Departing from his earlier figurative works and engagement with Futurist ideals, Italian painter Osvaldo Licini (1894-1958) turned away from realism in 1940 and painted only abstract works from then on. His paintings from that fruitful decision engage in a surrealist language of precise lines, solid colors and pregnant signs; colors and signs that Licini viewed as expressions of energy, willpower, ideas and magic. This catalog of Licini's show at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice, the most comprehensive monograph of his work, marks the 60th anniversary of his death. That same year, Licini won the National Grand Prize for Painting at the 29th Venice Biennale, where he had shown 53 works--executed between 1925 and 1958--in a room of his own, mounted by Carlo Scarpa. This catalog gathers his complete works, including those displayed in that same venue 60 years prior to this 2018 show.

C.R.W. Nevinson (1889-1946) is regarded as one of the finest British printmakers of the first half of the twentieth century - admired by contemporaries and modern-day viewers in equal measure. Yet despite this assured reputation, nothing substantial has been published on his remarkable printmaking career until now. Nevinson began creating prints in 1916, only stopping, due to ill health, in 1932. During this period he produced 148 prints, all of which reflecting his distinct vision and outstanding skills as a printmaker. Providing historical and social insights, his body of work is impressive in its range - images depicting the horrors of the First World War sit alongside contrasting cityscapes which present Nevinson's singular interpretation of Paris, New York and London. Drawing on original archival research and including a catalogue raisonne of Nevinson's prints, this unrivalled resource stands as a landmark publication in the literature available on this outstanding British modernist. It is an essential reference volume for all those who collect, sell or study Nevinson's prints and also provides much needed context for those with a general interest in the artist and the period in which he worked.

When the State Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1918, the Swiss artist and art theorist Johannes Itten (1888 - 1967) was one of the first teachers to be appointed by Walter Gropius. With his preliminary course, Itten had a considerable effect on the creative training in the Bauhaus; to this day his insights into the theory of colours set standards in art education and in the field of design. Enquiring mind and lecturer, painter and art teacher - Johannes Itten was a very thoughtful artist personality which was reflected in numerous theoretical texts and artworks covering a wide range of styles. Constantly in dialogue with students and colleagues as well as in a study of other cultures and artistic ideas, Itten created works in which he examined colours, their aura, contrasts and forms. Inspired by Adolf Hoelzel, his teacher at the Stuttgart Academy, Itten developed, amongst other things, the famous doctrine of colour types whose significance extends far beyond the realms of art into everyday culture. The acknowledged Itten expert Christoph Wagner introduces the artist with his complex and symbolic work and traces an arc from the revolutionary Bauhaus teacher and founder of various art schools to the art theorist of the theory of colours.

Now available again, this book is a penetrating exploration of the American realist painter Edward Hopper, who was able to capture the many moods of the nation he called home. From his images of deserted small towns and solitary figures in empty offices to his cheerfully tranquil New England landscapes, Hopper's most famous compositions can be seen as products of a life spent observing human nature. Hopper's images evoke an enigmatic uncertainty, which speaks to the heart of the American experience. Hopper's talent for depicting multiple aspects of the post-war experience is the focus of this generously illustrated and engaging volume.

In the mid-1950s, declaring "there is no reason not to consider the world as a gigantic painting," Robert Rauschenberg began a series of radical experiments with what he called "Combines," a term he coined to describe works that fused cast-off items like quilts or rubber tires with traditional supports. "Canyon" (1959), one of the artist's best-known Combines, is a large canvas affixed with paper, fabric, metal, personal photographs, wood, mirrors and one very striking object: a large stuffed bald eagle, wings outstretched, carrying a drooping pillow, and balanced upon a wooden plank jutting out from the canvas. "Canyon" is one of six Combines in MoMA's collection, and a landmark work that helped to revolutionize art in the postwar period. An essay by curator Leah Dickerman explores the legacy of this extraordinary piece, and places it within a key period in Rauschenberg's career.

Despite the fundamental functions that architecture must perform, it will always inspire artists across all genres with its masterful handling of space, harmony and proportion. Enric Mestre (b.1936) is one of those observers of space and volume who have left their mark on the ceramic sculptural art movement of the 20th century and beyond. As one of the key artists of the Spanish school, his name is mentioned in the same breath as master sculptors Jorge Oteiza and Eduardo Chillida. His sculptures come across as sober spatial constructions, but appearances are deceptive: these objects have a poetic force that counters the gaze of the beholder. This book celebrates the master's best creations and is a perfect opportunity to discover or rediscover his timeless work. Text in English and Spanish.

The first substantial book on the French Neo-Romantics, a cosmopolitan group working in 1920s Paris who turned against modernist abstraction in favour of a new form of figurative painting. In 1926, the Galerie Druet in Paris made waves presenting a group of young painters who had spurned modernist abstraction and returned to a form of figurative painting. For most of them this was the first time they had exhibited, but their impact was considerable. Art critic Waldemar George baptized them the 'Neo-Romantics' or the 'Neo-Humanists'. They were influenced by Picasso, in particular his Blue and Rose periods, but went beyond him to forge new ways of painting. These were artists who liked to play with forgotten references and obsolete visual devices such as trompe l'oeil. They produced work for secondary art forms including the theatre, set design and ballet. In some ways they were the first post-modernists in the history of art, yet until now there has only ever been one book about them, After Picasso, published ten years after their exhibition. Only more recently has their influence on contemporary artists and thinkers including Max Jacob, George Hugnet and Gertrude Stein been recognized. Though friends, these painters never formed a formal group or movement. The Second World War sent them on different paths, with the Berman brothers and Tchelitchev moving to the United States. Before their departure, however, their activities attracted the attention and admiration of a cosmopolitan group of characters, including Gertrude Stein, Alfred Barr, Lincoln Kirstein, George Balanchine and many others including leading fashion figures of the day, Christian Dior and Elsa Schiaparelli.

The Viennese artists' association Hagenbund played a crucial role in the artistic scene of not only Vienna but of Central Europe in general. Active from 1900 to 1938, the group united several different art movements under its umbrella and helped to introduce a new creative dynamic at a time when the Vienna Secession was slowly losing its impact. In that context, the liberal political and artistic attitude of the Hagenbund membership was revolutionary. The Hagenbund counted more than 250 members, among them Georg Merkel, Oskar Laske, Carry Hauser, Otto Rudolf Schatz, Emil Strecker, and Fritz Schwarz-Waldegg. This volume traces the history of the Hagenbund and its influence, offering the first sustained analysis of the group in an art-historical context. Packed with more than three hundred color images, it will be the standard work on the Hagenbund for decades to come.

This book offers the first sustained examination of the cultural relations of the American and Soviet avant-gardes in a period of major transformation. From the formation of the USSR in 1922 until its recognition by the American government, American avant-garde artists, writers and designers watched the 'Red Dawn' with fascination, enthusiastically reporting on its post-revolutionary cultural developments in articles and books, and brought these works to an American audience in ground-breaking exhibitions. Americans also emulated and adapted aspects of Soviet culture, as in the case of the New Playwrights Theatre, a group that mixed Russian avant-garde theatrical techniques with jazz, vaudeville and slapstick comedy in plays about strikes and racial injustice. Figures discussed include Louis Lozowick, Jane Heap, Frederick Kiesler, Ralph Steiner, John dos Passos, Margaret Bourke-White and Langston Hughes. Watching the red dawn takes an innovative interdisciplinary approach, considering these developments in architecture, theatre, film, photography and literature, and will be invaluable for students and specialists in these subject areas. It provides a new perspective on American avant-garde culture of the inter-war years. -- .

1918 marked the end of a golden era: it was the year that Gustav Klimt, Egon Schiele, Koloman Moser, and Otto Wagner died. Artistic activity, however, had already freed itself of their influence. Hardly affected by the political disruptions taking plac e, artists in the countries of the former Austro - Hungarian monarchy were busily productive, driven by a desire for a new start. The period between the two World Wars is characterised in the arts by international networks that transcended political and id eological borders. A lively artistic exchange took place, stimulating constructive, expressionist, and fantastic tendencies. An increasingly important role was played by magazines that disseminated new positions. The outbreak of World War II abruptly inter rupted these cosmopolitan art networks. This publication examines the fascinating, artistically fruitful epoch between the wars.

A dynamic new look at the legendary college that was a major incubator of the arts in midcentury America In 1933, John Rice founded Black Mountain College in North Carolina as an experiment in making artistic experience central to learning. Though it operated for only 24 years, this pioneering school played a significant role in fostering avant-garde art, music, dance, and poetry, and an astonishing number of important artists taught or studied there. Among the instructors were Josef and Anni Albers, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Buckminster Fuller, Karen Karnes, M. C. Richards, and Willem de Kooning, and students included Ruth Asawa, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly. Leap Before You Look is a singular exploration of this legendary school and of the work of the artists who spent time there. Scholars from a variety of fields contribute original essays about diverse aspects of the College-spanning everything from its farm program to the influence of Bauhaus principles-and about the people and ideas that gave it such a lasting impact. In addition, catalogue entries highlight selected works, including writings, musical compositions, visual arts, and crafts. The book's fresh approach and rich illustration program convey the atmosphere of creativity and experimentation that was unique to Black Mountain College, and that served as an inspiration to so many. This timely volume will be essential reading for anyone interested in the College and its enduring legacy.

Household Names is all about the iconic Russell Hobbs automatic kettles of the 1950s and 60s and the people who invented, designed and made them, set in the wider context of the British economy and culture in the second half of the twentieth century. Russell Hobbs (founded in 1952) was the brainchild of Bill Russell and Peter Hobbs. They had started out at Morphy Richards before parting company and setting up on their own, with Bill on design and engineering and Peter on marketing and sales. Their story demonstrates the significance of invention and design for successful manufacturing, often neglected by British firms, especially during the latter part of the 20th century, and provides object lessons in how successful product manufacturing might still be done. Russell Hobbs was an independent firm for only a decade but in that short time established an international reputation for design quality. Brexit and the Coronavirus will almost certainly force British industry to pay more attention to local manufacturing again and this is a timely look at the origins of this famous brand by Nicholas Russell the son of Bill Russell.

Earl Krentzin (1929-2021) was a virtuoso silversmith who poured his considerable talents into figurative sculpture, creating whimsical theatrical settings in silver with a wry humour. He was an anomaly in the world of modern craft, having more in common with the 16th-century goldsmith Benvenuto Cellini than with his 20th-century peers. This first full scale monograph on the artist offers the breadth of Krentzin's engaging creations, which he based on his love of toys, movement, and the mechanical arts. Readers will find humour and pathos in his theatrical settings and verisimilitude in every tiny detail, set amidst the burgeoning crafts scene in Detroit. All will discover a modern master who used amusements and daydreams to unlock the imagination.

One of the most innovative artists and thinkers of the first half of the 20th century, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy (1895-1946) emigrated to Britain after the forced closure of the Bauhaus, following his colleague Walter Gropius. This book examines the two years he spent in Britain in the mid-1930s before moving on to the United States - two intense years filled with commissions, collaborations, opportunities, disappointments, artistic exchanges and friendship. Moholy-Nagy was especially known in the UK as a photographer, his photos having previously been published in the Architectural Review. Although brief, Moholy-Nagy's English period represented the peak of his photographic activity. In Britain, he also worked as a graphic designer on books, advertisements and on London Transport posters. He worked as an art advisor for Simpsons' menswear store and designed publicity for the Isokon Furniture Company. He made a couple of documentary films - Lobsters and New Architecture at London Zoo and worked as a designer on Things to Come for Alexander Korda. As well as the films and photographic essays for the AR, he was introduced by John Betjeman to publisher John Miles, who commissioned him to illustrate three books: The Street Markets of London, Eton Portrait and An Oxford University Chest. He also worked with Gropius and Maxwell Fry on various exhibition designs, gave lectures and wrote articles throughout his stay, and The London Gallery held an exhibition of his work in January 1937. This highly visual book weaves together rarely seen images, documents and narrative to create a fascinating picture of the man and the artist during this critical and highly productive phase of his life.

A vivid, engaging account of the artists and artworks that sought to make sense of America's first total war, Grand Illusions takes readers on a compelling journey through the major historical events leading up to and beyond US involvement in WWI to discover the vast and pervasive influence of the conflict on American visual culture. David M. Lubin presents a highly original examination of the era's fine arts and entertainment to show how they ranged from patriotic idealism to profound disillusionment. In stylishly written chapters, Lubin assesses the war's impact on two dozen painters, designers, photographers, and filmmakers from 1914 to 1933. He considers well-known figures such as Marcel Duchamp, John Singer Sargent, D. W. Griffith, and the African American outsider artist Horace Pippin while resurrecting forgotten artists such as the mask-maker Anna Coleman Ladd, the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the combat artist Claggett Wilson. The book is liberally furnished with illustrations from epoch-defining posters, paintings, photographs, and films. Armed with rich cultural-historical details and an interdisciplinary narrative approach, David Lubin creatively upends traditional understandings of the Great War's effects on the visual arts in America.

The Aesthetics of Loss is a cultural history of German women's art of the First World War that locates the artists' rich visual testimony in the context of the civilian experience of war and wartime loss. Drawing on a fascinating body of visual sources produced throughout the war years, Claudia Siebrecht examines the thematic evolution of women's art from expressions of support for the war effort to more nuanced and ambivalent testimonies of loss and grief. Many of the images are stark woodcuts, linocuts, and lithographs of great iconographical power that acted as narrative tools to deal with the novel, unsettling, and often traumatic experience of war. German female artists developed a unique aesthetic response to the conflict that both expressed emotional distress and allowed them to re-imagine the place of mourning women in wartime society. Historical codes of wartime behaviour and traditional rites of public mourning led female artists to redefine cultural practices of bereavement, question existing notions of heroic death and proud bereavement through art, and to place grief at the centre of women's war experiences. As a cultural, aesthetic, and thematic point of reference, German women's art of the First World War has had a fundamental influence on the European memory and understanding of modern war.

A vivid, engaging account of the artists and artworks that sought to make sense of America's first total war, Grand Illusions takes readers on a compelling journey through the major historical events leading up to and beyond US involvement in WWI to discover the vast and pervasive influence of the conflict on American visual culture. David M. Lubin presents a highly original examination of the era's fine arts and entertainment to show how they ranged from patriotic idealism to profound disillusionment. In stylishly written chapters, Lubin assesses the war's impact on two dozen painters, designers, photographers, and filmmakers from 1914 to 1933. He considers well-known figures such as Marcel Duchamp, John Singer Sargent, D. W. Griffith, and the African American outsider artist Horace Pippin while resurrecting forgotten artists such as the mask-maker Anna Coleman Ladd, the sculptor Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, and the combat artist Claggett Wilson. The book is liberally furnished with illustrations from epoch-defining posters, paintings, photographs, and films. Armed with rich cultural-historical details and an interdisciplinary narrative approach, David Lubin creatively upends traditional understandings of the Great War's effects on the visual arts in America.

"For the first time, the real story behind the Highwaymen has emerged . . . a well-researched, lively, and comprehensive overview of the development and contribution of these African-American artists and their place in the history of Florida's popular culture."--Mallory McCane O'Connor, author of "Lost Cities of the Ancient Southeast"

"The Highwaymen" introduces a group of young black artists who painted their way out of the despair awaiting them in citrus groves and packing houses of 1950s Florida. As their story recaptures the imagination of Floridians and their paintings fetch ever-escalating prices, the legacy of their freshly conceived landscapes exerts a new and powerful influence on the popular conception of the Sunshine State.

While the value of Highwaymen paintings has soared in recent years, until now no authoritative account of the lives and work of these black Florida artists has existed. Emerging in the late 1950s, the Highwaymen created idyllic, quickly realized images of the Florida dream and peddled some 100,000 of them from the trunks of their cars.
Working with inexpensive materials, the Highwaymen produced an astonishing number of landscapes that depict a romanticized Florida--a faraway place of wind-swept palm trees, billowing cumulus clouds, wetlands, lakes, rivers, ocean, and setting sun. With paintings still wet, they loaded their cars and traveled the state's east coast, selling the images door-to-door and store-to-store, in restaurants, offices, courthouses, and bank lobbies.
Sometimes characterized as motel art, the work is a hybrid form of landscape painting, corrupting the classically influenced ideals of the Highwaymen's white mentor, A. E. "Bean" Backus. At first, the paintings sold like boom-time real estate. In succeeding decades, however, they were consigned to attics and garage sales. Rediscovered in the mid-1990s, today they are recognized as the work of American folk artists.
Gary Monroe tells the story behind the Highwaymen, a loose association of 25 men and 1 woman from the Ft. Pierce area--a fascinating mixture of individual talent, collective enterprise, and cultural heritage. He also offers a critical look at the paintings and the movement's development. Added to this are personal reminiscences by some of the artists, along with a gallery of 63 full-color reproductions of their paintings.
Gary Monroe, professor of visual art at Daytona Beach Community College, is a documentary photographer with a long-time interest in "outsider" and vernacular art. His work has been recognized with numerous exhibitions and awards, including grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fulbright Foundation, and he has been a popular lecturer for the Florida Humanities Council's Speakers Bureau. His photographs have been published in "Cassadaga: The South's Oldest Spiritualist Community" (UPF, 2000), which he coedited; "Life in South Beach" (1989); and "Florida Dreams" (1993). He lives in DeLand, Florida.

Werner Graeff - painter, graphic artist, typographer, photographer and sculptor - is an important Bauhaus artist and a significant representative of Constructivism in Germany. Prompted by his friend Mies van der Rohe he wrote his moving autobiography "Hurdenlauf durch das 20. Jahrhundert" (The Obstacle Race of the 20th century), which this volume publishes for the first time with a representative selection of texts. Werner Graeff ( 1901 - 1978 ) was a student at the Bauh aus in Weimar and from 1921 a member of the De Stijl Dutch artists' group. Together with Willi Baumeister he was also closely associated with the "ring neue werbegestalter" founded in 1927 by Kurt Schwitters. At an early stage he focused much of his attent ion on film and photography, but in 1951 after his return to the Ruhr region from exile in Switzerland he once again increasingly devoted himself to his work as an independent artist. Illustrated with a large number of paintings, pictograms, multiples, dra wings and graphic works from the artist's estate, this volume leads the reader through Graeff's life and works and is at the same time a fascinating journey through the German art history of the 20 th century.

The Art Institute of Chicago's opportunity to host the International Exhibition of Modern Art, better known as the Armory Show, in 1913 set a radical new course for modern and contemporary art in the United States. This monumental exhibition introduced audiences to some of the greatest avant-garde artists working in Europe, and forever changed the aesthetic landscape for artists, critics, collectors, and arts institutions. This fascinating publication brings together over 130 masterpieces from the Art Institute, which holds one of the finest collections of modern art in North America. Following an introductory essay by Stephanie D'Alessandro on the history of collecting modern art at the Art Institute, the masterworks of the museum's collection are presented in discrete sections devoted to important movements such as Expressionism, Cubism, Dada, Abstraction, and Surrealism, and to individual artists such as Brancusi, Chagall, Kandinsky, Leger, Matisse, and Picasso, as well as the remarkable American artist Joseph Cornell. Distributed for The Art Institute of Chicago

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) was a fighting spirit. Despite a cancer diagnosis in 1941, increasing frailty, and the confines of a wheelchair, the indomitable Frenchman never stopped in his quest to make art. With what he called une seconde vie, a second life, he embarked on a remarkable collage period, cutting and pasting pieces of colored paper into gouaches decoupees of birds, plants, flowers, and the female form. Emphasizing color and contrast, the cut-out technique generated both striking lines and vivid juxtapositions. In works such as Icarus (1943), The Blue Nude (1952), The Snail (1953), and The Sheaf (1953), clean forms and elemental structures power a compositional force that belies the work's decorative appeal, at once tightly organized and infectious with joie de vivre. As his work progressed, Matisse's excitement with his results fueled ever-larger pieces, advancing from small works to vast wall-sized murals. As his final years approached, Matisse reveled in the simplicity and brilliance of these pieces, avowing, "Only what I created after the illness constitutes my real self: free, liberated..." In this essential introductory book, we revisit this joyful final chapter of Matisse's long and prodigious career, examining how the cut-outs encapsulated the artist's many years exploring the possibilities of composition, form, and color. 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