LibGuides: Expressionism to Abstract Art: Books & eBooks

Featured eBooks

Go to A-Z Databases: Books & eBooks to search for more eBooks. Must access on campus or login with your COM account for off campus access.

Want more on finding books or eBooks? Try our How to Use Books & eBooks guides.

Amedeo Modigliani Equally famous for his masterful canvases and tumultuous mental health, Amedeo Modigliani (1884-1920) was, in many ways, a tortured artist. A lifelong sufferer of painfully degenerative tuberculosis, Modigliani was famous for denying his disease with a frenzied bohemian lifestyle of hard drinking, drug abuse, and passionate love affairs. But at the same time, he managed to produce some famous masterpieces, and today his work sells for record-breaking sums whenever it comes up for auction. In this fascinating examination of Modigliani's life and work, Frances Alexander, Jane Rogoyska, and Klaus Carl turn their penetrating gaze on this most enigmatic of artistic geniuses.
Antoni Gaudi Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, "the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile." His completed works (the Casa Batlló, 1905-1907 and the Casa Milà, 1905-1910) and his incomplete works (the restoration of the Poblet Monastery and the altarpiece of Alella in Barcelona) illustrate the importance of this philosophy. His furniture designs were conceived with the same philosophy, as shown, for example, in his own office (1878) or the lamps in the Plaza Real in Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia (1882-1926) was a monumental project which eventually took over his life (it was still incomplete at the time of his death).
Antoni Gaudi El arquitecto y diseñador español Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) es una importante e influyente figura en la historia del arte contemporáneo de España. El uso del color, la utilización de diferentes materiales y la introducción de movimiento en sus construcciones fueron toda una innovación en el terreno de la arquitectura. En su diario, Gaudí expresó sus propios sentimientos sobre el arte: "los colores usados en arquitectura tienen que ser intensos, lógicos y fértiles". El autor, Jeremy Roe, utiliza una amplia gama de detalles fotográficos y arquitectónicos que le permiten revelar el contexto del arte de Barcelona mientras nos introduce en el mundo de Gaudí, maestro de algunas de las más famosas construcciones, objetos de diseño y grandes obras de la arquitectura española. Este libro ayuda a comprender a Gaudí y su legado.
Art Nouveau Art Nouveau gives a name to the decorative and architectural style developed in the 1880s and 1890s in the West. Born in reaction to the Industrial Revolution and to the creative vacuum it left behind, Art Nouveau was at the heart of a "renaissance" in the decorative arts. The primary objective of the movement was the creation of a new aesthetic of nature through a return to the study of natural subjects. In order to achieve this, artists such as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Antoni Gaudí, Jan Toorop, and William Morris favoured innovation in technique and novelty of forms.After its triumph at the Paris Universal Exposition in 1900, the trend continued and has inspired many artists ever since. Art Deco, the successor of Art Nouveau, appeared after World War II.
Bauhaus The Bauhaus movement (meaning the "house of building") developed in three German cities - it began in Weimar between 1919 and 1925, then continued in Dessau, from 1925 to 1932, and finally ended in 1932-1933 in Berlin. Three leaders presided over the growth of the movement: Walter Gropius, from 1919 to 1928, Hannes Meyer, from 1928 to 1930, and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, from 1930 to 1933. Founded by Gropius in the rather conservative city of Weimar, the new capital of Germany, which had just been defeated by the other European nations in the First World War, the movement became a flamboyant response to this humiliation. Combining new styles in architecture, design, and painting, the Bauhaus aspired to be an expression of a generational utopia, striving to free artists facing a society that remained conservative in spite of the revolutionary efforts of the post-war period.Using the most modern materials, the Bauhaus was born out of the precepts of William Morris and the Arts and Crafts movement, introducing new forms, inspired by the most ordinary of objects, into everyday life. The shuttering of the center in Berlin by the Nazis in 1933 did not put an end to the movement, since many of its members chose the path of exile and established themselves in the United States. Although they all went in different directions artistically, their work shared the same origin. The most influential among the Bauhaus artists were Anni Albers, Josef Albers, Marianne Brandt, Marcel Breuer, Lyonel Feininger, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Paul Klee, Wassily Kandisky, and Lothar Schreyer. Through a series of beautiful reproductions, this work provides an overview of the Bauhaus era, including the history, influence, and major figures of this revolutionary movement, which turned everyday life into art.
A Companion to Dada and Surrealism This excellent overview of new research on Dada and Surrealism blends expert synthesis of the latest scholarship with completely new research, offering historical coverage as well as in-depth discussion of thematic areas ranging from criminality to gender. This book provides an excellent overview of new research on Dada and Surrealism from some of the finest established and up-and-coming scholars in the field Offers historical coverage as well as in-depth discussion of thematic areas ranging from criminality to gender One of the first studies to produce global coverage of the two movements, it also includes a section dealing with the critical and cultural aftermath of Dada and Surrealism in the later twentieth century Dada and Surrealism are arguably the most popular areas of modern art, both in the academic and public spheres
Concerning the Spiritual and the Concrete in Kandinsky's Art This book examines the art and writings of Wassily Kandinsky, who is widely regarded as one of the first artists to produce non-representational paintings. Crucial to an understanding of Kandinsky's intentions is On the Spiritual in Art, the celebrated essay he published in 1911. Where most scholars have taken its repeated references to "spirit" as signaling quasi-religious or mystical concerns, Florman argues instead that Kandinsky's primary frame of reference was G.W.F. Hegel's Aesthetics, in which art had similarly been presented as a vehicle for the developing self-consciousness of spirit (or Geist, in German). In addition to close readings of Kandinsky's writings, the book also includes a discussion of a 1936 essay on the artist's paintings written by his own nephew, philosopher Alexandre Kojève, the foremost Hegel scholar in France at that time. It also provides detailed analyses of individual paintings by Kandinsky, demonstrating how the development of his oeuvre challenges Hegel's views on modern art, yet operates in much the same manner as does Hegel's philosophical system. Through the work of a single, crucial artist, Florman presents a radical new account of why painting turned to abstraction in the early years of the twentieth century.
Cubism Les Demoiselles d'Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines-with this painting, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism was thus born in 1907. Transforming natural forms into cylinders and cubes, painters like Juan Gris and Robert Delaunay, driven by Braque and Picasso, imposed a new vision upon the world, in total opposition to the principles of the Impressionists. Largely diffused in Europe, Cubism developed rapidly in successive phases that brought art history to all the richness of the 20th century: from the futurism of Boccioni to the abstraction of Kandinsky, from the suprematism of Malevich to the constructivism of Tatlin. Linking the core text of Guillaume Apollinaire with the studies of Dr. Dorothea Eimert, this work offers a new interpretation of modernity's crucial moment, and permits the reader to rediscover, through their biographies, the principal representatives of the movement.
Devouring Frida: The Art History and Popular Celebrity of Frida Kahlo Beginning in the late 1970's Frida Kahlo achieved cult heroine status less for her richly surrealist self-portraits than by the popularization of the events of her tumultuous life. Her images were splashed across billboards magazine ads, and postcards; fashion designers copied the so-called "Frida" look in hairstyles and dress; and "Fridamania" even extended to T-shirts, jewelry, and nail polish. Margaret A. Lindauer argues that this mass market assimilation of Kahlo's identity has consistently detracted from appreciation of her work, leading instead to narrow interpretations based on "an entrenched narrative of suffering." While she agrees that Kahlo's political and feminist activism, her stormy marriage to fellow artist Diego Reviera, and the tragic reality of a progressively debilitated body did represent a biography colored by emotional and physical upheaval, she questions an "author-equals-the-work" critical tradition that assumes a :one-to-one association of life events to the meaning of a painting." In kahlo's case, Lindauer says, such assumptions created a devouring mythology, an iconization that separates us from rather than leads us to the real significance of the oeuvre. Accompanied by 26 illustrations and deep analysis of Kahlo's central themes, this provocative, semiotic study recontextualizes an important figure in art history at the same time it addresses key questions about the language of interpretation, the nature of veneration, and the truths within self-representation. Ebook Edition Note: All images have been redacted.
Egon Schiele Egon Schiele (1890-1918) is one of the great Expressionist painters. He was taught by Gustav Klimt, and at a very early age, like his Viennese Secession predecessors broke with the traditions of official Austrian art. His numerous self portraits and nude models remained consistent throughout his career in keeping with his erotic, sensual and tormented visions of art. The paintings and text included in this book bring the extraordinary talent of this artist who, sadly, died of Spanish influenza at the age of 28 in Vienna.
Expressionism Max Beckmann, Otto Dix, George Grosz, Emil Nolde, E.L. Kirchner, Paul Klee, Franz Marc as well as the Austrians Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were among the generation of highly individual artists who contributed to the vivid and often controversial new movement in early twentieth-century Germany and Austria: Expressionism. This publication introduces these artists and their work. The author, art historian Ashley Bassie, explains how Expressionist art led the way to a new, intense, evocative treatment of psychological, emotional and social themes in the early twentieth century. The book examines the developments of Expressionism and its key works, highlighting the often intensely subjective imagery and the aspirations and conflicts from which it emerged while focusing precisely on the artists of the movement.
The Life and Masterworks of Salvador Dali       As a one of the foremost painters of the 20th century, Dali, like Picasso and Warhol, can boast of having overturned the art of the previous century and directed contemporary art toward its present incarnation. As irrational as he was surrealist, this genius diverted objects from their original meanings, plunging them into the acid of his constantly churning imagination. A megalomaniac and an artist who above all understood the force of marketing and publicity, Dal#65533; disorients the viewer in order to draw him into the artist's world. On his canvases, images and colours crash together to express and mock certain ideas, creating a subversive eroticism that taps into the subconscious of the avid voyeurs that we are.The author, Eric Shanes, explores the twists and turns of Dal#65533;'s mad genius, commenting on the masterpieces of the painter so as to show the diversity and scope of his talent, leaving the reader blown away and bewitched by this Prince of Metamorphosis. This work opens up the sweet, mad universe of this megalomaniac genius and invites us to let ourselves be overcome ... Dal#65533; is, first and foremost, an absolute.  
Modern Theories of Art 2 In this volume, the third in his classic series of texts surveying the history of art theory, Moshe Barasch traces the hidden patterns and interlocking themes in the study of art, from Impressionism to Abstract Art. Barasch details the immense social changes in the creation, presentation, and reception of art which have set the history of art theory on a vertiginous new course: the decreased relevance of workshops and art schools; the replacement of the treatise by the critical review; and the interrelation of new modes of scientific inquiry with artistic theory and praxis. The consequent changes in the ways in which critics as well as artists conceptualized paintings and sculptures were radical, marked by an obsession with intense, immediate sensory experiences, psychological reflection on the effects of art, and a magnetic pull to the exotic and alien, making for the most exciting and fertile period in the history of art criticism.
Munch Edvard Munch, born in 1863, was Norway's most popular artist. His brooding and anguished paintings, based on personal grief and obsessions, were instrumental in the development of Expressionism. During his childhood, the death of his parents, his brother and sister, and the mental illness of another sister, were of great influence on his convulsed and tortuous art. In his works, Munch turned again and again to the memory of illness, death and grief. During his career, Munch changed his idiom many times. At first, influenced by Impressionism and Post-impressionism, he turned to a highly personal style and content, increasingly concerned with images of illness and death. In the 1892s, his style developed a 'Synthetist' idiom as seen in The Scream (1893) which is regarded as an icon and the portrayal of modern humanity's spiritual and existential anguish. He painted different versions of it. During the 1890s Munch favoured a shallow pictorial space, and used it in his frequently frontal pictures. His work often included the symbolic portrayal of such themes as misery, sickness, and death. and the poses of his figures in many of his portraits were chosen in order to capture their state of mind and psychological condition. It also lends a monumental, static quality to the paintings. In 1892, the Union of Berlin Artists invited Munch to exhibit at its November exhibition. His paintings invoked bitter controversy at the show, and after one week the exhibition closed. In the 1930s and 1940s, the Nazis labeled his work "degenerate art", and removed his works from German museums. This deeply hurt the anti-fascist Munch, who had come to feel Germany was his second homeland. In 1908 Munch's anxiety became acute and he was hospitalized. He returned to Norway in 1909 and died in Oslo in 1944.
O'Keeffe Am Zeitraum zwischen Geburt und Tod der Georgia O'Keeffe (1887-1986) streift die gesamte moderne Geschichte der Vereinigten Staaten vorbei wie ein Hollywood-Film. Aus einer kleinen Stadt stammend, schafft sich Georgia O'Keeffe erst in New York einen Namen; jenes New York, das Mitte des 20. Jahrhunderts Paris als Welthauptstadt der Kunst ablöst. Sie wurde vor allem durch ihre komplexen Naturbeschreibungen wie beispielsweise der Zartheit eines Herbstblattes, den subtilen Nuancen einer Blüte oder der Symmetrie eines Tierschädels bekannt. Heute assoziiert man Georgia O'Keeffe mit kraftvollen Farben und der wilden Schönheit der Wüste Neu Mexikos, wo sie bis zu ihrem Tod im Jahr 1986 gelebt hat. Das vorliegende Ebook zeichnet den Lebensweg der modernen Frau Georgia O'Keeffe sowie ihre Art und Weise, Kunst zu schaffen, nach und betrachtet nicht zuletzt ihr Erbe für die Nachwelt. Es hebt auch die Aspekte der Weiblichkeit und des Schaffens hervor.
Pablo Picasso Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist''s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children''s games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born and it was there that he spent the first ten years of his life. Picasso''s father was a painter and professor at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts. Picasso learnt from him the basics of formal academic art training. Then he studied at the Academy of Arts in Madrid but never finished his degree. Picasso, who was not yet eighteen, had reached the point of his greatest rebelliousness; he repudiated academia''s anemic aesthetics along with realism''s pedestrian prose and, quite naturally, joined those who called themselves modernists, the non-conformist artists and writers, those whom Sabartés called "the élite of Catalan thought" and who were grouped around the artists'' café Els Quatre Gats. During 1899 and 1900 the only subjects Picasso deemed worthy of painting were those which reflected the "final truth"; the transience of human life and the inevitability of death. His early works, ranged under the name of "Blue Period" (1901-1904), consist in blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the death of his friend, Casagemas. Even though Picasso himself repeatedly insisted on the inner, subjective nature of the Blue Period, its genesis and, especially, the monochromatic blue were for many years explained as merely the results of various aesthetic influences. Between 1905 and 1907, Picasso entered a new phase, called "Rose Period" characterised by a more cheerful style with orange and pink colours. In Gosol, in the summer of 1906 the nude female form assumed an extraordinary importance for Picasso; he equated a depersonalised, aboriginal, simple nakedness with the concept of "woman". The importance that female nudes were to assume as subjects for Picasso in the next few months (in the winter and spring of 1907) came when he developed the composition of the large painting, Les Demoiselles d''Avignon. Just as African art is usually considered the factor leading to the development of Picasso''s classic aesthetics in 1907, the lessons of Cézanne are perceived as the cornerstone of this new progression. This relates, first of all, to a spatial conception of the canvas as a composed entity, subjected to a certain constructive system. Georges Braque, with whom Picasso became friends in the autumn of 1908 and together with whom he led Cubism during the six years of its apogee, was amazed by the similarity of Picasso''s pictorial experiments to his own. He explained that: "Cubism''s main direction was the materialisation of space." After his Cubist period, in the 1920s, Picasso returned to a more figurative style and got closer to the surrealist movement. He represented distorted and monstrous bodies but in a very personal style. After the bombing of Guernica during 1937, Picasso made one of his most famous works which starkly symbolises the horrors of that war and, indeed, all wars. In the 1960s, his art changed again and Picasso began looking at the art of great masters and based his paintings on ones by Velázquez, Poussin, Goya, Manet, Courbet and Delacroix. Picasso''s final works were a mixture of style, becoming more colourful, expressive and optimistic. Picasso died in 1973, in his villa in Mougins. The Russian Symbolist Georgy Chulkov wrote: "Picasso''s death is tragic. Yet how blind and naïve are those who believe in imitating Picasso and learning from him. Learning what? For these forms have no corresponding emotions outside of Hell. But to be in Hell means to anticipate death. The Cubists are hardly privy to such unlimited knowledge".
Russian Avant-Garde The Russian Avant-garde was born at the turn of the 20th century in pre-revolutionary Russia. The intellectual and cultural turmoil had then reached a peak and provided fertile soil for the formation of the movement. For many artists influenced by European art, the movement represented a way of liberating themselves from the social and aesthetic constraints of the past. It was these Avant-garde artists who, through their immense creativity, gave birth to abstract art, thereby elevating Russian culture to a modern level.Such painters as Kandinsky, Malevich, Goncharova, Larionov, and Tatlin, to name but a few, had a definitive impact on 20th-century art.

Featured Print Books

Go to OneSearch to search for more print books.

Want more on finding print books? Try our How to Use OneSearch guide.

American Chronicles: The Art of Norman Rockwell Author Twentieth-century American society wittily and ironically portrayed by a great artist. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), one of the most popular American artists of the past century, has often been regarded as a simple illustrator and had his work identified with the covers of the Saturday Evening Post. He is, instead, a total artist. An acute observer of human nature and talented storyteller, Rockwell captured America's evolving society in small details and nuances, portraying scenes of the everyday life of ordinary people and presenting a personal and often idealized interpretation of the American identity. His images offered a reassuring visual haven in a period of epoch-making transformation that led to the birth of the modern American society. The art of Norman Rockwell entered the homes of millions of Americans for over fifty years, illustrating the Roaring Twenties, the Depression, World War II, and the 1950s and 1960s. His works mirror aspects of the life of average Americans with precise realism and often in a humorous light. The exhibition catalog organized in collaboration with the Norman Rockwell Museum of Stockbridge, Massachusetts, presents well-known and beloved masterpieces like the Triple Self-Portrait (1960), Girl at the Mirror (1954), and The Art Critic (1955) alongside carefully observed images of youthful innocence (No Swimming, 1921) and paintings with a powerful social message like The Problem We All Live With (1964).
Braque : The Late Works This volume is the catalogue for the spring 1997 exhibition at the Royal Academy in London and at the summer 1997 exhibition at the Menil Collection in Houston. The exhibition focuses on Braque's late works including the Interiors, Billiard Tables and the late Bird paintings.
Chagall One of a series of monographs introducing the work of 20th-century artists, this text is devoted to Marc Chagall. Chagall developed a romantic and personal naive style based on themes from Eastern European Jewish life and Russian and Jewish folklore. He was strongly influenced by the brilliant colours of Fauvism and by the new sense of space of Cubism.
Charles Munch A mesmerizing figure in concert, Charles Munch was celebrated for his electrifying public performances. He was a pioneer in many arenas of classical music - establishing Berlioz in the canon, perfecting the orchestral work of Debussy and Ravel, and leading the world to Roussel, Honegger, andDutilleux. A pivotal figure, his accomplishments put him on a par with Arturo Toscanini and Leonard Bernstein.In Charles Munch, D. Kern Holoman provides the first full biography of this giant of twentieth-century music, tracing his dramatic survival in occupied Paris, his triumphant arrival at the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and his later years, when he was a leading cultural figure in the United States, aman known and admired by Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy. He turned to conducting only in middle age, after two decades as a violinist and concertmaster, a background which gave him special insight into the relationship between conductor and orchestra. At the podium, his bond with his musicians unleashed something in them and in himself. "A certain magic took wing that amounts to the very essence of music in concert," the author writes, as if "public performance loosed the facets of character and artistry and poetry otherwise muffled by histimidity and simple disinclination to say much." In concert, Munch was arresting, even seductive, sweeping his baton in an enormous arch from above his head down to his knee. Yet as Holoman shows, he remained a lonely, even sad figure, a widower with no children, a man who fled admirers and avoidedreporters. With groundbreaking research and sensitive, lyrical writing, Charles Munch penetrates the enigma to capture this elusive musical titan.
Complete Mondrian A visual companion to the complete works of Piet Mondrian (1872-1944), one of the most important figures in the development of abstract art. Drawing on the Mondrian catalogue raisonne, the book reproduces all of Mondrian's works in a single volume with key caption information. The organization of the illustrations into major chronological periods is intended to give the reader an immediate visual impression of the development of Mondrian's work - from the early naturalistic paintings of the 1890s, through the more experimental, neo-Impressionist work of the early 20th century, to the abstract grid paintings for which he is best known.
Constantin Brancusi This volume in the Modern Masters series is an important and perceptive study of the sculptor Constantin Brancusi, whose arresting forms have exerted a powerful impact on the art of this century. By incisively evaluating the diverse influences that channeled into the artist's work -- including his academic training and brief apprenticeship with Auguste Rodin, the folk art and architecture of his native Romania, Cubism, and African art -- Eric Shanes has produced an insightful study that reveals how this complex artist achieved the expressive simplicity of his innovative sculptures. An extensive "Notes on Technique" section, illustrated with evocative views of the artist's studio, illuminates Brancusi's methods of working in all media, including photography, which he used to record his own ideas about how his sculpture should be seen. The many photographs by Brancusi are complemented by sensitive color illustrations that capture the essence of his art. Written with a clarity of prose that well serves the clarity of the sculptor's own work, this much-needed book presents the fascinating story of a profoundly influential artist. About the Modern Masters series: With informative, enjoyable texts and over 100 illustrations -- approximately 48 in full color -- this innovative series offers a fresh look at the most creative and influential artists of the postwar era. The authors are highly respected art historians and critics chosen for their ability to think clearly and write well. Each handsomely designed volume presents a thorough survey of the artist's life and work, as well as statements by the artist, an illustrated chapter on technique, a chronology, lists of exhibitions and public collections, an annotated bibliography, and an index. Every art lover, from the casual museumgoer to the serious student, teacher, critic, or curator, will be eager to collect these Modern Masters. And with such a low price, they can afford to collect them all.
Dali "Flamboyant, egocentric, enigmatic - these qualities describe the extraordinary Spanish artist Salvador Dali (1904-1989), whose ingenious talent, layered with virtuosity and technical brilliance, was rivaled only by his unforgettable personality." "This illustrated survey presents seventy-four brilliant, full-color reproductions of work from an astonishing career, beginning with canvases rarely seen - Dali's earliest paintings done while still in his teens. Although he worked in many styles - realist, abstract, Cubist - he is most often thought of as a leader in the Surrealist movement of the 1920s and '30s. Indeed, the words Surrealism and Dali are almost synonymous, despite his stormy split from the movement to launch his own style, portraying an imagined world of symbols projecting visions steeped in sexual and religious images." "Organized under chapter headings that suggest the intriguing content of Dali's work - such as Ego and Memory, Painted Deliriums, Paradoxical Images, and Edible Beauty - this book offers concise comments on each colorplate, providing insights into the phantasmagoric world conjured up by the man who publicized his art as being of "myself - the great Dali!"" "In addition to his prodigious output of paintings, drawings, and graphics, Dali also created theater, opera, and ballet sets, was a pioneer in Surrealist filmmaking, illustrated numerous books, wrote an autobiography and a novel, and designed fashion and jewelry. Two magnificent, whimsical examples of the latter are included here."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Duchamp Focusing on Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968), this is one of a series of illustrated monographs which offer introductions to modern art and artists. Each book presents a profile of the artist and analysis of his distinctive style.
Frank Lloyd Wright Pulitzer Prize'winning critic Ada Louise Huxtable's biography of America's greatest architect Renowned architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable's biography Frank Lloyd Wright looks at the architect and the man, from his tumultuous personal life to his long career as a master builder. Along the way she introduces Wright's masterpieces? from the tranquil Fallingwater to Taliesin, rebuilt after tragedy and murder'not only exploring the mind of the man who drew the blueprints but also delving into the very heart of the medium, which he changed forever.
Frida Kahlo : The Painter and Her Work When Frida Kahlo died in 1954, she left behind a slender oeuvre. It consists of 143 paintings of small size, rarely larger than 20 x 30 inches, many of them now considered icons of 20th century art, most of them self-portraits. The reasons for this ostensible narcissism were closely bound up with Kahlo's biography, with the country and epoch in which she grew up, and with her decidedly eccentric character. It was no coincidence that the major enigmatic minds of the 16th century, namely Hieronymus Bosch and Pieter Bruegel the Elder, were among her favorite painters. For Frida Kahlo never displayed her wounds directly--be it the physical wounds caused by accidents and illness, or the psychological inner wounds. Hers is a subtly enciphered symbolic language, rich in metaphors drawn from almost all the world's cultures. Aztec myths of creation, Far Eastern and Classical Greek mythology, and popular Catholic beliefs all mingle in Kahlo's pictures with Mexican folklore and the stuff of quotidian life, with Marx and Freud. Andr Breton, one of her many admirers among the European avant-garde, once described Kahlo's art as a "colored ribbon round a bomb." Exotic and explosive, sensuous and fascinatingly vital in terms of artistic statement, Kahlo's paintings shed a complex and often frightening light on her soul, her "inner reality," as she called it. If the incessant commercial marketing of Kahlo's paintings over the past decade has obscured a clear view of her extraordinary oeuvre, this present monograph attempts to make amends. "Frida Kahlo: The Painter and Her Work" returns to the heart, to 42 select masterpieces, reproduced in full and in detail. The painterly quality, the beauty, and the immense wealth of details in Kahlo's paintings is laid out before the reader's eyes, as is the abyss in which the artist found herself.
Georgia O'Keeffe in Texas Georgia O'Keeffe, a superbly gifted American artist usually associated with New Mexico, spent nearly four years in Texas, most of them in the Panhandle. She taught art in the public schools of Amarillo for two years, 1912-1914, and headed the art department at West Texas Normal College (now West Texas A & M University) in Canyon from the fall of 1916 to early 1918. She then went for a few months to Waring, Texas, northwest of San Antonio. There are scores of books on Georgia O'Keeffe. The books are of various lengths, covering her life, art, and influence on other artists; her time spent in New Mexico; and her relationship with and marriage to Alfred Stieglitz. By comparison, however, there is little on O'Keeffe's years in Texas.   Georgia O'Keeffe in Texas: A Guide is different from previous O'Keeffe studies, as it provides a short biography of O'Keeffe on the people and events that influenced her Texas years. The authors are neither artists nor professional art critics, but are historians of the American West who have an interest in Georgia O'Keeffe. They believe her years in Texas, especially the Texas Panhandle, were significant for her subsequent development as a thoroughly modern American artist. This book is designed to work as a guide to O'Keeffe's life and work in Texas, and reveals an even more fascinating figure in the process. Front Cover Art Credit: Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas
In Montmartre A lively and deeply researched group biography of the figures who transformed the world of art in bohemian Paris in the first decade of the twentieth century In Montmartre is a colorful history of the birth of Modernist art as it arose from one of the most astonishing collections of artistic talent ever assembled. It begins in October 1900, as a teenage Pablo Picasso, eager for fame and fortune, first makes his way up the hillside of Paris's famous windmill-topped district. Over the next decade, among the studios, salons, caf#65533;s, dance halls, and galleries of Montmartre, the young Spaniard joins the likes of Henri Matisse, Andr#65533; Derain, Maurice de Vlaminck, Georges Braque, Amedeo Modigliani, Constantin Brancusi, Gertrude Stein, and many more, in revolutionizing artistic expression. Sue Roe has blended exceptional scholarship with graceful prose to write this remarkable group portrait of the men and women who profoundly changed the arts of painting, sculpture, dance, music, literature, and fashion. She describes the origins of movements like Fauvism, Cubism, and Futurism, and reconstructs the stories behind immortal paintings by Picasso and Matisse. Relating the colorful lives and complicated relationships of this dramatic bohemian scene, Roe illuminates the excitement of the moment when these bold experiments in artistic representation and performance began to take shape. A thrilling account, In Montmartre captures an extraordinary group on the cusp of fame and immortality. Through their stories, Roe brings to life one of the key moments in the history of art. Praise for In Montmartre "Lively and engaging....[Readers] will find a fresh sense of how all these people--the geniuses and the hangers-on, the wealthy collectors and the unworldly painters--related to each other.....In [Roe's] entertaining, ingeniously structured account Roe brings Montmatre's hedyday back to life." --Sunday Times (London) "With evocative imagery Roe sketches out the intensely visual spectacle on which Montmatre's artistic community was able to draw.... Roe is particularly good at communicating the extraordinary devotion of Matisse and Picasso to their work." --Financial Times
Kandinsky : A Retrospective A survey of over 100 works spanning Kandinsky's full career, from his formative period in Munich to his final years in Paris This spectacular five-decade survey of paintings, drawings, and prints by Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) includes more than 100 works drawn primarily from the outstanding collections of the Centre Pompidou in Paris and the Milwaukee Art Museum. The comprehensive catalogue traces the artist's development from his formative period in Munich, with his co-founding of the Blue Rider group and pivotal turn toward abstraction, to his return to Russia during the First World War, to his prolific work at the Bauhaus in Weimar, Germany, and his last years in Paris. New scholarship illuminates murals Kandinsky designed in 1922, contextualizing this project at the transition from his Russian period to his time at the Bauhaus, where he taught mural painting and plunged fully into abstraction. Close examination of the works of art, Kandinsky's rich body of theoretical texts, and their pedagogical significance provides the foundation for essays on the celebrated artist's promotion of abstraction and on the reception of his work in the 21st century. Today his artistic and theoretical output continues to inspire students, scholars, and artists. Short texts on key works of art and timelines generously enhanced by archival photographs augment the catalogue.
Marc Chagall and the Lost Jewish World : The Nature of Chagall's Art and Iconography Offers the first in-depth look at the art of Marc Chagall and the meanings of the sometimes hidden but more often overt images found in the lost Jewish world of his childhood, from his early masterpieces made in Russia and in Paris to his Yiddish art theater paintings.
Matisse This is one of the Great Modern Masters series on 20th-century artists which introduce modern art and artists. This book covers the work of French painter, Henri Matisse (1869-1954). In the early years of the century he became the leader of a group of avant-garde artists called the Fauves (wild beasts), known for their use of brilliant, aggressive colours. His career spanned more than five decades and during that time he developed many other styles, from austere variations on Cubism to sensual interiors and figure paintings. Throughout his life, Matisse remained preoccupied by the subject of the female model; during the many years he spent on the Mediterranean coast he painted innumerable fantasies of women in exotic costumes. Late in life, in ill health and no longer able to sustain the exertion of painting, Matisse invented the technique of making pictures from pieces of coloured paper cut out with scissors. He achieved in old age a final burst of creativity in his mural and stained glass designs for a chapel at Vence in the south of France, an acclaimed ensemble of church decoration.
Picasso and the Invention of Cubism This work seeks to transform our understanding of Cubism, showing in detail how it emerged in Picasso's work of the years 1906-13, and tracing its roots in 19th-century philosophy and linguistics.