Discover how painters such as Van Gogh, Mondrian, and Jacoba van Heemskerck drew on the legacy of Dutch landscapes and realism to put their own spin on the Impressionist movement. Impressionism may have originated in France, but artists in late 19th- and early 20th-century Netherlands quickly made it their own. The genre’s vibrant colors and focus on light and atmosphere were a perfect complement to the country’s groundbreaking traditions of landscape painting and realism. This exhibition catalog brings more than a hundred works by nearly forty artists including Johan Barthold Jongkind, Vincent van Gogh, Jacoba van Heemskerck, and Piet Mondrian. It traces the birth of the Hague School, whose practitioners captured the changing moods of light in the coastline’s vast, grey skies. And it explores the Amsterdam Impressionists, whose cityscapes offered realistic images of modern life. Alongside vibrant reproductions of masterworks, a series of lively essays explore a diverse array of topics, including Dutch landscape painting within an international context; Dutch artist settlements and communities; and iconography in Dutch impressionism.

During the 1860s, Claude Monet, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, and Alfred Sisley joined forces to revolutionize art with light- flooded landscapes that dispensed with the conventional imagery of the time. In 1874, with their penchant for working out of doors in order to capture fleeting sensory impressions directly on the canvas, they came to be known as the "Impressionists." Berthe Morisot, Paul Cezanne, and Gustave Caillebotte became affiliated with the new tendency as well. More than a decade later, artists such as Paul Signac and Henri-Edmond Cross developed their pioneering ideas further, and in 1901, during his first year in Paris, the young Pablo Picasso too drew inspiration from the Impressionist style. No comparable collection provides such a comprehensive overview of Impressionist landscape painting and its development as the one assembled in recent decades by Hasso Plattner, founder of the Museum Barberini. On its basis, Ortrud Westheider, the director of the Museum Barberini, presents the history of French Impressionism. With its focus on the transitory moment, the artistry of the Impressionists continues to exert a powerful fascination. Guided by the interplay between light and atmosphere, they created exquisite and timeless images whose innovative spirit and vitality continue to delight viewers today.

Capturing fleeting natural impressions played a central role in the art of Claude Monet. He deeply engaged with the landscape and light of different places, from the metropolis of Paris to the Seine villages of Argenteuil and Giverny. This lavishly illustrated new paperback edition explores the development of Monet's art from the 1850s to the 1920s, focusing on the places, both at home and on his frequent travel, from which he drew inspiration for his painting. In addition, the book traces the critical shift in Monet's art that occurred when he began to focus on series of the same subjects such as haystacks, poplars, and the water lilies and pond at his meticulously designed garden in Giverny. Insightful and revealing, the book deepens our appreciation of Monet's art and allows us to experience anew his gift for bringing the natural world to life.

From his first compositions to the colorful flower images of his late years, Vincent van Gogh repeatedly painted still lifes. In this genre, he could try out various pictorial techniques - from depicting space through light and shadow to experimentation with color. Although many of his still life compositions employed traditional approaches to the genre, he ultimately formulated an unmistakably unique artistic style. This lavishly illustrated book revisits the development of Van Gogh's career and focuses on his still-life paintings, offering new insights into the working process and creative evolution of one of the most radical innovators in the history of modern art.

For as long as humans have been making art, they have turned to the sun as the source of light, warmth and life itself. It appears as a symbol of limitless power, as the personification of gods and of Christ, and as a harbinger of change. Artists have also used the sun as a means of exploring light and color and as an entrée into discussions about climate. The first of its kind, this catalog investigates visual representations of the sun from antiquity to the present day. It is divided into seven roughly chronological sections that look at both epoch-spanning and period specific examples, including symbolic, allegorical representations, the iconography of mythological subjects, and mimetic qualities such as typology, phenomenology, and emotional effect. It includes more than two hundred stunning reproductions of well- and lesser-known works. Incisive and enlightening texts explore how solar symbolism figured in pre-Christian objects through 17th-century depictions of the “Sun King” Louix XIV; how artists such as Rubens and Monet employed the sun in their narrative paintings; how the Impressionists first investigated the sun’s effects on a landscape; how Neo-Impressionist such as Seurat experimented with color based on the Newtonian analysis of the solar spectrum; and how 20th-century artists incorporated a broad array of abstract, surrealistic, and transformative modes of solar representation into a variety of media.

Behind the Mask: Artists in the GDR focuses on the wide variety of artistic self-staging in the GDR, between public and private, prescribed collectivism and creative individuality. The intention of the GDR's official state art was to exert political influence and this resulted in ideological entanglements that have been examined in numerous publications and exhibitions in recent years. Yet how did artists in the GDR critically scrutinize themselves and their own art when their prescribed role was to represent the interests of the state? The pertinent essays and outstanding reproductions in this volume draw a comprehensive picture of art in the GDR from a new and knowledge-enhancing perspective.

Following World War II, Western painting went in completely new directions. A young generation of artists turned their backs on the dominant styles of the interwar period: Instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, painters in the orbit of Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe pursued a radically impulsive approach to form, color, and material. As an expression of individual freedom, the spontaneous artistic gesture gained symbolic significance. Large-scale color-field compositions created a meditative space for ruminating the fundamental questions of human existence. The exhibition and catalogue examine the two sister movements against the background of a vibrant transatlantic exchange, from the 1940s through to the end of the Cold War. This lavishly illustrated volume brings together works by more than 50 artists, amongst them Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, K. O. Goetz, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Georges Mathieu, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Judit Reigl, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still, and Jack Tworkov.

In the 19th century, numerous photographers chose the same motifs as Impressionist painters: the forest of Fontainebleau, the cliffs of Etretat or the modern metropolis of Paris. They, too, studied the changing light, seasons and weather conditions. From its inception, photographers pursued artistic ambitions, as evidenced by their experimentation with composition and perspective, by means of various technical procedures. Until the First World War, the relationship between photography and painting was characterized both by competition and mutual influence. The exhibition and catalogue examine these interactions and illuminate the development of the new medium from the 1850s to its establishment as an autonomous art form around 1900. With contributions by: Dominique De Font-Reaulx, Monika Faber, Matthias Kruger, Ulrich Pohlmann, Esther Ruelfs, Helene Von Saldern, Bernd Stiegler, and Daniel Zamani.

In der ersten Halfte des 19. Jahrhunderts entdeckten amerikanische Maler die Vielfalt und Pracht der Neuen Welt. Sie sahen die Wildnis ihrer noch jungen Nation als neuen Garten Eden, dessen Motive ihnen eine Kunst jenseits europaischer Traditionen ermoglichte.

Palast, Kirchen und Kloster des Grossen Nowgorod brachten die bedeutendsten Ikonen der ostkirchlichen Malerei hervor. Ihre weltbekannten Meisterwerke vermitteln im vorliegenden Band ein umfassendes Bild von Kunst und Kultur der alten Metropole. Im mittelalterlichen Russland spielte Nowgorod eine herausragende Rolle als wichtigster Handelsplatz auf dem Weg von Norden nach Sueden und als Zentrum der altrussischen Kultur und Kunst. Dank seines Reichtums und seiner Weltoffenheit, wurde Nowgorod im 11. Jahrhundert zu einem Mittelpunkt, der Kuenstler und Geistliche vor allem aus Byzanz und vom Balkan anzog. Die hohe Qualitat, die klare Komposition, die voll geistiger Freude strahlende Farbgebung und die Anschaulichkeit aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, dem goldenen Zeitalter der Ikonen vermitteln das sichere Lebensgefuehl der Nowgoroder, die stolz auf ihre reiche, unabhangige Stadt und alten Traditionen waren. Zahlreiche Kirchen und Kunstwerke, darunter eine vollstandige Ikonostase, wertvolle Ikonen, Goldschmiedearbeiten, Textilien, Briefe auf Birkenrinde und diverse archaologische Objekte, vergegenwartigen heute noch den Rang des Groaen Nowgorod . Der umfassende Begleitband zur Ausstellung in Hamburg enthalt Beitrage von: Walentin Janin, Engelina Smirnowa, Irina Solovjewa, Heinz Spielmann, Tatjana Wilibahowa u.a.

Aleksandr Rodchenko (1891 -1956) was one of the driving forces of the Russian avant-garde. In his works - paintings, collages, photomontages, photographs, sculptures, advertising designs and typography - he captured the dynamic social changes that took place in the years immediately following the October Revolution: the design of a new world.

Mannerism is the first art movement that is considered to have simultaneously captured all of Europe. In the 16th century, artists in Florence, Prague, Antwerp and Madrid no longer depicted the idealized harmony of humans and the world, but started to mirror the changes and upheavals of their time with loud colors, exaggerated constructions of space, and skewed perspectives. This volume presents 120 Mannerist works of art from the Szepmuveszeti Muzeum in Budapest, including paintings by Jacopo Tintoretto, Agnolo Bronzino, Giorgio Vasari, El Greco, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and Hans von Aachen. German text.