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Famous artists Marc Chagall (1887-1985) and Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) share a surprising amount in common, beyond the mere fact that they both have birthdays in July. It's true, Chagall tends to be celebrated for his uplifting paintings, whereas Kahlo is renowned for her poignant imagery. Nonetheless, both artists created deeply personal works that were rich with color, symbolism and emotion.

Born in Mexico on July 6, 1907, Frida Kahlo was a famous painter, an active Communism supporter and the wife of Mexican artist Diego Rivera. Due to a debilitating spinal condition caused by a bus accident when she was a youth, Kahlo spent much of her time bedridden. Nonetheless, she churned out work after ingenious artwork, rich with feeling, detail and color. Her creations were often portraits, celebrations of the self. In Frida's own words:

I paint self-portraits because I am so often alone, because I am the person I know best.

Kahlo's illness brought her much pain, as did her tumultuous relationship with her philandering husband. She translated this pain, however, into the creation of beautiful works of art. In Diego En Mi Pensamiento, below, Kahlo uses symbolism to portray the power of her love for the wayward Rivera, and his constant presence in her thoughts.

Diego En Mi Pensamiento
By Frida Kahlo

By apparent contrast, artist Marc Chagall chose to convey happy themes and events in his deeply personal artwork. Born in Russia on July 7, 1887, Chagall was raised in a humble Jewish ghetto and went on to live in Nazi-occupied St. Petersburg. He later moved to France, where he would become celebrated for his playful, joyful works of art. Commenting on his lighthearted works, Chagall once said:

Only love interests me, and I am only in contact with things that revolve around love.

Despite the turmoil he experienced in his early life, Chagall chose to fill his artwork with bright, vivid colors and many symbols of prosperity and happiness. Some of Chagall's favorite visual metaphors included the cow (life and abundance), tree (life), cock (fertility, often painted with lovers), the female bosom (fertility and eroticism) and horses (freedom).

I and My Village
By Marc Chagall

From different sides of the world, under different circumstances, Frida Kahlo and Marc Chagall painted rich, colorful, deeply felt expressions of their innermost emotions. And while both artists had adversities to overcome, both rose to the occasion and translated life experience into beautiful, emotionally moving works of art.

July being the birth month of both Kahlo and Chagall, what better time to explore the rich worlds of each artist's creations? We invite you to peruse the art of Frida Kahlo and Marc Chagall now.

How to Make Little Spaces Speak Volumes

Using a predominantly red and white color scheme, Jack lends his space a crisp, clean, modern flair. Notice that Jack also chose a large, bold Pop Art print to adorn one wall. While you might expect art with bright, primary colors and a Contemporary feel to overwhelm a small room, they can actually work beautifully. The trick is to choose art in hues that match the rest of the room -- in this case red, black and white -- and to keep everything else relatively simple.

Got a cool small room you’d like to share? I’d love to hear your design tips.

And for more inspiration on decorating small spaces, be sure to check out these pages about expanding small rooms and adding space and light.

These days, you don’t have to be a world traveler to decorate like one. While rich tapestries, exotic furniture and other global accents used to be found only in the homes of elite globe-trotters, today they’re readily available for everyone.

One of the most popular trends in home decorating today, Global décor combines exotic style elements from all over the world. From the rich silk curtains of India to the Zen-inspired artwork of Japan, Global décor offers up a veritable feast for the senses.

•Lush, ornate, exotic, sensuous, Olde World

•Rich color schemes, usually in neutrals or brights

•Geometric patterns and animal prints

•Zen-inspired imagery and motifs

•Wooden accents, especially dark cherry, mahogany, teak and bamboo

Whether your décor is predominantly Global or you’d just like to introduce a few exotic accents, Global-themed artwork can help set the tone. If, for instance, you tend to favor elements of Asian decor -- like rice paper lanterns and bamboo screens -- you could tie the pieces together beautifully with Asian artwork.

The African artwork below would look beautiful in a room with rich, geometric prints and plenty of plants.

There really are no hard and fast rules, though. The different facets of Global décor are all complementary, and you can easily combine and overlap styles. African art can look beautiful in a predominantly Asian-style décor, and vice versa.

Artwork with fresh, green plant imagery is another hallmark of Global style.

Lush, ornate wall tapestries also make a Global statement.

Need more inspiration? Our Global Art collection offers a wide range of artwork from various cultures across the world. And when you find something you like, you can custom frame it online to suit your décor. Our designers tend to recommend frames that are rich, rustic and/or ornate in and of themselves, such as embossed, burnished, bronze, distressed wood and bamboo.

Are you using Global décor in a unique or ecclectic way? Send us some snaps of your space!

Decorate with '50s Retro Chic

You know what they say about fashion -- any style that holds timeless appeal is bound to turn up on runways again...and again, and again. The same holds true in the worlds of art and decor as well. That's why, in both design and decorating, we're seeing a strong return to vintage '50s chic.

The characteristics of this movement tend to be playful, functional, quirky, and simple. Objects and imagery center around things with seasonless appeal, like pretty women, heroic men, happy children, carefree scenes and simple, colorful patterns.

Check out the fun, retro details in artist Matte Stephens' home, which was recently highlighted in a Design*Sponge (one of my blog faves) article

I like the sweet simplicity and humor in Stephens' accents.

If, like me, you enjoy scouring flea markets and antique stores for rare retro finds, you might also enjoy tying the elements together with vintage art. Here are a couple whimsical picks from the ArtSelect collection.

Popcorn, anyone?

Now that's what I call a micro-mini!

My guys (i.e. my hubby and son) would love this print.

Who doesn't love a masked avenger?

Got any vintage art or decor finds to share? I'm all ears (and eyes)...

Edgar Degas (July 19, 1834 - September 27, 1917) is widely considered the master of drawing the human figure in motion. His extraordinary draftsmanship, which stressed balance and clarity of outline, became a hallmark of his signature style.

Degas worked in many media, preferring pastel to all others. He is well known for his animated race horse paintings:

But most of all, Degas is celebrated for his intimate, immediate renderings of nudes and ballerinas:

Fascinated with the movement of forms through space, Degas often sketched dancers from the theater wings, capturing his subjects with an unrivaled poignancy and power.

Degas is often classified as an Impressionist artist, which is an understandable but not entirely accurate description. While he did, like Impressionists, favor off-center compositions and scenes from everyday Parisian life, Degas never adopted the signature Impressionist color-fleck technique, and he was a not a fan of painting en plein air.

Nonetheless, Degas' paintings greatly impacted the world of Impressionist art and he is inexorably linked with the genre. And while he never formally mentored any specific pupils, Degas strongly influenced many notable artists, such as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Mary Cassatt and Jean-Louis Forain.

An Artful Line Designed by Yours Truly

Some recurring themes I've noticed lately, both in art and decor, are striking silhouettes, nature-inspired motifs, and above all else, clean, simple lines. So when ArtSelect charged me and my team of designers to design a new collection of custom-framed artwork featuring the season's most chic trends, we came up with The High Design Line.

First we started with the artwork. We hand-selected pieces that featured bold, stylized, sometimes exotic imagery. Then we customized each piece with elegant frames and chic, contemporary matting for a modern presentation.

There are framed art prints with bottom-weighted mats:

And there are prints with all-around thicker mats, which give the artwork extra visual “breathing room.”

If you happen to be in the market for some fresh, new art for fall, now's a great time to browse our new High Design Line. It's on sale, starting today, and going through August 7. Everything in the collection is ready to hang and ships out the next business day, so it's great for decorators in a hurry. Even if you don't buy, just check it out and let me know what you think! Sometimes our best inspirations come from your feedback.

See you next week!

Waverly Cycles
By Alphonse Mucha

Alphonse Mucha (July 24, 1860 – July 14, 1939) is considered one of the most influential artists from the Art Nouveau movement—if not its chief founder. Born in Ivancice, Moravia, Mucha took to painting and drawing at a very young age. As a youth, he was regularly commissioned to paint theatrical scenery and in 1879 moved to Vienna to work for a popular local theatrical design company.

He went on to study in at the Munich Academy of Fine Arts and then moved to Paris in 1887 to study at the Academies Juilian and Colarossi. While in Paris, he developed the unique, lush, stylized poster technique that quickly catapulted him into fame.

Ete (Summer) and Printemps (Spring), By Alphonse Mucha

A great admirer of the ornate, the feminine and the beautiful, Mucha's work typically featured beautiful, rosy-cheeked young women in flowing garments, with ornate, flowered backdrops. The prolific artist produced a vast array of art posters, advertisements and illustrations, along with intricate designs for wallpaper, jewelry, theater sets and more in the Art Nouveau style that he helped to pioneer. Famous painters who followed in his wake included Gustav Klimt and Theophile Alexandre Steinlen.

Bieres de la Meuse
By Alphonse Mucha

A Small Homage to One of My Artistic Heroes

My friend Christine just came back from a weekend visit to Chicago, where she spent a day at one of my favorite galleries: the Art Institute. What really struck her this time around, she said, was how unbelievably prolific and multifaceted an artist Pablo Picasso was.

That got me remembering how I studied him extensively during my BFA. He really was artistically adventurous, wasn’t he? Few famous artists have taken so many chances and successfully reinvented themselves so many times.

There was his Blue Period (1901–1904), where Picasso’s paintings were pretty austere and he stuck to a palette of blue and greenish-blue. During this time, his subjects were fairly somber characters.

The Old Guitarist
By Pablo Picasso

Then there was Picasso’s Rose Period (1905 –1907), which reflected a happier time for him. He used cheerful pinks and oranges and painted more uplifting and hopeful subject matter, like this portrait of a mother feeding her child.

Maternity
By Pablo Picasso

Not stopping there, Picasso moved on to an African Period, where his paintings were strongly influenced by African sculpture. You can also see the beginnings of Cubism in some of these works -- the one below, for example.

Les Demoiselles D'Avignon
By Pablo Picasso

Here’s where, for me, things get really interesting: Picasso’s Analytic Cubism (1909–1912) period. Analytic Cubism, which Picasso developed along with fellow artist Georges Braque, is a monochromatic style of painting where subject matter is analyzed and reduced into basic geometric shapes on a two-dimensional plane. It’s a much more abstract genre, but I think it’s fascinating!

Violin and Guitar
By Pablo Picasso

From there, Picasso moved into Synthetic Cubism, which is a lot like Analytic Cubism, except artists use cut paper fragments instead of paints. What you end up with is a fine art collage, like Guernica, the original image featured in the print below.

Guernica
By Pablo Picasso

If that weren’t enough, Picasso was very experimental with sculpture of all kinds. Probably the most notable (or at least the largest) work he ever did was a gigantic 50-foot-tall public sculpture in Chicago. The “Chicago Picasso,” as it’s commonly known, is one of the more famous landmarks of the city. You’ve probably walked by it if you’ve ever been in the Loop district.

The Chicago Picasso
(image from Wikipedia article)

And here's one of his later works that I love:

Girl Before a Mirror
By Pablo Picasso

So that’s a brief sweep of Picasso’s artistic forays. His finished artwork numbers in the thousands and also includes line drawings, ceramics, murals, and even costumes and theater sets. For me, that vast legacy of creative experimentation serves as a reminder to keep pushing my own artistic boundaries. Who inspires you, artistically? Let me know!