interesting facts


Art history is full of wild tales and fascinating facts, which makes it interesting yet makes it tough to determine what is fact and fiction. These amazing facts are things that you have hopefully never heard of before. In this article, we have listed a few fun facts which you don’t hear every day. Enjoy your read.

1. Art used to be an Olympic event

The Olympics wasn’t always about sports. The founder of the modern Games, Baron Pierre de Coubertin, was enamoured with the idea of the true Olympian being an artist and a sportsman so in about 1912 and 1948 medals were handed out for masterpieces of sculpture, painting, literature and architecture.

2. Roman statues were made with detachable heads

This comes not only in the line of amazing art facts but also amazing historical facts. Roman statues were made with detachable heads so that one could be removed and replaced by another. It seemed to be quite practical for the ancient sculptors to not make separate busts but to wait for different emperors to be killed and create only a head. Pretty handy, right?

3. In the top 25 of the most expensive paintings, 5 of them are by Picasso

Do you ever wonder who is the best painter? Or do you ever think if money really talks in the case of art? Well, in most cases, it doesn’t but it’s for sure that painters like Picasso, Pallock and Van Gogh dominate the top 25 most expensive paintings in the world.

4. Henri Matisse’s painting hung upside down

Yes, you read that right. Back in 1961, Henri Matisse’s painting Le Bateau was hung upside down at New York’s Museum of Modern Art. It took about 46 days before someone noticed it.

5. When the Mona Lisa was stolen, the empty wall attracted more visitors

The Mona Lisa has been in the Louvre since 1797 but went missing for a while in 1911. The masterpiece was stolen by an Italian employee of the Louvre. But the empty space it left on the wall surprisingly attracted more visitors than the painting had.

6. Learning art correlates strongly with your achievements in math and reading

Have you ever thought to yourself whether you are a math person or humanitarian? Well, studies have shown that if you are good at art then there is a high possibility of you being good at math or any other technical sciences. Researchers find that art correlates strongly with high achievements in reading and math. How cool is that!

7. Picasso could draw before he could walk

Now this is certainly a cool fact about Picasso! Picasso could draw before he could walk, and his first word was the Spanish word for pencil. Which was Lápiz and then the rest is history.

For art lovers: General knowledge questions about arts