A lot of the really talented people I like were already mentioned, because most of them are musicians, moviemakers or comic writers.
But I haven't mentioned the artists performing other perhaps more classical art, like painting, sculpting, architecture, theatre and dance...
Whatever may happen, I will always remain very afffected by Surrealism and the artists who worked in that style. My favorite painters therefore are Max Ernst and Salvador Dali. Ernst, also a Dada artist, started off in collage art, which culminated in a surrealist collage novel: "Une semaine de Bont�". The mood of catastrophe in the book is probably due to the condemnation of his artwork by the Nazis in 1933. By an enormous coincidence I managed to find a recent copy of that book whilst in London.
Dali is perhaps much more accessible for most because of the delirious and baroque imagery, the Oneiric visions and erotic fantasies. Dali is the gladiator of enchantment. Some of his work already incorporate the dynamic aggressiveness, which can much later be found in Action painting. Other talented surrealist artists I like are Yves Tanguy, Joan Mir� and our own Ren� Magritte.
In fact, a lot of influence for the development of surrealism, Dada art and even pop-art came from Marcel Duchamp, altough his own
artistic contribution remains very small. He also made several paintings in the bold style of Fauvism, a style that impressed another favorite artist of mine, Georges Braque. But I mostly prefer
Braque's cubist style, which was developed together with Picasso(who, on the other hand, is not one of my favorite artists).
I also like the haunting, fantastic work of the late medieval Dutch painter Hieronymus Bosch. His paintings often depict demonic imagery and folly of humans and their inclination to sin in defiance to God. His most well known work is "The Garden of Earthly Delights".
The powerful expressionist works of Norwegian artist Edvard Munch are probably along a similar line of unease, like his best known painting "The Scream" which reflects his childhood trauma. Other works, like "Puberty", are pictures of women, reflecting sexual anxieties.