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.

In 1959, Bridget Riley's copy of Georges Seurat's Bridge at Courbevoie (1886-87) offered the artist a new understanding of colour and tone, which led her to produce her first major works of pure abstraction during the early 1960s. In 2015-16, an exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London, presented seven of Riley's paintings and this key Pointillist work by Seurat from the museum's collection. Brought together for the first time, the exhibition demonstrated the two artists' shared preoccupation with perception by looking at pivotal points throughout Riley's career. Alongside full-colour illustrations, this publication features two essays written by Riley that offer the artist's insights on Seurat's importance to her own practice. An interview with the artist by Eric de Chassey, complemented by an introductory text by Karen Serres and Barnaby Wright, make this an important resource for art historians and general readers alike.

This stunning catalogue presents for the first time an outstanding group of modern drawings by European and American masters, assembled by the late Howard Karshan and his wife, Linda, who recently presented the works to The Courtauld. Accompanying their exhibition at The Courtauld Gallery, the catalogue features drawings by renowned artists including Paul Cezanne, Wassily Kandinsky, Paul Klee, Willem de Kooning, Philip Guston, Sam Francis, Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter and Georg Baselitz. The Karshan gift is a significant addition to The Courtauld's collection. The works demonstrate Howard and Linda Karshan's sensibility for the expressive power and rich variety of drawing as an art form. The drawings are characterised by innovative mark-making and distinctive use of line. Examples range from radical watercolours by Cezanne and highly expressive finger drawings in ink by Louis Soutter, to abstract compositions made by Henri Michaux whilst experimenting with Mescalin to explore the subconscious, and on to works by Twombly that further broadened the possibilities of draughtsmanship. The 25 drawings of the Karshan gift will be shown at The Courtauld Gallery when it reopens in late 2021, following a major transformation project. This catalogue will include an interview with Linda Karshan, two essays and a fully illustrated catalogue with detailed entries on each work.

Accompanying a major exhibition of new and recent works by Peter Doig at The Courtauld, London, this publication will present an exciting new chapter in the career of one of the most celebrated and important painters working today. It will include paintings and etchings created since the artist’s move from Trinidad to London in 2021. It includes a major group of large paintings made for this exhibition. Doig (born Edinburgh, 1959) is widely acknowledged as one of the world’s leading artists. He secured his early reputation in the 1990s as a highly original figurative painter, producing large-scale, immersive landscape paintings that exist somewhere between actual places and the realms of the imagination. Layered into his paintings is a rich array of inspirations, such as scenes from films, album covers, and the art of the past. His works are often related to the places where he has lived and worked, including the UK, Canada and Trinidad. In 2021, Doig moved back to London where he has set up a new studio. This new studio has become the crucible for developing paintings started in Trinidad and New York and elsewhere, which are being worked up alongside completely fresh paintings, including a new London subject. The works produced for the exhibition at The Courtauld convey this particularly creative experience, as Doig explores a rich variety of places, people, memories and ways of painting that have accompanied him to his new London studio. For Doig, printmaking is an integral part of his artistic life: his prints and his paintings often work in dialogue with one another. The exhibition and catalogue will also showcase the artist’s work as a printmaker by unveiling a new series of etchings that Doig has made in response to poems by his friend, the Nobel prize winning poet Derek Walcott (1930-2017). This will allow readers to consider the full span of Doig’s creative process. Doig has long admired the collection of The Courtauld Gallery. The Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists who are at its heart have been a touchstone for his own painting and printmaking over the course of his career. His works presented here will reflect his current artistic preoccupations and readers will be able to consider Doig’s contemporary works in the light of paintings by earlier artists in The Courtauld’s collection that are important for him, such as those by Cézanne, Gauguin, Manet, Monet, Pissarro and Van Gogh. The publication will explore how Doig recasts and reinvents traditions and practices of painting to create his own highly distinctive works.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's "La Loge" (The Theatre Box), 1874, is one of the masterpieces of Impressionism and a major highlight of The Courtauld Gallery's collection. Its depiction of an elegant couple on display in a loge, or box at the theatre, epitomises the Impressionists' interest in the spectacle of modern life. At the heart of the painting is the complex play of gazes enacted by these two figures seated in a theatre box. In turning away from the performance, Renoir focused instead upon the theatre as a social stage where status and relationships were on public display.This book accompanies an exhibition in celebration of The Courtauld Institute of Art's 75th anniversary which unites "La Loge" for the first time with Renoir's other treatments of the subject and with loge paintings by contemporaries, including Mary Cassatt and Edgar Degas. Concentrating on the early years of Impressionism during the 1870s, the book explores how these artists used the loge to capture the excitement and changing nature of fashionable Parisian society. Lavishly produced contemporary journals such as "La Mode Illustree" included fine hand-coloured engravings showing the latest fashions modelled by elegant ladies in theatre boxes. A rich selection of this little-known graphic material from contemporary Parisian journals, as well as caricatures from the popular press, will also be examined.

There are some collectors who through foresight and dedication have built truly outstanding art collections and shared them widely as part of public museums. Among these were Samuel Courtauld in London and Rasmus Meyer in Bergen. At the heart of each man's collection were single artists who were their greatest passions: for Courtauld it was Paul Cezanne and for Meyer, Edvard Munch. This unique collaboration between KODE art museums in Bergen and The Courtauld in London, celebrates these two remarkable collectors and two great artists by showing masterpieces by Cezanne in Bergen and Munch in London. The Courtauld is home to some of the most important paintings by Cezanne, such as The Card Players and Montagne Sainte-Victoire. "Cezanne. Masterpieces from The Courtauld at KODE Art Museum" is the story about how collectors and artists became aware of Cezanne. This publication not only presents ten key works from The Courtauld along with Cezannes from Norwegian collections, it also brings them together with eye witness accounts from the early years of his profound influence, seen through the lens of the Norwegian art scene around 1900. With essays by Barnaby Wright, Oystein Sjastad and Karen Serres and an introduction by Line Daatland. Forewords by Petter Snare and Ernst Vegelin van Claerbergen.