2019Figures in World History and Culture - First Day Cover

The quest for beauty is as old as humankind. Everyday ugliness and tedium, along with clashes of civilisations, are often shown to be powerless to hold back the genius of those who dare to risk new paths. Even if anguish, the result of incomprehension, is the price to be paid. Or perhaps it is precisely there that we nd the key to understanding the mystery of great artistic creation. Despite recognising that these feats often do not come in synchrony with the tastes of the day, we are always indebted to those who did things di erently and better, rewriting the canon in the areas in which they express themselves. This was the case with composer and cellist Jacques O enbach (1819-1880), pianist and composer Clara Schumann (1819-1896) and ballerina Margot Fonteyn (1919-1991).