Sensual, Erotic Works of Art for Valentine's Day

In their salad days, many now famous artists sold their works for barely enough to survive. Try to pick up a VanGogh now and you'd need to have the wealth of Croesus! Happily for lover's of art, quality reprints are available inexpensively. So for that quintessential Valentine's Day gift for your one of a kind lover, how about framing a piece of art that communicates your love? And for Valentine's Day, we don't want a Cezanne bowl of fruit or a pastoral Monet. What we are looking for on Valentine's Day, the day for lover's, is a romantic, sensual work. Something passionate, intimate and even a little erotic.

So I am going to play Sister Wendy Beckett for awhile. We are going to scour The Louvre, MOMA, wherever our journey takes us in search of that perfect, that definitive work of art for the perfect sensual, romantic Valentine's Day gift.

In my blog On Intimacy, (onintimacy.blogspot.com), I feature with my title a work by Gustave Klimt entitled The Embrace. Klimt, a German painter used lavish Byzantine colors to communicate longing, desire, passion and love. I believe the embrace is meant to represent the biblical passion between Ruth and Boaz. Both are wrapped in Boaz's cloak. And what a sensual garment Klimt has made Boaz's coat. Lush gold, scarlet, green and blue. A sensual Persian mosaic encasing the lovers.

Pablo Picasso, the Spanish Cubist painter explored line, angle, form and geometry in such well-known works as Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. In the majority of Picasso's works, the human female form is shown nude. A breast with obvoius nipple is always included. This is not done to be crude or garish. Picasso loved the female nude form and wanted to feature it prominently. I personally see more passion in Picasso's famous Guernica, which decrys the bombing of Picasso's beloved Spain and horror of the Spanish-Civil War. My favorite Picasso will always be The Old Guitarist, from Picasso's noted Blue Period.

For sheer eroticism Edgar Degas is your man. Degas is the well-known painter of ballet scenes (La Classe de Danse, Blue Dansers) which are quite sensual in and of themselves. Degas also made a series of paintings featuring women in various stages of bathing.Woman in the Bath, The Tub, After the Bath, andAfter the Bath, Woman Drying Her Napeare particularly erotic. Women are shown luxuriously bending, stooping, washing, drying and relaxing in the bath.

And did you think that dear old Pierre August Renoir did nothing but flowers? Au Contraire! Renoir excelled in nudes, particulary women bathing. Click here for a link to several paintings featuring women bathing, reclining and drying nude. These images are sensual and erotic, in a simple, pleasurable way. They might easily be hung in a bath, bedroom or lounge.

Of course for pure eroticism and lascivious color at it's best, we can't overlook Tiziano Vecelli or Titian. Titian is so well-known for his high color, that a shade of red is named for him. Titian's works focused primarily on mythological figures: Venus (Aphrodite) and Adonis. Titian painted religious scenes with a raw erotic zeal: Judith, the Assunta and other characters of saints and biblical characters take on a passion and drama very intensely human.

There are hundreds of other works of art to which I could draw your interest. These happen to be my personal favorites. Hunt up a good copy of one of these sensual works of art for your Valentine!