Top Ten Greatest Artists

These should be best artists in the world but also those that have had a profound influence people or society.
The Top Ten
1 Leonardo da Vinci Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (April 15, 1452 - May 2, 1519) more commonly Leonardo da Vinci or simply Leonardo, was an Italian polymath whose areas of interest included invention, painting, sculpting, architecture, science, music, mathematics, engineering, literature, anatomy, geology, astronomy, botany, writing, history, poetry, and cartography.

A man whose legendary works grace the modern world.

2 Michelangelo Buonarroti Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6 March 1475 – 18 February 1564) was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art.

Considered to be the greatest living artist during his lifetime, he has since also been described as one of the greatest artists of all time. Despite making few forays beyond the arts, his versatility in the disciplines he took up was of such a high order that he is often considered a contender for the title of the archetypal Renaissance man, along with his rival and fellow Florentine Medici client, Leonardo da Vinci. ...read more.
3 Rembrandt Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (15 July 1606 – 4 October 1669) was a Dutch draughtsman, painter, and printmaker. A prolific and versatile master across three media, he is generally considered one of the greatest visual artists in the history of art and the most important in Dutch art history.

You can stand right next to a Rembrandt painting and find it impossible to believe that the material of clothes he has painted is not real. You almost know that it will feel like velvet and not paint!

4 Peter Paul Rubens
5 Édouard Manet Édouard Manet (23 January 1832 – 30 April 1883) was a French painter. He was one of the first 19th-century artists to paint modern life, and a pivotal figure in the transition from Realism to Impressionism.
6 Vincent van Gogh Vincent Willem van Gogh (30 March 1853 – 29 July 1890) was a Dutch Post-Impressionist painter who is among the most famous and influential figures in the history of Western art. In just over a decade he created about 2,100 artworks, including around 860 oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life. They include landscapes, still lifes, portraits and self-portraits, and are characterised by bold colours and dramatic, impulsive and expressive brushwork that contributed to the foundations of modern art. His suicide at 37 followed years of mental illness and poverty.

An artist who lived a very depressing life, but his works of art beams with happiness. Over the great periods of life, his art still stands over to astound us. The bright, vibrant colors he plasters across his paintings, his transformation and presentations of the array of emotions he beholds, he really is an artist to be deserving of a good reputation.

7 Oscar Claude Monet Oscar-Claude Monet was a founder of French Impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting.

I love his landscape paintings the most, his landscape paintings are mostly very beautiful and colorful. He knew how to blend the colors very well to paint the landscapes and they were mostly meticulously done. Although he used dots and lines as the main brush strokes but he knew how to use dots and lines to paint marvelous looking landscapes. My most favorite paintings of him are the landscape near Monte Carlo, San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk, and Woman on the Parasol.

He is the true founder of impressionism, and his style formed itself upon his pure emotion and expression. Every painting was so beautifully unique, and his lilly pad series was wonderfully remarkable. Truly the greatest artist of his time.

What would offices and hospitals done without the regulation Monet prints to hang in the waiting rooms.

8 Pablo Picasso Pablo Ruiz y Picasso, (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) also known as Pablo Picasso, was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, stage designer, poet and playwright who spent most of his adult life in France.

Regarded as one of the greatest and most influential artists of the 20th century, he is known for co-founding the Cubist movement, the invention of constructed sculpture, the co-invention of collage (with Georges Braque), and for the wide variety of styles that he helped develop and explore. ...read more.

The most unique painter to be ever existed, his paintings are mostly very unique and interesting to look at. And the best thing about him is that he is a perfectionist who always work hard to make his paintings as pleasing as possible.

Broke new ground during a time of convention and turned art on it's head

9 Chinwe Chukwuogo-Roy

I believe that she gave more hope and inspiration to more people than any other artist in history - yet most of those people will never be aware of it!

In my view the outstanding artist of the 21st century and one of the best in the 20th. If only I could afford her work...

What a tragedy that she is no longer here. The world has lost the greatest artist of our time

10 Ben Enwonwu

Outstanding African Artist of the last century. Led the way for other notable artists from Africa and North America

A ground breaker and trend setter in a time of repression and prejudice

The Contenders
11 Francesco Hayez
12 Bob Ross Robert Norman Ross (October 29, 1942 – July 4, 1995) was an American painter, art instructor, and television host. He was the creator and host of The Joy of Painting, an instructional television program that aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS in the United States, and also aired in Canada, Latin America, and Europe. Ross went from being a public-television personality in the 1980s and 1990s to being an Internet celebrity in the 21st century, becoming popular with fans on YouTube and many other websites after his death.

Amazing artist. Made landscape paintings that look photo realistic in a matter of minutes, and taught you how to do it at the same time.

13 Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa (24 November 1864 – 9 September 1901), also known as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec was a French painter, printmaker, draughtsman and illustrator whose immersion in the colourful and theatrical life of Paris in the late 19th century allowed him to produce a collection of enticing, elegant and provocative images of the modern, sometimes decadent, life of those times.
Toulouse-Lautrec is among the best-known painters of the Post-Impressionist period, with Cézanne, Van Gogh and Gauguin. ...read more.

He did more for the poster industry than all the others put together

14 Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (April 6 or March 28, 1483 – April 6, 1520), known as Raphael, was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. His work is admired for its clarity of form, ease of composition, and visual achievement of the Neoplatonic ideal of human grandeur. Together with Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, he forms the traditional trinity of great masters of that period.
15 Salvador Dali Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marqués de Dalí de Púbol (11 May 1904 – 23 January 1989), known as Salvador Dalí, was a prominent Spanish surrealist painter born in Figueres, Catalonia, Spain.
16 Auguste Rodin François Auguste René Rodin (12 November 1840 – 17 November 1917), known as Auguste Rodin, was a French sculptor. Although Rodin is generally considered the progenitor of modern sculpture, he did not set out to rebel against the past. He was schooled traditionally, took a craftsman-like approach to his work, and desired academic recognition, although he was never accepted into Paris's foremost school of art.

The Thinker must have inspired generations of artists - and thinkers.

17 Donatello Donato di Niccolò di Betto Bardi (c. 1386 – 13 December 1466), better known as Donatello, was an early Renaissance sculptor from Florence. He studied classical sculpture, and used this to develop a fully Renaissance style in sculpture, whose periods in Rome, Padua and Siena introduced to other parts of Italy a long and productive career. He worked in stone, bronze, wood, clay, stucco and wax, and had several assistants, with four perhaps being a typical number. Though his best-known works were mostly statues in the round, he developed a new, very shallow, type of bas-relief for small works, and a good deal of his output was larger architectural reliefs.

Worked with stone, bronze, Terra Cotta and wood. His 'David' may not be as hansom as Michelangelo's but it is more realistic

18 Frank Frazetta

One of the greatest artists of all time. He taught Boris Vallejo how to paint and his art is just as awesome and interesting.

19 Boris Vallejo

I love his art. He and Julie Bell do everything from fantasy art to mythology to Marvel and DC. So much amazing art. I visit their site once in a while just to look at their artwork. Boris and Julie are my favorite artists in the world.

20 Julie Bell

I love Boris and Julie. They always have such great art and interesting art. I visit their site every now and then just to look at their art. They're awesome.

21 Jeff Easley
22 Dave Rapoza
23 Gerald Brom
24 Marilyn Manson Brian Hugh Warner, better known by his stage name Marilyn Manson, is an American musician, songwriter, actor, painter, multimedia artist, author, and former music journalist.

He does music and paintings.

25 Giorgio Morandi
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