Librartist

Ginsberg, Burroughs, Kerouac - the Beat Generation!

A striking black and red graphic depiction shows a stylized, angular creature that resembles a a dog or a wolf. The angular lines and shapes create a dynamic and somewhat aggressive visual effect, suggestive of movement and ferocity.

Maxim Gorky was loved, wronged, and misunderstood. Sometimes, he made poor judgments, but most of the time, he was true to himself. Drifting through Russia's vast space in his youth and taking low paid jobs, Gorky learned about hardships that ordinary people faced. He became a writer of their sorrows and hopes.

Writer and anthropologist Zora Neale Hurston was an essential member of the Harlem Renaissance. She researched the African-American folklore and daily life, drawing inspiration from it. Her most recognized work was Their Eyes Were Watching God.

With this image, we celebrate Puerto Rican poet and civil rights activist Julia de Burgos.

Italo Calvino (1923-1985) was an Italian writer and journalist whose stories and novels gained significant popularity in Western countries. At the time of his death, he was the most translated Italian writer. In 1981, the French government decorated him with the Legion of Honour.

A portrait of director Sam Peckinpah! Perhaps, his most praised film was The Wild Bunch, the western that was so good that it ended the genre.

A colorful portrait is segmented into various shapes and hues, featuring a central figure of Mexican painter Frida Khalo with an intense gaze and earrings.

Carson McCullers wrote about the deep South, and her work is frequently described as Southern Gothic. Despite her poor health and the series of strokes that tormented her since her youth, she gave us a significant number of excellent books: The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter, Reflections in a Golden Eye, The Member of the Wedding, The Ballad of the Sad Café. She was a close friend of Truman Capote and Tennessee Williams.

Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935) published his works under tens of pen-names. His fame came posthumously. Today, he is seen as one of the greatest Portuguese poets and one of the most significant twentieth-century writers.

In Italy, he is called "the supreme poet" and is considered the Italian language's father. Dante (1265 – 1321) was the first to compose verses in the tongue of ordinary folks, extensively using words from his Tuscan dialect. He lived in a turbulent time and ended his life in exile. After seven centuries, Dante's name shines much brighter than those he had to fear. His most famous work is Divine Comedy.

With this design, we celebrate motion pictures in general. We do it by featuring famous historical photo of Russian Jewish cinematographer and photographer Mikhail Kaufman.

Anton Chekov was a true master of the short story, and the writer of exceptional theater plays. This image celebrates his play The Seagull.

English poet, painter, and illustrator William Blake (1757-1827) is usually associated with the Romantic Age but is hard to put on any shelf. Both in his visual arts and his literature, Blake often elaborates motifs from the religious narrative. He did it with the passion and brilliancy of a genius. Even though he was almost unknown in his lifetime, every century that passed held Blake in higher regard. This image is based on his historical self-portrait.

Zitkala-Ša or Red Bird was a Native American writer, musician, educator, and activist. In her autobiographical prose, she described what happens when you are born in one culture but have to live in another. She also collected Native folk stories and legends, preserving them and raising the self-awareness of young generations. In 1926, she co-founded the National Council of American Indians and served as its president until she died in 1938. She is recognized as one of the most influential Native American activists of the twentieth century.

A tough and traumatic childhood didn't stop Virginia Woolf (1882-1941) from becoming one of the essential modernist writers. She was a pioneer of stream of consciousness narration. Her most famous works are the novels Mrs. Dalloway (1925) and To the Lighthouse (1927).

This image celebrates Mikhail Bulgakov, the writer of Master and Margarita, one of the true masterpieces of the twentieth century.

This image celebrates Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa, remembered by classics like Rashomon, Seven Samurai, Dersu Uzala, Yojimbo, Kagemusha, etc.

Italian poet and novelist Cesare Pavese lived at times of turmoil and clash of ideologies. His characters are loners who are detached from their surroundings. There is an air of emptiness around them. Later, we see the same in the movies of Michelangelo Antonioni. Pavese's tragic end came in 1950.

This portrait might be bringing an unexpected unexpected vision of one of the best writers of detective novels. But why not?

With this image, we celebrate Mexican surrealist painter and novelist Leonora Carrington. She was also one of the of the main figures of Women's Liberation Movement in Mexico.

With this image, we celebrate Icelandic writer Halldór Kiljan Laxness, the winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature.

With this image, we celebrate American poet and playwright Edna St. Vincent Millay, the winner of the 1923 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

Why Kafka's appeal is so deep and lasting? Because he is like no-one else, and no-one else can be like him.

She was known as an eccentric and as a loner who was passionate about gardening. Thanks to her sister Lavinia, who published her poems posthumously, we now have a towering figure in American poetry.

With this design, we are honoring Ernest Hemingway and his true masterpiece The Old Man and the Sea.

With this image, we celebrate American poet and satirist Dorothy Parker.

In this series, we offer humorous takes on the classics of literature.

When Fitzgerald published The Great Gatsby, the novel did not receive the reviews he desired. That changed after his death in 1940. Today, The Great Gatsby is on everybody's list of the best achievements in American literature.

John Cassavetes was an A-list actor, but he shined as a maverick-director and independent film pioneer. His films were revolutionary; they offered a truthful picture of reality executed in an anti-Holywood style. Many of his movies are world heritage, like Shadows, Faces, Opening Night, Minnie and Moskowitz, A Woman Under Influence, or Love Streams.

Ernst Toller was the president of a short-lived state called the Bavarian Soviet Republic. His presidency lasted for only six days. During his five years in Prison, Toller started writing theater plays and became a highly recognized expressionist playwright. Some of his titles are Transformation and Hoppla - We are Alive. This is redisegned historical photograph of Ernst Toller, property of National Library of Israel, Schwadron collection. The picture is available at https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ernst_Toller_-_Schwadron.jpg and it is altered by clors and geometrical shapes and what feels like a folk-pattern. CC BY 3.0 Deed Attribution 3.0 Unported

With this image, we celebrate Dashiell Hammett, the father of a hard-boiled detective novel, the creator of Sam Spade, Maltese Falcon and and indirectly of the film-noir genre.

Russian writer and poet Varlam Shalamov spent the best years of his life imprisoned. At first, he spent two years in gulag and after serving it he became a published writer and journalist. Then he was arrested again and survived seventeen years of extreme labour camp. When he came back, his health was ruined, his family life destroyed. Kolyma Tales, collection of short stories about a labour camp, is considered a masterpiece. It is written in dry, almost numb documentary style. Shalamov also published books of poetry like Flint, Journey and Destiny, and Moscow Cloud.

Voltairine de Cleyre (1866-1912) was born in Michigan and schooled in Sarnia, Ontario. She was a poet, an anarchist, and an early feminist.

With this image, we celebrate the giant of French Literature Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, better known as Molière.

Friedrich von Schiller (1759-1805) was a German poet, writer, playwright, and philosopher. He is one of the key figures of German culture in general. In his writing, both artistic and philosophical, Schiller examines the great themes of love, freedom, and faith. Note: we redesigned an early nineteenth-century portrait of Schiller by Gerhard von Kügelgen.