My favs are Paul Klee, Max Ernst , Piet Mondrian, Mark Rothko and Jackson Pollock.
I got a chance to see a traveling Klee exhibit in Houston at the Menil a couple years ago, and they had my favorite piece, The Twittering Machine. Klee's work always inspires me. It's just astoundingly beautiful to me.
I adore Max Ernst. He had extraordinary technique and extraordinary imagination. The Menil has a number of his works, as Mrs. Menil had been a long time firend of Ernst. They had my favorite work by him, Surrealism and Painting. Online pics of this painting does not do it justice at all. You have to see it in person to be just awed by the varied, delicate and sophisticated techniques he used in this one painting, and keeping in mind he was completely self-taught and this was made decades before artists had things like airbrushes and easy-use acrylics that are commonly used today to create similar effects Ernst did.
Mondrian appeals to my Aspie sense of abstraction and order. His more abstract works have a very inspiring affect on me.
And I find Rothko uniquely inspiring. When I lived in Houston I would go to the Rothko Chapel frequently. His work is very existential and demands you drop all presumptions and expectations of art that you have to simply experience his art as it is. I liked to sit there and sketch the interior of the chapel with the painting on the wall, and iI even wrote a short story inspired by the chapel, that I never tried to get published, but maybe one day I will.
Then Pollock, if only for his courage and individuality in his art. I love making action painting myself--it is a fascinating way to play with color and just move past all the inhibition we put on ourselves that impede our creativity.