World Animal Day

World Animal Day is an international day of action for animal rights and welfare celebrated annually on October 4, the feast day of Francis of Assisi, the patron saint of animals. The World Animal Day, was originated by cynologist Heinrich Zimmermann. He organized the first World Animal Day on March 24, 1925 at the Sport Palace in Berlin, Germany. Over 5,000 people attended this first event. The activity was originally scheduled for October 4, to align with the feast day of Saint Francis of Assisi, patron saint of ecology. Unfortunately, the venue was not available on that day. The event was then moved to October 4 for the first time in 1929.

Every year, Zimmermann worked tirelessly on the promotion of World Animal Day. Finally, in May 1931 at a congress of the International Animal Protection Congress in Florence Italy, his proposal to make October 4 World Animal Day universal was unanimously accepted and adopted as a resolution. Many Artists have been showing their love for animals to date with their exceptional hyper realistic artworks such as below.

Irina Kryuchkova is an animal painter, she describes herself as a country girl since she spent most of her childhood in her grandmother’s house in a village where there were all sorts of pets, which she adored. The artist has always enjoyed playing with animals, she explains that animals are fantastic models they provide infinite opportunities to create a variety of portraits.

“The relationships of people and animals are my fascination. They are in our world, and we are in theirs.We are bound by our nature and the world we share. How we see each other is what moves me to create”, says Irina

Hanna Asfour is a 29 years old artist from Jordan who studied Architecture in the university of Jordan. He is a self-taught pet& wild-life artists, when Hanna first started drawing, he only drew human portraits with simple tools such as pencil or graphite. The artist aways concentrated on making his art look hyper realistic, so with practice he was able to add more details to each of his work.

“My passion for animals had led me to create a career from my art, I love capturing the essence & characters of animals in my portraits, I have found that the bond between pet and owner and the profound love people have for their pets truly inspires me”says Hanna