associated with the Impressionists and also exhibited with them, but he developed his own style. In 1854, he spent five years studying the Renaissance in Italy. After returning to Paris, he combined classical and romantic painting styles in his portraits. In the early 70s of the 19th century, ballerinas became his main motif. Otherwise, Degas‘s art was mainly influenced by the new photographic science and Japanese color printing, which impressed him with its unexpected angles in which views open up, compositions without centers and unpainted space, and at the same time apparent unplannedness.
He liked to sketch live on the ballet stage and later finish his works in the studio. His artistic paintings of that time have a characteristic harmony of lines and continuity of contours, reflecting the psychology of movement and dance expression of ballerinas. He died in Paris, leaving behind more than 2,000 oils on canvas and pastels.