No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time as a conscript in the dazzling light of Algeria, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 19th century, the work Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations was the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, which, in their approach towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential artist, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.

No other artist, apart from J. M. W. Turner, tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color. Whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time as a conscript in the dazzling light of Algeria, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 19th century, the work Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations was the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, which, in their approach toward almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential artist, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary. About the series Bibliotheca Universalis - Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe!

A century after the death of Paul Gauguin, our knowledge of his life and work has made huge strides.
The present work covers the youth and early maturity of this pioneering artist and attempts a summation. It also offers a complete catalogue of the paintings, in the process thoroughly updating the original Wildenstein catalogue of 1964. These first two volumes take the reader through to the end of 1888, a year of profound upheavel in French painting. That was the year in which Gauguin and his friends, by a collaborative effort, arrived at Synthetism and, by rejecting representation in depth, freed Western painting of laws that had governed it since the Renaissance.
But Synthetism was also a form of primitivism. The society in which Gauguin lived was--already--a technical and materialist one, which contained the seeds of all that the 20th century became. Gauguin was one of the first to seek, in reaction to this civilization, a form of inspiration deriving from the timeless origins of humanity.
Although these two volumes are the product of rigorous research, they are studded with illustrations and are by no means intended for specialists alone. Commentary on each work offers a step-by-step analysis of Gauguin's artistic development, while reconstructing the artist's experience and the aesthetic and socio-cultural issues of his times.
The lively detail of the chronology describes the events of Gauguin's life, along with those of his friends; thanks to extensive research in unpublished archives, it also casts completely new light on Gauguin's ancestry.
The introduction offers an analysis of the period and an in-depth portrait of this great artist.
This exhaustivework is carefully designed so that each entry and insert can be read in isolation, though a system of cross-referencing ensures the continuity of the work and restores the overall trajectory of Gauguin's development.

Along with Turner, no artist has sought more than Claude Monet (1840-1926) to capture light itself on canvas. Of all the Impressionists, it was the man Cezanne called "only an eye, but my God what an eye!" who stayed completely true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting directly from the object. It could be said that Monet reinvented the possibilities of color, and whether it was through his early interest in Japanese prints, his time in the dazzling light of Algeria as a conscript, or his personal acquaintance with the major painters of the late 1800s, what Monet produced throughout his long life would change forever the way we perceive both the natural world and its attendant phenomena. The high point of his explorations were the late series of water lilies, painted in his own garden at Giverny, that, in their moves towards almost total formlessness, are really the origin of abstract art. This biography does full justice to this most remarkable and profoundly influential of artists, and offers numerous reproductions and archive photos alongside a detailed and insightful commentary.