In the late 19th century, numerous Russian artists found inspiration in the style of French Impressionist painters. Often, a journey to Paris acted as a catalyst for their burgeoning interest in the movement. They developed a preference for working en plein air and aimed to capture transitory effects through a spontaneous and free handling of the brush. Many leading painters of the later Russian avant-garde arrived at their individual styles due to studying the Impressionist use of light. This lavishly illustrated volume explores the many-layered ways French Impressionism influenced the evolution of Russian art from the 1880s to the 1920s, including the work of painters as diverse as Ilya Repin, Valentin Serov, Konstantin Korovin, Natalia Goncharova, and Kazimir Malevich. Essays by many of the leading scholars in the field provide rich new insights into one of the most intriguing chapters of Russian modernism.

Like no other 20th-century movement, Surrealism was keenly inspired by tropes of magic, myth and the occult. In their engagement with the irrational and the unconscious, numerous of its members looked to magic as a poetic and deeply philosophical discourse, related to both arcane knowledge and individual self-empowerment. In their works, they heavily drew on esoteric symbols and cultivated the image of the artist as a magician, visionary, and alchemist. This catalog explores the myriad ways, in which magic and the occult informed the development of the Surrealist movement in international perspective, from the "metaphysical paintings" of Giorgio de Chirico through to works of the post-war period. Lavishly illustrated, it combines longer research essays with focused chapter introductions, all penned by leading scholars in the field. Amongst the many fascinating artists included in the volume are Victor Brauner, Leonora Carrington, Paul Delvaux, Salvador Dali, Max Ernst, Leonor Fini, Rene Magritte, Roberto Matta, Kay Sage, Kurt Seligmann, Dorothea Tanning, Yves Tanguy, and Remedios Varo.