Arnold Genthe

Arnold Genthe. Dancer on the beach 1910s

Helen Moller

From the book Dancing with Helen Moller 1918

Marc Chagall

« Her silence is mine. Her eyes, mine. It is as if she had known me for a long time, as if she knew everything about my childhood, my present, my future; as if she was watching over me, guessing me from closer, although I see her for the first time. I felt that she was my wife. Her pale complexion, her eyes… These are my eyes, my soul…I have entered a new house, and I am inseparable from it. »
(Marc Chagall)

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Lovers 1912

Gustave Gain

Gustave Gain. Femmes en studio 1910. Autochrome

Gustave Gain

Gustave Gain. Adeline Gain et des amies au bord de l’eau 1910. Autochrome

Gustave Gain

Gustave Gain. Femme sur les rochers 1910s. Autochrome

Gustave Gain

Gustave Gain. Pêcheuses 1900s. Autochrome

Kansuke Yamamoto

Kansuke Yamamoto. Sans titre

Arnold Genthe

Arnold Genthe. Nude dancers 1910s

Arnold Genthe

Arnold Genthe. Florence Fleming Noyes’s dancers 1914

From A midsummer night’s dream directed by William Dieterle et Max Reinhardt in 1935

Florence Fleming Noyes

Florence Fleming Noyes’s dancer with a scarf on a rock 1910

Florence Fleming Noyes

Florence Fleming Noyes’s dancer with poppies 1910

Florence Fleming Noyes

Florence Fleming Noyes’s dancers in outdoor 1910

Henry Miller

“Some feel the rain in advance: others just get wet.”
(Henry Miller)

Alfred Cheney Johnston

Alfred Cheney Johnston. The actress Corinne Griffith 1918

From A midsummer night’s dream directed by William Dieterle et Max Reinhardt in 1935

Mona Paiva

Souyioultzoglou Seraidari (Nelly).
The dancer Mona Paiva on the Acropolis 1925

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Young woman lying 1911

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Gerti Schiele 1910

Anaïs Nin

“I am an excitable person who only understands life lyrically, musically, in whom feelings are much stronger as reason. I am so thirsty for the marvelous that only the marvelous has power over me. Anything I can not transform into something marvelous, I let go. Reality doesn’t impress me. I only believe in intoxication, in ecstasy, and when ordinary life shackles me, I escape, one way or another.”
(Anaïs Nin)

Roberto Baccarini

Roberto Baccarini. The actress Lidia Martora between 1920 – 1930

Émile Marcovitch

Émile Marcovitch. The dancer Tatiana Riabouchinska 1933

Émile Marcovitch

Émile Marcovitch. The dancer Tamara Toumanova 1933

From La fée aux fleurs directed by Gaston Velle in 1905

Francis A. Willey

Francis A. Willey. Day and night 2009

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Women embracing 1914

Anaïs Nin

“I will always be the virgin-prostitute, the perverse angel, the two-faced sinister and saintly woman.”
(Anaïs Nin)

Willy Ronis

Willy Ronis. Nu féminin allongé 1990

Lila Nikolska

The dancer Lila Nikolska. Folies Bergère 1928

Lila Nikolska

The dancer Lila Nikolska. Folies Bergère 1928

Nini Theilade

The dancer Nini Theilade in A midsummer night’s dream directed by William Dieterle et Max Reinhardt in 1935

Anna Akhmatova

« You will hear thunder and will remember me, and you will think: « she wanted storms ».The borders of the sky will be the colour of strong crimson. And your heart, as it was then, will be on fire.“
(Anna Akhmatova)

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Nude woman with black stockings 1913

From A midsummer night’s dream 1935

Jean Cocteau

From La belle et la bête directed by Jean Cocteau in 1946

Jean Cocteau

« La minute m’a dit : « Presse-moi dans ta main ;
Tu ne sais aujourd’hui si tu seras demain ;
Ainsi prends tout le suc qui m’enfle comme une outre,
Ne tourne pas la tête et ne passe pas outre,
Vis-moi !…dans un instant, je serai du passé !
Mais tu ne sais peut-être au juste ce que c’est
Qu’étreindre dans ses bras la minute qui passe,
Si tu comprends la splendeur grave de l’espace
Qui te laissait jadis indifférent et froid,
Si tu sais accepter la douleur sans effroi,
Si tu sais jouir d’un très subtil parfum de rose,
Si pour toi le couchant est une apothéose,
Si tu pleures d’amour, si tu sais voir le beau
Alors suis sans trembler la route du tombeau.
Tu vivras de chansons, de splendeurs, de murmures,
Le chemin n’est plus long si l’on cueille ses mûres,
Et je suis près de toi la mûre du chemin ! »
La minute m’a dit : « Presse-moi dans ta main. »

(Jean Cocteau)

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Portrait de femme 1907. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Portrait de femme 1908. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Jeune fille dans un jardin 1924. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Sarah Bernhardt 1907. Autochrome

Frères Lumière. Sarah Bernhardt 1907. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Portrait de femme sur un canapé 1907. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Jeune femme accoudée 1910. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Femme au bord de l’eau 1907. Autochrome

Frères Lumière

Frères Lumière. Portrait de Mme Stern 1907. Autochrome

The actress Katherine Murphy

The actress Katherine Murphy in ballet mécanique directed by Fernand Léger in 1924

George Hurrell

George Hurrell. The actress Gigi Parrish 1939

George Hurrell. The actress Gigi Parrish 1939

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall. Lovers over the town 1918

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku. Hidden life 2020

Waldemar Strempler

Waldemar Strempler. Collage 2015
« …flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh… »(Charles Bukowski)

Edvard Munch

Edvard Munch. On the waves of love 1896

Jan Saudek

Jan Saudek. Nu féminin allongé 1984

Antonio Garduno

Antonio Garduno. Nahui Olin 1924

Marc Chagall

« Her silence is mine. Her eyes, mine. It is as if she had known me for a long time, as if she knew everything about my childhood, my present, my future; as if she were watching over me, guessing me from closer, although I see her for the first time. I felt that she was my wife. Her pale complexion, her eyes… These are my eyes, my soul…I have entered a new house, and I am inseparable from it. »

Marc Chagall

Marc Chagall. Couple in ocher 1952

Virginia Woolf

There was a star riding through clouds one night, and I said to the star « Consume me »
(Virginia Woolf)

E. Aubin

E. Aubin. Nu féminin allongé 1881

E. Aubin

E. Aubin. Nu féminin allongé 1882

Herbert James Draper

Herbert James Draper. Study for a bather 1913

Jaroslav Fabinger

Jaroslav Fabinger. Portrait de femme 1930

Jaroslav Fabinger

Jaroslav Fabinger. Sans titre 1930s

Jaroslav Fabinger

Jaroslav Fabinger. Sans titre 1933

Jaroslav Fabinger

Jaroslav Fabinger. Nu avec un cercle 1930

Herbert James Draper

Herbert James Draper. Figure study for Clyties of the mist 1912

Herbert James Draper

Herbert James Draper. Study for the central figure of Clyties of the mist  1890s

Herbert James Draper

Herbert James Draper. Study of a female nude

Pal Funk Angelo

Pal Funk Angelo. Olga Szentpál’s dance group 1928

Pal Funk Angelo

Pal Funk Angelo. Olga Szentpál’s dance group 1924

From Le président directed by Carl Theodor Dreyer in 1919

Anonymous photographer

Anonymous photographer. Nude with stockings. French postcard 1920s

Alfred Cheney Johnston

Alfred Cheney Johnston. The actress Corinne Griffith 1920s

Alfred Cheney Johnston

Alfred Cheney Johnston. The actress Doris Kenyon 1920s

Henri Matisse

Henri Matisse. Nus bleus 1952

Auguste Rodin

« … sois assurée que je n’ai aucune femme en amitié, et que toute mon âme t’appartient…
Je suis déjà mort et je ne comprends plus le mal que je me suis donné pour des choses qui me sont si indifférentes maintenant…
Toi qui me donnes des jouissances si élevées, si ardentes, près de toi, mon âme existe avec force et, dans sa fureur d’amour…
Il a fallu que je te connaisse et tout a pris une vie inconnue, ma terne existence a flambé dans un feu de joie…
Merci car c’est à toi que je dois toute la part de ciel que j’ai eue dans ma vie… » (Lettre d’Auguste Rodin à Camille Claudel)

Auguste Rodin

Auguste Rodin. Femme allongée 1900s. Aquarelle

E.E. Cummings

« Here is the deepest secret nobody knows
here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide
and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart
I carry your heart I carry it in my heart. « 
(E.E. Cummings)

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku. From the serie The cabinet of souls 2015

The actress Judy Garland in the Clock directed by Vincente Minnelli in 1945

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku. Lovers 2015

Laura Makabresku

Laura Makabresku. Lovers 2022

Christian Schad

Christian Schad. Half-nude woman 1929

« My soul comes from better worlds and I have an incurable homesickness of the stars. »
(Nikos Kazantzakis)

Nora Dumas

Nora Dumas. Nus féminins sous l’arbre 1930s

John Cimon Warburg

John Cimon Warburg. Fish boat 1915. Autochrome

Amedeo Modigliani

Amedeo Modigliani. Reclining nude 1916

Willem de Kooning

Willem de Kooning. The kiss 1925

From Les petites marguerites directed by Věra Chytilová in 1966

Raoul Hausmann

Raoul Hausmann. Nus féminins allongés sur le sable 1930s

Waldemar Strempler

Waldemar Strempler. The end 2020. Collage

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Red pregnant woman 1910

Charles Bukowski

« …flesh covers the bone and the flesh searches for more than flesh… »

Nini Theilade

From A midsummer night’s dream 1935

Waldemar Strempler

Waldemar Strempler. Collage 2017

Pavel Odvody

Pavel Odvody. Dance study 2005

From The blue bird directed by Maurice Tourneur in 1918

Hans Duivenvoorden

Hans Duivenvoorden. Lovers

Egon Schiele

Egon Schiele. Nu féminin avec bordure blanche 1911

Waldemar Strempler

Waldemar Strempler. No war 2022. Collage

Eleanor Boardman

The actress Eleanor Boardman in Souls for Sale 1923