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László Moholy-Nagy was born in Hungary and served as an artillery officer in the First World War before completing his law degree. His early paintings showed his interest in German Expressionist painting, then in the early 1920s, he was influenced by Dada (particularly Kurt Schwitters and Paul Klee) and then by the Russian Constructivists.

In 1921 he got married. He worked in close collaboration with his wife, photographer Lucia Moholy, and some of the photographs credited to him are their joint work or hers alone.

In 1924, Walter Gropius, the Director of the Bauhaus, met Moholy-Nagy and was so impressed by his ideas about the future of art and society that he asked him to take over the running of the foundation course (Johannes Itten, the previous course leader, had recently resigned.)

At the Bauhaus Moholy-Nagy joined some of the major artistic figures of the era, including Joseph Albers, Herbert Bayer, Marcel Breuer,Lyonel Feininger, Walter Gropius, Wassily Kandinsky, and Paul Klee. Together with Gropius, Mohloy-Nagy proceeded to edit a series of fourteen books, including his Painting, Photography, Film that defined the philosophical framework for the Bauhaus program and set an agenda for much of art education in the twentieth century.

Increasing political pressure led both Moholy-Nagy and Gropius to resign in 1928. Moholy-Nagy experimented with stage design and photography. In the 1930s he moved to England to escape the Nazis, working for a while as a photographer, before moving to America. Lucia Moholy stayed in England, working as a photographer and teacher.

In Chicago he was invited to direct the 'New Bauhaus' and when this failed through lack of financial support, in January 1939 he opened the School of Design (later called the Institute of Design), explicitly founded on Bauhaus principles. Shortly after his death from leukaemia in 1946, this became financially successful with the influx of former GIs.

Man Ray (August 27, 1890–November 18, 1976) was an American artist who spent most of his career in Paris, France. Perhaps best described simply as a modernist, he was a significant contributor to both the Dada and Surrealist movements, although his ties to each were informal. Best known in the art world for his avant-garde photography, Man Ray produced major works in a variety of media and considered himself a painter above all. He was also a renowned fashion and portrait photographer.
While appreciation for Man Ray's work beyond his fashion and portrait photography was slow in coming during his lifetime, especially in his native United States, his reputation has grown steadily in the decades since. In 1999, ARTnews magazine named him one of the 25 most influential artists of the 20th century, citing his groundbreaking photography as well as "his explorations of film, painting, sculpture, collage, assemblage, and prototypes of what would eventually be called performance art and conceptual art" and saying "Man Ray offered artists in all media an example of a creative intelligence that, in its 'pursuit of pleasure and liberty,'" — Man Ray's stated guiding principles — "unlocked every door it came to and walked freely where it would."

Zuane Antonio Canal, Venetian painter, the son of Bernardo Canal, a well-known scenery painter at the time. 'Canaletto' — or small canal — as he was soon called, received his training in the studio of his father and his brother, with whom he continued to collaborate for several years. He became the most famous view-painter of the 18th century.

He began his career as a theatrical scene painter (his father's profession), but he turned to topography during a visit to Rome in 1719-20, when he was influenced by the work of Giovanni Paolo Pannini. In Rome, in his own words, 'irritated by the immodesty of the playwrights, [he] formally foreswore the theatre,' to devote himself entirely to painting al naturale (from nature). It is not entirely clear what inspired him to this, but it was most likely his acquaintance with the work, and possibly also the person, of Caspar van Wittel.

By 1723 he was painting picturesque views of Venice, marked by strong contrasts of light and shade and free handling, this phase of his work culminating in the splendid Stone Mason's Yard (c. 1730, National Gallery, London,). Meanwhile, partly under the influence of Luca Carlevaris, and largely in rivalry with him, Canaletto began to turn out views which were more topographically accurate, set in a higher key and with smoother, more precise handling - characteristics that mark most of his later work. At the same time he began painting the ceremonial and festival subjects which ultimately formed an important part of his work.

His patrons were chiefly English collectors, for whom he sometimes produced series of views in uniform size. Conspicuous among them was Joseph Smith, a merchant, appointed British Consul in Venice in 1744. It was perhaps at his instance that Canaletto enlarged his repertory in the 1740s to include subjects from the Venetian mainland and from Rome (probably based on drawings made during his visit as a young man), and by producing numerous capricci. He also gave increased attention to the graphic arts, making a remarkable series of etchings, and many drawings in pen, and pen and wash, as independent works of art and not as preparation for paintings. Meanwhile, in his painting there was an increase in an already well-established tendency to become stylized and mechanical in handling. He often used the camera obscura as an aid to composition. In 1746 he went to England, evidently at the suggestion of Jacopo Amigoni (the War of the Austrian Succession drastically curtailed foreign travel, and Canaletto's tourist trade in Venice had dried up).

For a time he was very successful painting views of London and of various country houses. Subsequently, his work became increasingly lifeless and mannered, so much so that rumours were put about, probably by rivals, that he was not in fact the famous Canaletto but an impostor. In 1755 he returned to Venice and continued active for the remainder of his life. Legends of his having amassed a fortune in Venice are disproved by the official inventory of his estate on his death. Before this, Joseph Smith had sold the major part of his paintings to George III, thus bringing into the royal collection an unrivalled group of Canaletto's paintings and drawings. Canaletto was highly influential in Italy and elsewhere. His nephew Bernardo Bellotto took his style to Central Europe and his followers in England included William Marlow and Samuel Scott.

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