Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama (b. 1929) is arguably Japan's most famous living artist. Her originality, innovation and powerful desire to communicate have propelled her through a career that has spanned six decades. During this time, Kusama has explored painting, sculpture, printmaking, photography, collage, film and video, performance and installation, as well as product design. From the late 1950s to the early 1970s Kusama lived in New York and was at the forefront of many artistic innovations in the city. Returning to Japan in her forties, she rebuilt her career, waiting years for the international recognition she has recently achieved. Now in her eightieth year, she continues to make art, extending the range of her large-scale, dazzling installations and relentlessly hand-painting extensive series of minutely detailed figurative fantasy paintings. Kusama has exhibited widely around the world, including representing Japan at the Venice Biennale, and her work is in many major collections. Accompanying the first major retrospective exhibition of the artist's work to be staged in the UK, this lavishly illustrated book features an introductory essay by Tate curator Frances Morris as well as four other substantial essays by leading international critics. Topics covered include Kusama's time in New York, her career after her return to Japan, her installation works and an exploration of her art from a psychoanalytical point of view.

Canadian-born Agnes Martin was one of the pre-eminent painters of the second half of the twentieth century, whose work has had a significant influence both on artists of her own time and for subsequent generations. A contemporary of the abstract expressionists though often identified with minimalism, Martin was of the few woman artists who came to prominence in the predominately masculine art world of the late 1950s and 1960s, and became a particularly important role model for younger women artists. This groundbreaking survey provides an overview of Martin's career, from lesser-known early experimental works through her striped and grided grey paintings and use of colour in various formats, to a group of her final works that reintroduce bold forms. A selection of drawings and watercolours is also included. With essays by leading scholars that give a context for Martin's work - her life, relationship with other artists, the influence of South- Asian philosophy - alongside focused shorter pieces on particular paintings, the book will appeal to art students, academics and all those interested in abstract art. Presenting new research, and beautifully designed, the book is also an opportunity to introduce the life and work of Agnes Martin to those unfamiliar with her oeuvre.