This important publication accompanies a major exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, London, of paintings by Edvard Munch, one of the world's greatest modern artists. The exhibition and catalogue showcase 18 major works from the collection of KODE Art Museums in Bergen. The works span the most significant part of Munch's artistic development and have never before been shown as a group outside of Scandinavia. KODE houses one of the most important collections of paintings by Edvard Munch (1863-1944) in the world. The collection was assembled at the beginning of the 20th century by the Norwegian industrialist, mill owner and philanthropist Rasmus Meyer (1858-1916), who was one of the first significant early collectors of Munch's work. Meyer knew Munch personally and was astute in acquiring major canvases by the artist that chart his artistic development. Edvard Munch: Masterpieces from Bergen explores this group of remarkable works in detail and considers the important role of Rasmus Meyer as a collector. The exhibition and publication include seminal paintings from Munch's early 'realist' phase of the 1880s, such as Morning (1884), which was made when the artist was just twenty years old, and Summer Night (1889), a pivotal work that shows the artist's move towards the expressive and psychologically charged work for which he became famous. These paintings launched Munch's career and set the stage for his renowned, highly expressive paintings of the 1890s when his compositions became powerful projections of his emotions and imaginative states. Such works are a major feature of the exhibition that includes remarkable canvases from Munch's famous 'Frieze of Life' series, such as Evening on Karl Johan (1892), Melancholy (1894-96) and At the Death Bed (1895). Through his 'Frieze of Life' works, Munch intended to address profound themes of human existence, from love to death. The artist used his own experiences as source material to make visceral depictions of the human psyche, which he hoped would help others understand their own life. Munch's powerful use of colour and form to convey his subjects marked him out as one of the most radical painters at the turn of the 20th century. This fully illustrated publication includes a catalogue of the works, with contributions by leading experts in their fi eld from KODE and The Courtauld.

This volume commemorates the 100th anniversary of Vincent van Gogh's death. Major van Gogh scholars present essays that reexamine the painter's place in the art world of his time, the phenomenal growth in his reputation, and his influence on later art movements and individual artists. At the time of his death and for some years after, there was a question as to whether van Gogh's approach would gain recognition. Today, he is seen as one of the most popular and recognized of the world's artists, and his impact on 20th-century art is unquestioned. How and why this occurred is a major theme throughout this essay collection.

Among the topics examined are iconography; van Gogh's poetry as well as the literature that influenced him and that he, in turn, influenced; psychological and religious aspects of van Gogh's painting and self-imaging; and how van Gogh has been interpreted. A section on his legacy in art concludes this major reassessment of van Gogh's place in art history. An important collection for art scholars and researchers as well as public library patrons.

The first comprehensive research guide and bibliography to the large literature surrounding the life and work of one of the 20th century's greatest artists, this volume includes information on more than 1,100 books and articles as well as a chronology, biographical sketch, and list of exhibitions. The secondary bibliography is arranged by topic and includes citations on the artist's life and career, his relationships with contemporary artists (notably Picasso), his influence on subsequent artists, his work in diverse artistic media as well as his oeuvre in general, iconography, and more. While concentrating on printed materials, this guide also includes selected manuscripts and audio-visual materials. Following a biographical sketch and chronology, the primary bibliography lists articles, essays, letters, interviews, manuscripts, and sketchbooks of Braque. The main part of the secondary bibliography lists monographs, catalogues, dissertations, theses, periodical articles, films, and selected newspaper articles. Substantial book reviews and exhibition reviews are also cited. Arranged by topic, this bibliography includes citations on Braque's career and development as an artist, his relationships with contemporary artists, a section on Braque/Picasso, his influence on other artists, his work in various media including paintings, drawings, prints, illustrated books, papiers decoupes, sculpture, jewelry, theatre designs, and other commissions. Georges Braque first came to world attention as Picasso's friend during the formative years of Cubism. Long overshadowed by his more famous contemporary, in the quarter-century after his death Braque is beginning to be evaluated accurately. Major retrospective exhibitions over the past decade, accompanied by a considerable body of new criticism and scholarship, have brought Braque into the spotlight.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. -- .

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

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.

An Expressionist before the term was coined, James Ensor (1860-1949) was the classic insider-outsider enigma. He knew all the right art-world figures but loathed most of them. His style lurched from the Gothic fantastical to the Christian visionary. He was a cosmopolitan trailblazer of modernism, but lived reclusively in an attic room in the resort town of Ostend. For all his elusiveness, Ensor influenced generations of artists through his vivid often gruesome paintings, prints, and drawings. He is cited in particular for his use of dark satire and allegory, his innovative lighting, and for his interest in carnival and performance, showcased in The Entry of Christ into Brussels in 1889 as well as in his repertoire of self-portraits in which he employs masking, travesty, and role-playing to adopt such varied guises as Christ on the Cross and a gender-bending dandy. This introduction to Ensor explores the richness and variety of his imagery through key examples of his macabre, maverick oeuvre. 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 beautifully designed book is filled with illustrations and photographs of the many animals in Picasso's life--those he painted and drew, as well as those he loved. One of the few under-examined aspects of Picasso's life and work was his love of animals. The son of a pigeon breeder and an aficionado of bullfighting, Picasso had an eye trained for capturing an animal's movement, shape, and personality--often with just a single line. Organized around the different types of animals that played a role in the artist's life and body of work--from his beloved dachshund, Lump, to dogs, cats, camels, penguins, pigs, and doves, among others--each chapter offers personal accounts, amusing anecdotes, and wondrous works of art. The perfect gift for lovers of animals or Picasso's art, this exquisite treasury of expertly rendered creatures is filled with humor, warmth, and the tremendous bonds between man and animal.

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.

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.

'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.

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. -- .

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