Vincent van Gogh becomes only 37 years old. Only the last 10 years of his life he is engaged in painting. Restlessly and exhausting he travels through the Netherlands, Belgium, Great Britain and France. Together with his colleagues Cezanne, Toulouse-Lautrec and Gauguin he is regarded today as one of the most important artists of the expressionism movement. This comic guide, written and drawn by Willi Bloss, catches the main marks of the master's life and refers optically to the unerring style that van Gogh used for his sketches

Involved in expressionism, cubism and surrealism, Picasso is the outstanding painter during the first half of the 20th century. Innumerable publications to his person have appeared. In contrast to them this short guide delivers an overview of life and work of the controversial genius in not so many words and entertaining pictures. By developing a cubistic influenced comic style author Willi Bloss and illustrator Thomas Thiesen come close to their aim: explaining art by art

His whole life long the surrealistic painter Dali is obsessed to come to terms with three key moments of his childhood in Spain: 1. the fear that in his parents eyes he is only a rebirth of the dead first son, 2. The shocking effect that the pictures of venereal diseases discovered in his father's library have had on him and 3. the betrayal of his father, whom he found in bed with his mother's sister. His "floating clocks"gain worldwide famousness and become a symbol for a reality loosing control.

Frida Kahlo called herself "Daughter of the Mexican Revolution." At the age of 18 she had a terrible traffic accident with the result of great pains for the remaining 28 years of her life. She created round about 70 self-portraits. She did painting when she felt sick and had to lay in bed. When she felt good she preferred to live an exciting life. But while her husband Diego Riviera, amidst the Mexican macho society, could live his immorality in public, she had to arrange her dates with other men covertly.

In 1961 Andy Warhol resolved to become the chronicler of the affluent society. His series of consumption products is heralded by hand-painted dollar bills, coke bottles, and the 32 varieties of Campbell's soup cans. In 1968 he is shot down. The doctors declare him clinically dead. But Andy remains productive for nearly 20 years more. He dies in 1987. Author Willi Bloss asked Annette Schulze-Kremer to draw this comic biography as a reference to the 1960 years and to Mort Drucker, one of their favorites from the magazine MA

At the end of the 1970 years Keith Haring decorates the walls of the subway tunnels in New York with simple, two-dimensional characters. His tag is "The Radiant Child." In contrast to the graffiti scene, which consists of little more than repetitions of such tags, Keith develops a diverse language of symbols. They seem to be mystic messages. In 1990 Haring dies, aged 31, from AIDS.