Collectors played an essential yet misunderstood role in the success of Impressionism. Even though they were not immune to economic and social woes, they were often engaged in defending this artistic movement that they had helped come to life, establish itself or make known, each according to their times. It is this group of committed collectors that the present work seeks to examine. From assembling a collection to donating it to a museum, from supporting artists within the borders of France to publicising the movement internationally, from the first intimate private showings to the questions raised by the presentation of these works in museums, collectors were present at every stage of the development of Impressionism, from the dawn of the movement to the middle of the 20th century. This volume aims to re-examine and reassess the importance of these collectors in the political, social and economic contexts of their times through the contributions of 16 international specialists. Depeaux, De Nittis, the Palmers, O'Hara, Buhrle, Caillebotte, Fayet: whether they are the subjects of dedicated case studies or part of a broader discourse, the multiplicity of profiles of these collectors and the paths they followed will allow readers to gain a better understanding of their importance in the history of the Impressionist movement.

One of the most prestigious contemporary art awards, the Marcel Duchamp Prize was created in 2000 by the ADIAF, Association for the international diffusion of French art which groups together 400 contemporary art collectors rallied around the French scene. Its ambition is to bring together the most innovative artists and help them raise their international profile. Each year, the Marcel Duchamp Prize is awarded to one of four artists, either French or living in France, all of them working in the field of the plastic and visual arts. Since the outset, this collectors' prize benefits from a close partnership with the Centre Pompidou who invites the four nominated artists for a 3-month group show in its Galerie 4. The winner is chosen by an international jury of collectors and directors of leading institutions. Text in English and French.

Offers an exhaustive account of this unique human, artistic and intellectual adventure through a comprehensive and up-to-date art historical analysis of Leonardo's work. Accompanied by spectacular illustrations. In the Quattrocento, an era when the representation of the human figure was dominated by timeless images based on Botticelli's example, Leonardo worked with light and colour to achieve a modelling that would restore three-dimensionality to the face and soften the rigours of perspective in a misty landscape, no longer a mere backdrop but a vivid pictorial transposition of careful scientific studies and refined psychological analyses. In Leonardo's pictures, it is the changing atmospheric conditions that complement and breathe life into the delicate rendering of the forms and the emotional experiences of the subjects. Thus the artist created powerfully expressive religious pictures and secular portraits that have a modern and disquieting quality in which the faces are true 'windows of the soul', highlighting a silent psychological dialogue between the painting's subject and the observer. Artistic innovations are sustained by a new sensitivity, as well as by study of the refraction of colour, to which much space is dedicated in the Florentine master's theoretical writings. The present book offers an exhaustive account of this unique human, artistic, and intellectual adventure through a comprehensive and up-to-date art historical analysis of Leonardo's work accompanied by spectacular illustrations.

The glorious Manifattura Lenci of Turin is the protagonist of this volume, which presents one hundred and fifty works belonging to the Ferrero Collection. Small plastics and decorative sculptures have made the fortune of this historical manufacture, first active in the field of cloths and dolls, for 'toys in general, furniture, furnishings and children's clothing', and subsequently, since 1927, in the ceramic sector. The Lenci production was inspired by the fashion magazines of its time, between customs and bon ton, reflecting the taste of an era and a society, which had identified in its products the bourgeois status symbol. Lenci was characterised over the years by the creative contribution of important artists such as Sandro Vacchetti, Elena Konig Scavini, Marcello Dudovich, Gigi Chessa, Mario Sturani, and Abele Jacopi, who made the ceramic production unique and inimitable. In 1934 Sandro Vacchetti, former artistic director of Lenci manufactory, founded the successful Essevi ceramics, which follows in the footsteps of Lenci and constitutes a continuation of their style.

The extraordinary fecundity of the photographic medium between the first and second world wars can be persuasively attributed to the dynamic circulation of people, of ideas, of images, and of objects that was a hallmark of that era in Europe and the United States. Voluntary and involuntary migration, a profusion of publications distributed and read on both sides of the Atlantic, and landmark exhibitions that brought artistic achievements into dialogue with one another all contributed to a period of innovation that was a creative peak both in the history of photography and in the field of arts and letters. Few, if any, collections of photography capture the imaginative spirit of this moment as convincingly as the Thomas Walther Collection at The Museum of Modern Art. This volume represents an important chapter in the rich and complex lives of these works, providing ample evidence of the brilliance of the photographers practicing on both sides of the Atlantic in the interwar period.

Christian Dior was born in Granville, a seaside town on the coast of Normandy, France: while his family had hoped that he would become a diplomat, Dior preferred art. His preternatural talent resulted in him being hired by Robert Piquet in 1937, and subsequently worked alongside Pierre Balmain and Lucien Lelong. Dior was an instant sensation after the Second World War. His designs, which asserted femininity, were a strong rebuke to the utilitarian, unisex clothing of wartime and came to symbolise the 'New Look'. Dior had an extremely close relationship with his sister, Catherine - honouring her work during the war in the French Resistance with the popular perfume Miss Dior. She was his muse. The book features around 60 haute couture designs from the collections of the Musee des Arts Decoratifs along with an equivalent number of iconic pieces belonging to Dior Heritage (the house's own archives of original runway prototypes or garments ordered by clients), supplemented by fragrances and accessories. The items on display thus offer a panorama of Christian Dior's haute couture creations since 1947, always the epitome of modern elegance, with the selection taking as its unifying thread the fabric of dreams and the passing on of an aesthetic vision. Text in English and Arabic.

The volume is dedicated to the work of New York-based Croatian artists TARWUK, presented, for the first time in Italy, at the Maramotti Collection in Reggio Emilia. A constant depiction of the human form - exploring the multiple ways it can exist and the flowing, expressive quality of the body - represents the formal result of TARWUK's deep, probing research into identity and the marks that memories and subconscious tensions leave on our bodies, shaping them physically. The artists, who were born in socialist Yugoslavia and grew up in the Balkans during the Croatian War of independence (1991-5), see their anatomically dissected sculptures as symbolising loss and conflict. However, they are also organisms with the potential for regeneration and rebirth: traces of beauty and the opportunity for transcendence can be glimpsed amidst the waste technological materials and signs of devastation. Drawing is another essential part of TARWUK's practice: TARWUK's drawings, which are fully fledged forms of expression, not preparatory works, have a dreamy and immediate quality, with echoes of late 19th-century and early 19th-century symbolism and the Vienna Secession, a period the artists see as a sort of equilibrium, a moment of balance between opposing tensions - death and beauty, decadence and decoration - that competed for dominance. The volume includes a text by Mario Diacono and a conversation between Bob Nickas and TARWUK. Text in English and Italian.

Davide Balliano (Turin, IT 1983) is an artist whose research operates on the thin line of demarcation between painting and sculpture. Utilising an austere, minimal language of abstract geometries in strong dialogue with architecture, his work investigates existential themes such as the identity of man in the age of technology and his relationship with the sublime. Through a practice that is self-described as monastic, austere and concrete, Balliano’s meticulous paintings appear, upon first glance, clean and precise. However, closer inspection reveals scrapes and scratches that uncover the organic wooden surface underneath the layers of paint, as a decaying façade of abandoned modernistic intentions. In addition to painting, Davide Balliano is also known for his sculptural work, which translates the visual vocabulary found in his paintings into solid objects, often in stainless steel or ceramic. The volume, which offers a wide selection of works that offer a complete overview of his production, contains a conversation between Osman Can Yerebakane and the artist, and a critical text by Michele Robecchi. Text in English and Italian.

This volume celebrates Luigi Pericle, painter, but also thinker, literate, scholar of theosophy and esoteric doctrines, revealing his extraordinary history, made of profound research and great encounters. From well-known collector Peter G. Staechelin to Sir Herbert Read, trustee of the Tate Gallery; from the museologist Hans Hess, curator of the York Art Gallery, to the famous German artist and director Hans Richter - everyone was attracted by his charisma, his versatile personality, his 'clairvoyant' art. With Luigi Pericle, the history of informal art of the second post-war period unexpectedly opens to philosophy, to alternative spirituality, to the mysteries of the cosmos, against the background of the space age. Essays by: Marco Pasi, Luca Bochicchio, Chiara Gatti, Michele Tavola, Andrea Biasca-Caroni, Valeria Malossa, and Giovanni Cavallo. Text in English and Italian.

Christine Rebet is fascinated by sleight of hand and optical illusions, the principal forms of entertainment before the invention of motion pictures. She combines history and fiction by creating fantasy universes that play with her viewers’ unconscious by means of deceptive measures, still employed in contemporary politics and the media. Drawing is at the heart of her artistic process and is closely linked to language and mime, as well as to sound and music. Christine Rebet uses animation, a hybrid medium in which the repetition of a drawing gives the illusion of movement, creating what she calls her ‘paper cinema’. Text in English and French.

This unique collection of exceptional breadth brings together almost 100 works by American artist Kiki Smith, from the 1990s to the present day. The exhibition at La Monnaie in Paris covers the major themes of the artist's oeuvre, including the human body, the female figure and the symbiotic relationship with nature, all of which are recurring motifs. Kiki Smith's oeuvre resembles a voyage, a quest in search of a union between the body and all other living beings and the cosmos. From microscopic elements to the organs of the body, from the organs to the body in its entirety, then from the body to cosmic systems, the artist explores the relationship between different species and scales, seeking out the harmony that unites us with nature and the universe. Text in English and French.

Painting, ceramics, sculpture, textile works, immersive installations, performances: the third exhibition at MOCO Hotel des collections is an ode to the Amazon Basin seen through the art and the ecological, economic and political stakes that characterise it. This exhibition catalogue showcases more than a hundred works coming from Catherine Petitgas's collection, based in London. Artists: Sol Calero, Anna Bella Geiger, Teresa Margolles, Beatriz Milhazes, Ernesto Neto, Helio Oiticica, Ivan Serpa, Luiz Zerbini. Text in English and French.

On the 150th anniversary of the painter Henri Matisse (1869-1954), the Musee Matisse in Cateau-Cambresis, which was founded by the artist in his hometown in 1952, pays tribute to the lesser-known man of the North, who became one of the greatest masters of the 20th century. You thought you knew everything about Matisse's work? This exhibition reveals the mystery of the first 20 years of his career and the awakening of a genius moving from shadow to light. It honours his early works from the revelation of painting, and his academic training until the end of his academic studies in Paris, where he taught until 1911. This decisive and defining period of his identity helps us to understand how he grew into a painter on his Hauts-de-France lands. It dissects the creative process of the man copying the ancients, drawing inspiration from the greatest masters of the past and his contemporaries, to shake the codes with 'luxury, calm and voluptuousness' and impose himself on the rank of those he has contemplated. Text in English and French.

The successful history of Pierre Angénieux's revolutionary zoom and focus technologies, a world reference in optics for cinema, photography and television. This book presents the history and current challenges of the Angénieux brand, a must in the world of cinema. Angenieux zooms are present on the most prestigious film shoots from Hollywood to Bollywood, from Moonlight to Game of Thrones, to name only a few. The incredible epic of this brand began in 1935 with Pierre Angénieux: inventor of the Retrofocus, father of the concept of modern zoom with mechanical compensation, Pierre Angénieux revolutionised focal calculation and deployed unparalleled inventiveness throughout his life, making his workshops of Saint-Héand in France a world reference in optics for cinema, photography and television. The Angenieux zooms have been distinguished three times in Hollywood by the Academy of Oscars in 1964, 1989 and 2008, and were selected by NASA to participate in the extraordinary adventure of the space conquest. The incredible achievement of Pierre Angénieux beyond the success of his company is the persistence of his work. The principles he has developed and applied remain the basis of Angenieux's vision. Today, backed by the Thales group since 1993, the Angénieux brand continues to offer the best technological solutions for cinematographic image.

This volume offers the first overview of American photorealist and Pop painter Howard Kanovitz (1929-2009), dubbed by Barbara Rose the grandfather of photorealism. Howard Kanovitz's landmark 1966 Jewish Museum solo exhibition is widely deemed to have launched the genre of photorealism.

Paintings, installations, sculptures and photographs from around fifty artists compose a chronological course of the different currents of non-conformist art in the former U.S.S.R and Russia. The Tretyakov Collection was created between 1983 and 2008 on the initiative of Russian art critic Andrei Erofeev to create a museum of the history of art mavericks in Moscow, as no Soviet institution was interested in the avant-garde. Originally composed of more than 5000 pieces, a selection of this collection eventually became part of the Tretyakov National Gallery, making it the first institution to house a department of Russian contemporary art. The exhibition thus allows a new dive in to this 'Underground' of the years 1960-2000. Each chapter brings together artists from the same movement and highlights their affinity with Tachism, kinetic art, Pop Art, conceptual art, or performance. The composition of the collection, revealing the sometimes-complex relationships between artists, official art of the Soviet era and institutions, will be evoked by historical documents, chronological friezes and an educational program. Text in English and French.

The Bonnard Museum has the privilege of unveiling, in the summer of 2019, a selection of remarkable works from the late nineteenth century to the early twentieth, preserved by an exceptional private collection. Privilege in more than one way since such an ensemble also highlights the fruitful relations between museums and private collectors. Text in English and French.

Published on the occasion of the first presentation of the future Art Mill Museum, due to open in 2030 in Doha, Qatar. This box comprises nine booklets, including one booklet with essays introducing the future museum. One booklet on the architecture, one on the landscape, a poster reproducing the models from the Art Mill Museum International Design Competition, and booklets on the museum's first artist commissions by Yasmina Benabderrahmane, Francois-Xavier Gbre, Ali Kazma, Amal Al Muftah and Shaima Al-Tamimi.

"Marialuisa Tadei succeeds in giving the mystery of life abstract form, implying that it trascends the nature in which it ordinarily manifests itself suggesting that it is unwordly - beyond space and time - like God's creative wisdom." - Donald Kuspit Tadei's sculptures encourage the awareness of a vital and universal spirituality, leaving the mind free to find its sense of immortality. This monograph dedicated to the artist showcases her works, characterised by her bold use of colour and materials, including mosaic, glass, bronze and feathers, and by the lyrical and spiritual qualities of her artistic language.

Nicole Bottet encapsulates time. The singular expression of an artistic career that doesn't fit into any specific school, delicately presents itself and lets us into an intimate space, a sacred place of muted dialogues. Ungrounded and yet firmly rooted, her large paintings are paralleled by a long trail of letters, photos, old adverts. A bouquet withers on the canvas, its petals fall onto a father's letter, a declaration of love bursts out of a tablecloth. Conversations become paintings. A red glow slips behind the mountain of letters. The unique demonstration of the sweetness of life amid everyday torment, this painting brings us face to face with a nude haloed in light, a sun-drenched wall, it discovers the sparkle of a crystal, the spontaneity of a vivid red, a deep green. Suspended like a star, gold shines through the obscurity. The work of Nicole Bottet can be seen in private collections and museums throughout Europe, Japan, China, the United States and Canada. Text in English and French.

After studying architecture at the Ecole Nationale Superieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris, Aymeric Zublena, born in September 1936 in Paris, graduated in 1963 and completed his training in urban planning at the Tony Garnier 'seminar'. In 1967 he won a Second Grand Prix of Rome on the theme 'A House of Europe in Paris'. In the same year, he became chief architect of the new town of Marne la Vallee, directing the studies of the regional urban centre for nearly 15 years. He developed the principle of diversity and urban density organised around powerful public transport. During this same period, he was the architect of the French mission of study in charge of the master plan of Greater Buenos Aires, foreseeing the creation of two new linear cities along the Rio de la Plata. For each of his programs, Aymeric Zublena is looking for a singular architectural response that strongly marks the host site with an emblematic sign making it easily identifiable: the 'hospital street' of the Georges Pompidou European Hospital, a long glass gallery that inscribes a new axis in the heart of Paris, the cover of the Stade de France which floats above the stands and the forecourt, the crescent of the Istanbul stadium, the bird wing of the Suwon stadium. The 'butterfly' metal lifting structures of the Rouen bridge, the monumental mobile door of the DASES on the Quai de la Rapee in Paris. Text in English and French.

From 12 October 2019 to 19 January 2020, the South Korean artist Kimsooja will surround the City of Poitiers on the occasion of the first edition of Traversees, a new international artistic and cultural event, closely linked to the destiny of a major building, the Palace of the Dukes of Aquitaine, and its neighbourhood, historical and heritage heart of the city. Kimsooja welcomes other artists, with whom her work resonates, and invites them to look at the city and create new perspectives. From India to Morocco, via South Korea, Peru or Japan, Traversees / Kimsooja is an invitation to a kaleidoscopic trip around the world, punctuated by installations, concerts and performances. Text in English and French.

This catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition Baghdad: Eye's Delight, that celebrates Baghdad as the most important and influential city ever created in the Islamic world, revealing its outstanding heritage as the capital of the great Abbasid caliphs (750-1258 CE) but also its renewed period of prosperity in the 20th century thanks to the discovery of oil. The display will take visitors on an imaginary tour across centuries, highlighting Baghdad's role as a city of power, scholarship and riches, ending the tour with a look at the city's social fabric, its cosmopolitan population, and many traditions, which have - despite war and destruction - enabled the city to thrive, time and time again. This catalogue brings together a collection of essays written by some of the best-known scholars in the field. Their essays touch upon the history of the city across many periods and themes, following the divisions of the exhibition while offering unique insights into the complicated and layered history of one of the most fascinating cities of the Middle East.

The illustrated stories published in the Christmas issues of the youth magazines have left lasting memories with Finnish children. Translated in French for the first time, these charming stories take us into landscapes of forests and lakes, squirrels and tits, leprechauns and trolls - more facetious than worrisome. Text in French.

Born in Barcelona in 1913, Antoni Clave was first confronted by war in 1937. The theme of the warrior is found very early on in his art and is among the subjects that ensured him public recognition in Paris by 1958. In contact with the sculptures and African masks that he surrounded himself with in his ateliers, the figure of the warrior remained fundamental to Clave's work and haunted him his whole life. It was the artist's favourite title and subject, and is an obsessive recurring image in Clave's sculptures, paintings, textile and wood assemblages through to the early 2000s. It is through the prism of the memory of African masks that this catalogue takes a new look at the art of Antoni Clave. Homage, admiration, appropriation, his connection to the arts of Africa is multiple. Clave takes up his artistic weaponry to assert his pictorial identity, which is one of absolute modernity, timeless and universal. Texts by: Franco Calarota, Illa Donwahi, Aude Hendgen, Sitor Senghor, Jose Corredor-Matheos Text in English and French.