Address book companion to the exciting and luxurious Flame Tree Notebooks. Combining high-quality production with magnificent fine art, the covers are printed on foil in five colours, embossed, then foil stamped. And they're powerfully practical: a pocket at the back for receipts and scraps, two bookmarks and a solid magnetic side flap. These are perfect for personal use and make a dazzling gift. Produced in partnership with the National Gallery, this stunning address book features Vincent van Gogh's Sunflowers. Vincent van Gogh painted a series of pictures depicting sunflowers, having first been inspired by the yellow flowers in Paris when he saw them growing in the gardens of Montmartre. Sunflowers were symbolic of life and hope to the artist, and could also be associated with his concept of the sun - glowing, yellow and hopeful.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brucke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner's work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce intensity. Distorted perspectives, rough lines, and unusual colors were mainstays of his practice, as well as a recurring interest in capturing the human form, whether in frenetic city vistas such as Berlin Street Scene (1913) or in his famously decadent studio. In this introductory book, we explore the stretch of Kirchner's career through Germany and Switzerland, including his founding of Die Brucke, and his inclusion in the Nazis' infamous "degenerate art" exhibition in 1937. Along the way, we'll encounter vivid landscapes, stark nudes, intense urban settings, and, above all, a persistent emphasis on the emotional experience of painter and viewer. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Although Pablo Picasso spotted Dora Maar at a cafe in January 1936 it is highly likely that she had come to his attention prior. As Brassai, a Hungarian-French photographer, recalled, It was at Les Deux-Magots that, one day in autumn 1935, [he] met Dora On an earlier day, he had already noticed the grave, drawn face of the young woman at a nearby table, the attentive look in her light-colored eyes, sometimes disturbing in its fixity. When Picasso saw her in the same cafe in the company of the surrealist poet Paul Eluard, who knew her, the poet introduced her to Picasso (Brassai, a.k.a. Gyula Halasz, Conversations with Picasso [University of Chicago Press, 1999]). Tinged with a seductive mix of violence and dark eroticism, this first meeting has attained mythical status in the story of the artists life. It reads like an unreal fantasy. A mysterious and feline beauty, which Man Ray had captured in the pictures he took of her, a companion of Georges Bataille, Dora was an accomplished photographer, close to the Surrealists revolutionary aesthetics. Picasso addressed her in French, which he assumed to be her language; she replied in Spanish, which she knew to be his. For the next decade, the painter would translate not just his fascination with the woman who had seduced him on the spot, but also his desire to escape the grip of someone who, for the first time, could intellectually aspire to be his equal. Dora would appear in his works as a female Minotaur, a Sphinx, a lunar goddess and a muse. Because of her intense artistic sensibility, her poetic gifts and her ability to participate in suffering, she was especially qualified to resonate Picassos own inner torments during these troubled years.

An extraordinary and inventive graphic biography, Steffen Kverneland's Munch explores the relationships and obsessions that drove the artist behind 'The Scream'. Using text drawn from the writings of Edvard Munch and his contemporaries, this extensively researched and beautifully drawn graphic novel debunks the familiar myth of the half-mad expressionist painter - anguished, starving and ill-treated - to reveal the artist's neglected sense of humour and optimism. Born out of a life-long fascination with all things Munch, Kverneland's award-winning seven-year project is the funniest and most entertaining portrait yet of a complex man and a pioneering artist. "Munch is a dazzling use of sequential storytelling... Rarely have I read a more entertaining biography." The Comics Journal

This book presents new research on the histories and legacies of the German Expressionist group Blaue Reiter, the founding force behind modernist abstraction. For the first time Blaue Reiter is subjected to a variety of novel inter-disciplinary perspectives, ranging from a philosophical enquiry into its language and visual perception to analyses of its gender dynamics, its reception at different historical junctures throughout the twentieth century and its legacies for post-colonial aesthetic practices. The volume offers a new perspective on familiar aspects of Expressionism and abstraction, taking seriously the inheritance of modernism for the twenty-first century in ways that will help to recalibrate the field of Expressionist studies for future scholarship. Blaue Reiter still matters, the contributors argue, because the legacies of abstraction are still being debated by artists, writers, philosophers and cultural theorists today. -- .

This book traces the emergence of modernism in art in South Asia by exploring the work of the iconic artist George Keyt. Closely interwoven with his life, Keyt's art reflects the struggle and triumph of an artist with very little support or infrastructure. He painted as he lived: full of colour, turmoil and intensity. In this compelling account, the author examines the eventful course of Keyt's journey, bringing to light unknown and startling facts: the personal ferment that Keyt went through because of his tumultuous relationships with women; his close involvement with social events in India and Sri Lanka on the threshold of Independence; and his somewhat angular engagement with artists of the '43 Group. A collector's delight, including colour plates and black and white photographs, reminiscences and intimate correspondences, this book reveals the portrait of an artist among the most charismatic figures of our time. This book will be of interest to scholars and researchers of art and art history, modern South Asian studies, sociology, cultural studies as well as art aficionados.

During the period in which Expressionist artists were active in central Europe, art historians were producing texts which also began to be characterized evocatively as 'expressionist', yet the notion of an expressionist art history has yet to be fully explored in historiographic studies of the discipline. This anthology offers a cross-section of noteworthy art history texts that have been described as expressionist, along with critical commentaries by an international group of scholars. Written between 1912 and 1933, the primary sources have been selected from the published scholarship of both recognized and less-familiar figures in the field's Germanic tradition: Wilhelm Worringer, Fritz Burger, Ernst Heidrich, Max Dvorak, Heinrich Woelfflin, and Carl Einstein. Translated here for the first time, these examples of an expressionist turn in art history, along with their secondary analyses and the book's introduction, offer a productive lens through which to re-examine the practice and theory of art history in the early twentieth century.

Though little known outside her native country, Helene Schjerfbeck (1862-1946) is one of Finland's best-loved artists. Her career, which stretched from the late 1870s to the end of the Second World War, encompassed both Impressionism and Modernism. This book records an exhibition that marks the first time her works have been seen in the UK since she exhibited in London herself in 1890. It presents the full range of her exceptional paintings and drawings, with 70 works in all genres, including portrait, landscape and still-life. Schjerfbeck's technique, her social and cultural context and her legacy are all examined in depth by the authors. The book also explores the role of the masquerade in Schjerfbeck's work, and the impact of old-master paintings on her practice.

A brilliant, concise account of the painting often described as the most important work of art produced in the twentieth century, as part of the stunning Landmark Library series. Pablo Picasso had already accepted a commission in 1937 to create a work for the Spanish Republican Pavilion at the Paris World Fair when news arrived of the assault by the German Condor Legion on the undefended Basque town of Guernica, in which hundreds of civilians died. James Attlee offers an illuminating account of the genesis, creation and many-stranded afterlife of Picasso's Guernica. He explores the historical context from which it sprang; the artistic influences that informed its execution; the critical responses that it elicited; its journeyings across Europe and America in the late 1930s; its post-war adoption by new generations of anti-war protestors; and its eventual return to Spain following the death of Franco.

Many people know that Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker and poet, a pioneer of Modernism and Cubism whose works include `Les Demoiselles D'Avignon'. What, perhaps, they don't know is that his full name is 23 words long; that he painted 15 different versions of `Les Femmes D'Algers', one of which sold in 2015 for $179 million; that doctors thought he was stillborn until his uncle blew cigar smoke into his face; and that he was interviewed by police over the theft of the `Mona Lisa'. Biographic: Picasso presents a modern study of his life and work, with an array of irresistible facts and figures converted into infographics to reveal the artist behind the pictures.

'My art is a self-confession - in it I seek to clarify my relationship with the world. But at the same time I have always thought and felt that my art could also clarify other people's quest for the truth' Edvard Munch Why do people travel from across the world to see Edvard Munch's artworks? Munch painted emotions in a way that nobody had ever seen before, depicting love, friendship and the darker sides of life. This book gives readers the opportunity to become better acquainted with Edvard Munch and his oeuvre. It takes a close look at the artworks and explores the stories behind some of the most famous paintings in the world, such as Madonna and The Scream.

Else Lasker-Schuler, a pivotal figure in German Expressionism, presided over avant-garde cafe life in pre-World War I Berlin in much the same way Gertrude Stein did in Paris around the same time. Her poetry, prose, plays and graphic art are not very well known in the English-speaking world, but her work has been enjoying a critical and popular revival since she was rediscovered in the 1960s. Else Lasker-Schuler's life and work as a Jew, a woman, and a writer and artist in Nazi Germany and in other locations after Hitler's takeover are chronicled in this book. It begins with her flight to Switzerland, after receving Germany's top literary prize, and then goes back to her childhood and follows her life through to its end in Jerusalem, where she died five months before Germany surrendered to the Allies. It covers her marriages to Dr Berthold Lasker, brother of the world chess champion, and to Herwarth Walden, founder of the avant-garde periodical, gallery and publishing house ""Der Sturm"" (The Storm), and her friendships with Martin Buber, Karl Kraus, Franz Marc, Gottfried Benn and Gershom Scholem.

Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color and line and is today credited with creating the first purely abstract work. As much a teacher and theorist as he was a practicing artist, Kandinsky's interests in music, theater, poetry, philosophy, ethnology, myth, and the occult, were all essential components to his painting and engraving. He was involved with both the influential Blaue Reiter and Bauhaus groups and left a legacy not only of dazzling visual work, but also of highly influential treatises such as Concerning the Spiritual in Art. Key tenets included the connections between painting, music and mystical experience, and the purification of art away from material realism and towards an emotional expression, condensed in particular by color. This book presents key Kandinsky works to introduce his repertoire of vivid colors, forms, and feelings. Tracing the artist's radical stylistic development, it shows how one painter's progression paved the way for generations of abstract expression to come. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features: a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance a concise biography approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

This book presents new research on the histories and legacies of the German Expressionist group Blaue Reiter, the founding force behind modernist abstraction. For the first time Blaue Reiter is subjected to a variety of novel inter-disciplinary perspectives, ranging from a philosophical enquiry into its language and visual perception to analyses of its gender dynamics, its reception at different historical junctures throughout the twentieth century and its legacies for post-colonial aesthetic practices. The volume offers a new perspective on familiar aspects of Expressionism and abstraction, taking seriously the inheritance of modernism for the twenty-first century in ways that will help to recalibrate the field of Expressionist studies for future scholarship. Blaue Reiter still matters, the contributors argue, because the legacies of abstraction are still being debated by artists, writers, philosophers and cultural theorists today. -- .

Pioneered by Picasso and Braque, Cubism has been described as the first avant-garde art movement of the 20th century. With inspiration from African and Native American art and sculpture, its practitioners deconstructed European conventions of viewpoint, form, perspective to create flattened, fragmented, and revolutionary images. Picasso's celebrated painting Les Demoiselles d'Avignon is typically regarded as the original cubist work, with its radical fracturing of objects and figures into distinct areas, corresponding to multiple different viewpoints. Cubism thereafter developed two distinct trends: Analytical Cubism, which continued to interweave perspectival planes in muted blacks, greys and ochre, and later Synthetic Cubism, characterised by simpler shapes, brighter colors, and collage elements such as newspaper. This book presents the prime protagonists of Cubism, with work from artists including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Fernand Leger, Juan Gris, Albert Gleizes, and Robert Delaunay. About the series Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art History series features: approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions a detailed, illustrated introduction a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a two-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

A SUNDAY TIMES BOOK OF THE YEAR The ten years leading up to the First World War were the most exciting, frenzied and revolutionary in the history of art. They were the crucible of Modernism, when Fauvism, Expressionism, Cubism, Futurism and Abstract Art all burst forth. Simultaneously the Old Master market boomed, and art itself was politically weaponised in advance of approaching war. What was the conventional art against which Modernism was rebelling? Why did avant-garde artists become so obsessed with themselves? What persuaded a few bold collectors to buy difficult modern art? And why did others pay so much money for Old Masters? Art expert Philip Hook brings to bear a unique perspective on the art of a unique and extreme decade.

In this generously illustrated and lively book, Christopher Lloyd sets out and interprets the lifelong achievement of Picasso (1881-1973) as a draftsman. Although there have been many publications about his drawings that have tended to focus on particular periods of his career, this stunning volume specifically examines how drawing serves as the vital thread connecting all of Picasso's art, just as it also links his private world with his public persona of which he was becoming increasingly aware in his later years. Picasso and the Art of Drawing ultimately showcases how the basis of the titular artist's style as painter, sculptor, printmaker, and designer was manifestly achieved through drawing. Distributed for Modern Art Press

During 1889, Belgian artist James Ensor (1860-1949) painted a monumental canvas that would be his magnum opus: The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889. The work is one of the most complex paintings ever painted. It was only 40 years after its completion that the monumental canvas was first publicly exhibited at the James Ensor retrospective at the Brussels Palais des Beaux-Arts in 1929. Needless to say, therefore, that the exhibiting of Ensor's work in 1929 was for many a revelation. Until then it had been seen and was known only to a limited group of visitors and insiders. Between 1889 and 1929, a veritable revolution had taken place in the visual arts. Before and during World War I, Fauvism, Cubism, Futurism, Expressionism, and Dadaism all came into being. Few explanations can accommodate the full daring and frenzy of such a painting which chaotic composition and barbaric style seem revolutionary, and look far beyond the early 20th century. Since the purchase of the work in 1987 by the J. Paul Getty Museum (Los Angeles), The Entry has acquired cult status. No other work depicts the notion of belgitude so aptly as The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889, and yet the painting can in the first place be regarded as a somewhat quirky but striking representation of Ensor's vision of humanity.

Now available again, this visually stunning collection of Gustav Klimt's landscape paintings brings to light a lesser-known aspect of the Viennese painter's oeuvre. While Gustav Klimt is largely revered for his opulent, symbolladen portraits of the Viennese bourgeoisie, these works were just one aspect of his artistic expression. His landscapes represent an important facet of his career and are a valuable contribution to the school of European nature painting. For many years the artist travelled to the Austrian and Italian countryside during the summer, where he took advantage of the extraordinary light and spectacular hues to paint and sketch landscapes. Among the most exquisite of Klimt's landscapes are those in which he experimented with composition and style. Accompanied by scholarly essays, the images reproduced in this book comprise all extant landscapes from this brilliant artist, proving that his mastery extends beyond portraiture and revealing themes that appeared throughout his life's work.