September 4, 476 A. D. marked the end of the Western Roman Empire. After several centuries of prosperity, Europe sank into chaos. With Charlemagne, a new dynamic begins that of a civilising reconstruction. The Romanesque period is part of the rediscovery of this Roman Empire, lost in memories, but living on in the architectural testimonies of the cities and the countryside. In art history, Romanesque art refers to the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era was characterised by a great diversity of regional schools, each practising their own unique style. In architecture as well as in sculpture, Romanesque art is marked by raw forms. Through its rich iconography and captivating text, this work endeavours to restore the importance of this art which is often overshadowed by the later Gothic style. Gothic art is defined by the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over 200 years. Abandoning curved Roman forms, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era incorporated new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary — a drastic contrast  to the dismal themes of Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art paved the way for the Italian Renaissance and the International Gothic movement.

Medieval Art in the Christian West

As a one of the foremost painters of the 20th century, Dalí, like Picasso and Warhol, can boast of having overturned the art of the previous century and directed contemporary art toward its present incarnation. As irrational as he was surrealist, this genius diverted objects from their original meanings, plunging them into the acid of his constantly churning imagination. A megalomaniac and an artist who understood above all the force of marketing and publicity, Dalí disorientates the viewer in order to draw him into the artist’s world. On his canvases, images and colours crash together to express and mock certain ideas, creating a subversive eroticism that taps into the subconscious of the avid voyeurs that we are. The author, Eric Shanes, explores the twists and turns of Dalí’s mad genius, commenting on the masterpieces of the painter so as to show the diversity and scope of his talent, leaving the reader blown away and bewitched by this Prince of Metamorphosis. This work opens up the sweet, mad universe of this megalomaniac genius and invites us to let ourselves be overcome … Dalí is, first and foremost, an absolute.

Salvador Dalí

Few people discuss the fact that Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was the most important artist of the 20th century. Born in Malaga, Spain, Picasso revealed his genius at a very early age and was quick to make contact with the most advanced art circles of his time, first in Barcelona and later in Paris. In the modernist quest for novelty, Picasso turned to pre-Modern history and ‘primitive’ art for inspiration. We owe him and his colleague Georges Braque the invention of Cubism, not just one of many avant-garde movements but the aesthetic that would change the art of painting forever. Once free from traditional values, Picasso produced an outstanding oeuvre, both in terms of variety and quality. Victoria Charles received her PhD in art history. She has published extensively on art history and has contributed to Art Information, an international guide to contemporary art. She is a regular contributor to journals and magazines, Victoria Charles recently contributed to a collective work, World History of Art.

The ultimate book on Picasso

Egyptian art is perhaps the most impersonal that exists. The artist effaces himself. But he has such an innate sense of life, a sense so directly moved and so limpid that everything of life which he describes seems defi ned by that sense, to issue from the natural gesture, from the exact attitude, in which one no longer sees stiffness. His impersonality resembles that of the trees bowing in the wind with a single movement and without resistance, or that of the water which wrinkles into equal circles all moving in the same direction. From afar, Egyptian art seems changeless and forever like itself. From nearby, it offers, like that of all the other peoples, the spectacle of great evolutions, of progress toward freedom of expression, of researches in imposed hieratism. Egypt is so far from us that it all seems on the same plane. One forgets that there are fi fteen or twenty centuries, the age of Christianity — between the “Seated Scribe” and the great classic period, twentyfive or thirty centuries, fi fty, perhaps — twice the time that separates us from Pericles and Phidias — between the pyramids and the Saite school, the last living manifestation of the Egyptian ideal. Egypt died of her need of eternity.

Egyptian art

In the arts, Neoclassicism is a historical tradition or aesthetic attitude based on the art of Greece and Rome in antiquity. The movement started around the 18th-century, age of Enlightenment, and continued into the early 19th-century The general credo associated with the aesthetic attitude of Classicism was that art had to be rational and therefore morally better. Neoclassicists also believed that art should be cerebral, not sensual and therefore characterised by clarity of form, sober colours and shallow space. It was a reaction against both the surviving Baroque and Rococo styles, and a desire to return to the perceived ""purity"" of the arts of Rome. The important artists of the movement include the sculptors Antonio Canova,Jean-Antoine Houdon and Bertel Thorvaldsen, and the painters J.A.D. Ingres, Jacques-Louis David and Anton Raphael Mengs.

Neoclassicism

The seascapes of Ivan Aivazovsky (1817-1900) made his name in Russia, his native country where he was a painter of the court of Nicholas I, yet his fame barely extended beyond these borders. Master of the Sublime, he made the ocean the principal subject of his work. Sometimes wild and raging, sometimes calm and peaceful, the life of the ocean is composed of as many allegories as the human condition. Like Turner, whom he knew and whose art he admired, he never painted outside in nature, nor did he make preliminary sketches; hispaintings were the fruit of his exceptional memory. With more than 6,000 canvasses, Aivazovsky was one of the most prolific painters of his time.

Ivan Aivazovsky and the Russian Painters of Water

Pieter Brueghel was the first important member of a family of artists who were active for four generations. Firstly a drawer before becoming a painter later, he painted religious themes, such as Babel Tower, with very bright colours. Influenced by Hieronymus Bosch, he painted large, complex scenes of peasant life and scripture or spiritual allegories, often with crowds of subjects performing a variety of acts, yet his scenes are unified with an informal integrity and often with wit. In his work, he brought a new humanising spirit. Befriending the Humanists, Brueghel composed true philosophical landscapes in the heart of which man accepts passively his fate, caught in the track of time.

The Brueghels

For many people, Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) was undoubtedly the most important artist of the 20th century. Born in Málaga, Spain, Picasso revealed his genius at a very early age and was quick to make contact with the most advanced art circles of his time, first in Barcelona and later in Paris. In the modernist quest for novelty, Picasso turned to pre-modern history and ÂprimitiveÊ art for inspiration. We owe him and his colleague Georges Braque the invention of Cubism, not just one of many avant-garde movements but the aesthetic that would change the art of painting forever. Once free from traditional values, Picasso produced an outstanding oeuvre, both in terms of variety and quality.

Pablo Picasso

Pablo Picasso Masterworks - Volume 2

Vincent van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to observe one without thinking of the other. Van Gogh has indeed become the incarnation of the suffering, misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. An article, published in 1890, gave details about van Gogh’s illness. The author of the article saw the painter as “a terrible and demented genius, often sublime, sometimes grotesque, always at the brink of the pathological.” Very little is known about Vincent’s childhood. At the age of eleven he had to leave “the human nest”, as he called it himself, for various boarding schools. The first portrait shows us van Gogh as an earnest nineteen year old. At that time he had already been at work for three years in The Hague and, later, in London in the gallery Goupil & Co. In 1874 his love for Ursula Loyer ended in disaster and a year later he was transferred to Paris, against his will. After a particularly heated argument during Christmas holidays in 1881, his father, a pastor, ordered Vincent to leave. With this final break, he abandoned his family name and signed his canvases simply “Vincent”. He left for Paris and never returned to Holland. In Paris he came to know Paul Gauguin, whose paintings he greatly admired. The self-portrait was the main subject of Vincent’s work from 1886c88. In February 1888 Vincent left Paris for Arles and tried to persuade Gauguin to join him. The months of waiting for Gauguin were the most productive time in van Gogh’s life. He wanted to show his friend as many pictures as possible and decorate the Yellow House. But Gauguin did not share his views on art and finally returned to Paris. On 7 January, 1889, fourteen days after his famous self-mutilation, Vincent left the hospital where he was convalescing. Although he hoped to recover from and to forget his madness, but he actually came back twice more in the same year. During his last stay in hospital, Vincent painted landscapes in which he recreated the world of his childhood. It is said that Vincent van Gogh shot himself in the side in a field but decided to return to the inn and went to bed. The landlord informed Dr Gachet and his brother Theo, who described the last moments of his life which ended on 29 July, 1890: “I wanted to die. While I was sitting next to him promising that we would try to heal him. [...], he answered, ‘La tristesse durera toujours (The sadness will last forever).’”

Vincent van Gogh

Art Deco style was established on the ashes of a disappeared world, the one from before the First World War, and on the foundation stone of a world yet to become, opened to the most undisclosed promises. Forgetting herself in the whirl of Jazz Age and the euphoria of the “Années Folles”, the Garçonne with her linear shape reflects the architectural style of Art Deco: to the rounded curves succeed the simple and plain androgynous straight line… Architecture, painting, furniture and sculpture, dissected by the author, proclaim the druthers for sharp lines and broken angles. Although ephemeral, this movement keeps on influencing contemporary design.

Art Deco

Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe over more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open up cathedrals to daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the Gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary – in drastic contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all of the various art forms (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art paved the way for the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic movement.

Gothic Art

Goya is perhaps the most approachable of painters. His art, like his life, is an open book. He concealed nothing from his contemporaries, and offered his art to them with the same frankness. The entrance to his world is not barricaded with technical difficulties. He proved that if a man has the capacity to live and multiply his experiences, to fight and work, he can produce great art without classical decorum and traditional respectability. He was born in 1746, in Fuendetodos, a small mountain village of a hundred inhabitants. As a child he worked in the fields with his two brothers and his sister until his talent for drawing put an end to his misery. At fourteen, supported by a wealthy patron, he went to Saragossa to study with a court painter and later, when he was nineteen, on to Madrid. Up to his thirty-seventh year, if we leave out of account the tapestry cartoons of unheralded decorative quality and five small pictures, Goya painted nothing of any significance, but once in control of his refractory powers, he produced masterpieces with the speed of Rubens. His court appointment was followed by a decade of incessant activity – years of painting and scandal, with intervals of bad health. Goya’s etchings demonstrate a draughtsmanship of the first rank. In paint, like Velázquez, he is more or less dependent on the model, but not in the detached fashion of the expert in still-life. If a woman was ugly, he made her a despicable horror; if she was alluring, he dramatised her charm. He preferred to finish his portraits at one sitting and was a tyrant with his models. Like Velázquez, he concentrated on faces, but he drew his heads cunningly, and constructed them out of tones of transparent greys. Monstrous forms inhabit his black-and-white world: these are his most profoundly deliberated productions. His fantastic figures, as he called them, fill us with a sense of ignoble joy, aggravate our devilish instincts and delight us with the uncharitable ecstasies of destruction. His genius attained its highest point in his etchings on the horrors of war. When placed beside the work of Goya, other pictures of war pale into sentimental studies of cruelty. He avoided the scattered action of the battlefield, and confined himself to isolated scenes of butchery. Nowhere else did he display such mastery of form and movement, such dramatic gestures and appalling effects of light and darkness. In all directions Goya renewed and innovated.

Goya

John Constable was the first English landscape painter to take no lessons from the Dutch. He is rather indebted to the landscapes of Rubens, but his real model was Gainsborough, whose landscapes, with great trees planted in well-balanced masses on land sloping upwards towards the frame, have a rhythm often found in Rubens. Constable’s originality does not lie in his choice of subjects, which frequently repeated themes beloved by Gainsborough. Nevertheless, Constable seems to belong to a new century; he ushered in a new era. The difference in his approach results both from technique and feeling. Excepting the French, Constable was the first landscape painter to consider as a primary and essential task the sketch made direct from nature at a single sitting; an idea which contains in essence the destinies of modern landscape, and perhaps of most modern painting. It is this momentary impression of all things which will be the soul of the future work. Working at leisure upon the large canvas, an artist’s aim is to enrich and complete the sketch while retaining its pristine freshness. These are the two processes to which Constable devoted himself, while discovering the exuberant abundance of life in the simplest of country places. He had the palette of a creative colourist and a technique of vivid hatchings heralding that of the French impressionists. He audaciously and frankly introduced green into painting, the green of lush meadows, the green of summer foliage, all the greens which, until then, painters had refused to see except through bluish, yellow, or more often brown spectacles. Of the great landscape painters who occupied so important a place in nineteenth-century art, Corot was probably the only one to escape the influence of Constable. All the others are more or less direct descendants of the master of East Bergholt.

Constable

Marc Chagall was born into a strict Jewish family for whom the ban on representations of the human figure had the weight of dogma. A failure in the entrance examination for the Stieglitz School did not stop Chagall from later joining that famous school founded by the Imperial Society for the Encouragement of the Arts and directed by Nicholas Roerich. Chagall moved to Paris in 1910. The city was his “second Vitebsk”. At first, isolated in the little room on the Impasse du Maine at La Ruche, Chagall soon found numerous compatriots also attracted by the prestige of Paris: Lipchitz, Zadkine, Archipenko and Soutine, all of whom were to maintain the “smell” of his native land. From his very arrival Chagall wanted to “discover everything”. And to his dazzled eyes painting did indeed reveal itself. Even the most attentive and partial observer is at times unable to distinguish the “Parisian”, Chagall from the “Vitebskian”. The artist was not full of contradictions, nor was he a split personality, but he always remained different; he looked around and within himself and at the surrounding world, and he used his present thoughts and recollections. He had an utterly poetical mode of thought that enabled him to pursue such a complex course. Chagall was endowed with a sort of stylistic immunity: he enriched himself without destroying anything of his own inner structure. Admiring the works of others he studied them ingenuously, ridding himself of his youthful awkwardness, yet never losing his authenticity for a moment. At times Chagall seemed to look at the world through magic crystal – overloaded with artistic experimentation – of the Ecole de Paris. In such cases he would embark on a subtle and serious play with the various discoveries of the turn of the century and turned his prophetic gaze like that of a biblical youth, to look at himself ironically and thoughtfully in the mirror. Naturally, it totally and uneclectically reflected the painterly discoveries of Cézanne, the delicate inspiration of Modigliani, and the complex surface rhythms recalling the experiments of the early Cubists (See-Portrait at the Easel, 1914). Despite the analyses which nowadays illuminate the painter’s Judaeo-Russian sources, inherited or borrowed but always sublime, and his formal relationships, there is always some share of mystery in Chagall’s art. The mystery perhaps lies in the very nature of his art, in which he uses his experiences and memories. Painting truly is life, and perhaps life is painting.

Chagall

The lighthouse, an indefatigable watchman, ceaselessly guides boats to their ports.This beacon of maritime signalisation has guided sailors since antiquity.The first known lighthouse appeared on the island of Pharos, and was the remarkable Lighthouse of Alexandria; however, it seems that volcanoes like Stromboli and its frequent eruptions were possibly at the origin of this invention, as the fires guided boats to their shores. Faced with the increasing development of modern navigational aids, these lone sentinels do not hold the same functional importance today. However, this work emphasises not only their role as a major architectural development, but also the place that they hold in the cultural heritage of the world. From the Lighthouse of the Whales (France) to the Lighthouse at the End of the World (Tierra del Fuego,Argentina), and passing by the Lighthouse of Green Island (Canada) and the Bell Rock Lighthouse (Scotland), this work invites the reader to rediscover the richness of these witnesses of other times.

Lighthouses

Long thought of as the neglected stepchild of painting, the art of drawing has recently begun to enjoy a place in the sun. With major museums around the world, from the Met to the Uffizi, mounting exhibitions focused on the art of draughtsmanship, drawing is receiving more critical and academic attention than ever before. This captivating text gives readers a sweeping analysis of the history of drawing, from Renaissance greats like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo, to Modernist masters like M.C. Escher, Pablo Picasso, and everyone in between.

1000 Drawings of Genius

Delve into the exquisite, sensuous sculpture of Camille Claudel with this in-depth look at her remarkable body of work. Along with many of her paintings and drawings, her sculpture is examined with a focus which reveals every intricate detail of her incredible renditions of movement and human emotions. Fascinated from a young age by crafting models with her hands, French sculptor, painter, and draughtswoman Camille Claudel (1864-1943) fought to overcome the hurdles placed in the way of female artists and carved a place for herself in the history of art. Following an apprenticeship with Alfred Boucher, Claudel entered the studio of Auguste Rodin, with whom she had a tumultuous ten-year love affair which often threatened to eclipse her art. The two artists had a profound impact on one another, each of their features appearing in the other’s work. After breaking off the relationship to forge her own path, Claudel created a stunning, incredibly modern oeuvre. Though many were destroyed by her own hands, those that remain are a powerful testament to her artistic genius.

Camille Claudel

In utter contrast to the obscurity of the medieval period which preceded it, the rapid and unexpected arrival of the Renaissance conquered Europe during the 14th to the 16th centuries. Placing man at its centre, the actors of this illustrious movement radically altered their vision of the world and refocused their aesthetic pursuits towards anatomy, perspective, and the natural sciences. Creator of numerous talents, the Renaissance offered the history of art great names such as Botticelli, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, whose glorious masterpieces still today hang on the walls of museums the world over.

Renaissance Paintings

He was the son of a citizen in comfortable circumstances, and had been, in Vasari’s words, “instructed in all such things as children are usually taught before they choose a calling.” However, he refused to give his attention to reading, writing and accounts, continues Vasari, so that his father, despairing of his ever becoming a scholar, apprenticed him to the goldsmith Botticello: whence came the name by which the world remembers him. However, Sandro, a stubborn-featured youth with large, quietly searching eyes and a shock of yellow hair – he has left a portrait of himself on the right-hand side of his picture of the Adoration of the Magi – would also become a painter, and to that end was placed with the Carmelite monk Fra Filippo Lippi. But he was a realist, as the artists of his day had become, satisfied with the joy and skill of painting, and with the study of the beauty and character of the human subject instead of religious themes. Botticelli made rapid progress, loved his master, and later on extended his love to his master’s son, Filippino Lippi, and taught him to paint, but the master’s realism scarcely touched Lippi, for Botticelli was a dreamer and a poet. Botticelli is a painter not of facts, but of ideas, and his pictures are not so much a representation of certain objects as a pattern of forms. Nor is his colouring rich and lifelike; it is subordinated to form, and often rather a tinting than actual colour. In fact, he was interested in the abstract possibilities of his art rather than in the concrete. For example, his compositions, as has just been said, are a pattern of forms; his figures do not actually occupy well-defined places in a well-defined area of space; they do not attract us by their suggestion of bulk, but as shapes of form, suggesting rather a flat pattern of decoration. Accordingly, the lines which enclose the figures are chosen with the primary intention of being decorative. It has been said that Botticelli, “though one of the worst anatomists, was one of the greatest draughtsmen of the Renaissance.” As an example of false anatomy we may notice the impossible way in which the Madonna’s head is attached to the neck, and other instances of faulty articulation and incorrect form of limbs may be found in Botticelli’s pictures. Yet he is recognised as one of the greatest draughtsmen: he gave to ‘line’ not only intrinsic beauty, but also significance. In mathematical language, he resolved the movement of the figure into its factors, its simplest forms of expression, and then combined these various forms into a pattern which, by its rhythmical and harmonious lines, produces an effect upon our imagination, corresponding to the sentiments of grave and tender poetry that filled the artist himself. This power of making every line count in both significance and beauty distinguishes the great master- draughtsmen from the vast majority of artists who used line mainly as a necessary means of representing concrete objects.

Botticelli

Over the course of history, many wars have changed the political and cultural landscape of our world. While these events are defined by their upheaval and violence, they frequently contribute to the formation of the identity of entire generations or groups of people, and thus have significant cultural effects. Despite the physical and emotional destruction that occurs during these turbulent periods, they have inspired prolific artistic creation. In the wake of traumatic events over the centuries, a myriad of artists have produced works that immortalise the most dramatic moments of these wars in order to establish them in history forever. This book presents beautiful images depicting famous battles and war scenes, accompanied by the iconic text of the legendary Chinese military strategist Sun Tzu, as well as texts documenting notable moments of different wars, each written by well-known writers. From Uccello’s The Battle of San Romano to Picasso’s Guernica, this work offers a captivating look at artworks inspired by war and what they reveal about humanity’s history.

Art of War

From the early Renaissance through Baroque and Romanticism to Cubism, Surrealism, and Pop, these canonical works of Western Art span eight centuries and a vast range of subjects. Here are the sacred and the scandalous, the minimalist and the opulent, the groundbreaking and the conventional. There are paintings that captured the feeling of an era and those that signaled the beginning of a new one. Works of art that were immediately recognised for their genius, and others that were at first met with resistance. All have stood the test of time and in their own ways contribute to the dialectic on what makes a painting great, how notions of art have changed, to what degree art reflects reality, and to what degree it alters it. Brought together, these great works illuminate the changing preoccupations and insights of our ancestors, and give us pause to consider which paintings from our own era will ultimately join the canon.

1000 Paintings of Genius

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) - Volume 1

Since the first funerary statues were placed in the first sepulchres, the ideas of death and the afterlife have always held a prominent place at the heart of the art world. An unlimited source of inspiration where artists can search for the expression of the infinite, death remains the object of numerous rich illustrations, as various as they are mysterious. The ancient Egyptian Book of the Dead, the forever sleeping statues on medieval tombs, and the Romantic and Symbolist movements of the 19th century are all evidence of the incessant interest that fuels the creation of artworks featuring themes of death and what lies beyond it. In this work, Victoria Charles analyses how, through the centuries, art has become the reflection of these interrogations linked to mankind’s fate and the hereafter.

The Art of Death. Myths and Rites

According to the defined canons of art technique, a portrait should be, above all, a faithful representation of its model. However, this gallery of 1000 portraits illustrates how the genre has been transformed throughout history, and has proven itself to be much more complex than a simple imitation of reality. Beyond exhibiting the skill of the artist, the portrait must surpass the task of imitation, as just and precise as it may be, to translate both the intention of the artist as well as that of its patron, without betraying eitherÊs wishes. Therefore, these silent witnesses, carefully selected in these pages, reveal more than faces of historic figures or anonymous subjects: they reveal a psychology more than an identity, illustrate an allegory, serve as political and religious propaganda, and embody the customs of their epochs. With its impressive number of masterpieces, biographies, and commentaries on works, this book presents and analyses different portraits, consequently exposing to the reader, and to any art lover, a reflection of the evolution of society, and above all the upheavals of a genre that, over 300 centuries of painting, has shaped the history of art.

1000 Portraits of Genius

Born in 1860 in a small Czech town, Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) was an artist on the forefront of Art Nouveau, the modernist movement that swept Paris in the 1910s, marking a return to the simplicity of natural forms, and changing the world of art and design forever. In fact, Art Nouveau was known to insiders as the “Mucha style” for the legions of imitators who adapted the master’s celebrated tableaux. Today, his distinctive depictions of lithe young women in classical dress have become a pop cultural touchstone, inspiring album covers, comic books, and everything in between. Patrick Bade and Victoria Charles offer readers an inspiring survey of Mucha’s career, illustrated with over one hundred lustrous images, from early Parisian advertisements and posters for Sandra Bernhardt, to the famous historical murals painted just before his death, at the age of 78, in 1939.

Alphonse Mucha

Caspar David Friedrich (1774-1840), a prominent German painter of the 19th century, was a vital figure in the Romantic movement. His artwork is characterised by its poetic and melancholic essence, displaying a profound sense of spirituality and transcendence. In his paintings, he masterfully blended external nature depictions with deep inner symbolism. His often desolate landscapes and grand architecture evoke a yearning for peace, solitude, and spiritual elevation. The skilful utilisation of light and shadow in his composition amplifies the emotional resonance of Friedrich's art, imbuing it with an almost mystical quality. The artistic legacy of Caspar David Friedrich continues to influence contemporary landscape painting. His unparalleled aptitude for capturing the infinite within the finite renders his work a timeless representation of humanity's quest for transcendence and spiritual connection. This biography delves into the life and creations of this remarkable artist, celebrating his invaluable contributions to the evolution of Romantic painting.

Caspar David Friedrich. Master of the tragic landscape (5 September 1774 – 7 May 1840)

Dürer is the greatest of German artists and most representative of the German mind. He, like Leonardo, was a man of striking physical attractiveness, great charm of manner and conversation, and mental accomplishment, being well grounded in the sciences and mathematics of the day. His skill in draughtsmanship was extraordinary; Dürer is even more celebrated for his engravings on wood and copper than for his paintings. With both, the skill of his hand was at the service of the most minute observation and analytical research into the character and structure of form. Dürer, however, had not the feeling for abstract beauty and ideal grace that Leonardo possessed; but instead, a profound earnestness, a closer interest in humanity, and a more dramatic invention. Dürer was a great admirer of Luther; and in his own work is the equivalent of what was mighty in the Reformer. It is very serious and sincere; very human, and addressed the hearts and understanding of the masses. Nuremberg, his hometown, had become a great centre of printing and the chief distributor of books throughout Europe. Consequently, the art of engraving upon wood and copper, which may be called the pictorial branch of printing, was much encouraged. Of this opportunity Dürer took full advantage. The Renaissance in Germany was more a moral and intellectual than an artistic movement, partly due to northern conditions. The feeling for ideal grace and beauty is fostered by the study of the human form, and this had been flourishing predominantly in southern Europe. But Albrecht Dürer had a genius too powerful to be conquered. He remained profoundly Germanic in his stormy penchant for drama, as was his contemporary Mathias Grünewald, a fantastic visionary and rebel against all Italian seductions. Dürer, in spite of all his tense energy, dominated conflicting passions by a sovereign and speculative intelligence comparable with that of Leonardo. He, too, was on the border of two worlds, that of the Gothic age and that of the modern age, and on the border of two arts, being an engraver and draughtsman rather than a painter.

Albrecht Dürer and artworks

Flowers are the centerpiece in the majority of pictorial still-lifes. By painting their colours and forms, artists from Brueghel to O’Keeffe have created symbols for both life and mortality. Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Monet’s water lilies and Matisse’s bouquets are, of course, unforgotten. Most of the works contained in Flowers are true masterpieces, which have often marked whole epochs and styles.

Flowers 120 illustrations

Influenced by Art Nouveau, this movement (created in 1897 by Gustav Klimt, Carl Moll, and Josef Hoffmann) was not an anonymous artistic revolution. Defining itself as a “total art”, without any political or commercial constraint, the Viennese Secession represented the ideological turmoil that affected craftsmen, architects, graphic artists, and designers from this period. Turning away from an established art and immersing themselves in organic, voluptuous, and decorative shapes, these artists opened themselves to an evocative, erotic aesthetic that blatantly offended the bourgeoisie of the time. Painting, sculpture, and architecture are addressed by the authors and highlight the diversity and richness of a movement whose motto proclaimed “for each time its art, for each art its liberty” – a declaration to the innovation and originality of this revolutionary art movement.

Art History The Viennese Secession

The Baroque period lasted from the beginning of the 17th-century to the middle of the 18th-century. Baroque art was artists' response to the Catholic Church's demand for solemn grandeur following the Council of Trent, and through its monumentality and grandiloquence, it seduced the great European courts. Amongst the Baroque arts, architecture has, without doubt, left the greatest mark in Europe: the continent is dotted with magnificent Baroque churches and palaces, commissioned by patrons at the height of their power. The works of Gian Lorenzo Bernini of the Southern School and Peter Paul Rubens of the Northern School alone show the importance of this artistic period. Rich in images encompassing the arts of painting, sculpture and architecture, this work offers a complete insight into this passionate period in the history of art.

Art History Baroque art

Gothic art finds its roots in the powerful architecture of the cathedrals of northern France. It is a medieval art movement that evolved throughout Europe for more than 200 years. Leaving curved Roman forms behind, the architects started using flying buttresses and pointed arches to open cathedrals to the daylight. A period of great economic and social change, the gothic era also saw the development of a new iconography celebrating the Holy Mary, in contrast to the fearful themes of dark Roman times. Full of rich changes in all the different arts (architecture, sculpture, painting, etc.), Gothic art gave way to the Italian Renaissance and International Gothic.

Art History Gothic art

The Art Deco movement emerged from the remnants of a world that had been torn apart after World War I. This aesthetic movement came to embody dreams of industry and prosperity. In the whirl of the Jazz Age and frenzy of the "Roaring Twenties", the streamlined silhouette of the flapper girl was reflected in the architectural aesthetic of Art Deco the rounded curve was conquered by the androgynous straight line. Architecture, painting, furniture, and sculpture evolved into oeuvres enhanced with sharp lines and broken angles. Although short-lived, this movement still influences contemporary design today.

Art History Art Deco

Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian Barocco, the French created the term Rococo. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th-century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the spontaneity of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its predecessor, Baroque, and it is thus also referred to as late Baroque style. While artists such as Tiepolo, Boucher and Reynolds carried the style to its apogee, the movement was often condemned for its superficiality. In the second half of the 18th-century, Rococo began its decline. At the end of the century, facing the advent of Neoclassicism, it was plunged into obscurity. It had to wait nearly a century before art historians could restore it to the radiance of its golden age, which is rediscovered in this work by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles.

Art History Rococo

Cézanne transformed a teacup into something alive, raising still-life to the point that it ceased to be inanimate. Wassily Kandinsky said about the French artist: “He painted these things as human beings because he was endowed with the gift of divining the inner life in everything.” In addition to those of Cézanne, this book is devoted to still-life paintings by artists such as Van Gogh, Matisse, Chardin and Picasso.

Still Life 120 illustrations

Pieter Bruegel and artworks

Picasso was born a Spaniard and, so they say, began to draw before he could speak. As an infant he was instinctively attracted to artist’s tools. In early childhood he could spend hours in happy concentration drawing spirals with a sense and meaning known only to himself. At other times, shunning children’s games, he traced his first pictures in the sand. This early self-expression held out promise of a rare gift. Málaga must be mentioned, for it was there, on 25 October 1881, that Pablo Ruiz Picasso was born and it was there that he spent the first ten years of his life. Picasso’s father was a painter and professor at the School of Fine Arts and Crafts. Picasso learnt from him the basics of formal academic art training. Then he studied at the Academy of Arts in Madrid but never finished his degree. Picasso, who was not yet eighteen, had reached the point of his greatest rebelliousness; he repudiated academia’s anemic aesthetics along with realism’s pedestrian prose and, quite naturally, joined those who called themselves modernists, the non-conformist artists and writers, those whom Sabartés called “the élite of Catalan thought” and who were grouped around the artists’ café Els Quatre Gats. During 1899 and 1900 the only subjects Picasso deemed worthy of painting were those which reflected the “final truth”; the transience of human life and the inevitability of death. His early works, ranged under the name of “Blue Period” (1901-1904), consist in blue-tinted paintings influenced by a trip through Spain and the death of his friend, Casagemas. Even though Picasso himself repeatedly insisted on the inner, subjective nature of the Blue Period, its genesis and, especially, the monochromatic blue were for many years explained as merely the results of various aesthetic influences. Between 1905 and 1907, Picasso entered a new phase, called “Rose Period” characterised by a more cheerful style with orange and pink colours. In Gosol, in the summer of 1906 the nude female form assumed an extraordinary importance for Picasso; he equated a depersonalised, aboriginal, simple nakedness with the concept of “woman”...

Pablo Picasso and artworks

The influence of works by French artists extends itself across all artistic styles, and many French works have gained world fame as classics. This book gives an overview of the French milestones in still lifes, portraits, and landscapes, and includes artists like Poussin, Clouet, Moreau, Millet, Courbet, Signac, and Rouault. The convenient format makes the Mega Square edition an ideal gift for any art lover.

French Painting 120 illustrations

Vincent van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to see his pictures without reading in them the story of his life, a life which has been described so many times that it is by now the stuff of legend. Van Gogh is the incarnation of the suffering, the misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. “When one lives with others and is bound by feelings of affection, then one realises that one has a reason for living, that one may not be utterly worthless and expendable, but is perhaps good for something, since we need one another and are journeying together as compagnons de voyage. But our proper sense of self-esteem is also highly dependent upon our relationship with others. A prisoner who is condemned to solitude, who is prevented from working, etc., will in the long run, especially if the run is too long, suffer from the effects as surely as one who has gone hungry too long. Like everyone else, I need friendly or affectionate relationships or intimate companionship, and am not made of stone or iron like a pump or a lamppost…”

Vincent van Gogh by Vincent van Gogh - Volume 1

Beyond the sunflowers, irises and portrait of Doctor Gachet, there is the man Van Gogh, signified by his fragility and talent. From his birth in 1853 to his death in 1890, the Post-Impressionist Van Gogh shaped 19th century concepts of painting, with his creativity and technique. He became a forerunner of the Expressionists, the Fauves and Modern art. Today, however, Van Gogh remains the symbol of a painter tortured by illness, by others and, above all, by himself. Explore the world of Post-Impressionism with a beautiful collection of paintings from this creative genius. The vibrant colours and whimsical brushstrokes within the paintings provide an insight into the volatile nature of Van Gogh’s state of mind.

Vincent Van Gogh

The incarnation of the myth of a cursed artist, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is a legend who became a reference for modern art. An Expressionist during the Post-Impressionist movement, his art was misunderstood during his lifetime. In Holland, he partook in the Dutch realist painting movement by studying peasant characters. Anxious and depressed, Vincent van Gogh produced more than 2000 artworks, yet sold only one in his lifetime. A self-made artist, his work is known for its rough and emotional beauty and is amongst the most popular in the art market today.

At the beginning of the 20th-century, trends started to emerge that began to diverge from a naturalistic conception of reality and set out to explore beneath the mere superficial appearance of things. Throughout, the author shows that, regardless of the multitude of stylistic backgrounds in individual Western countries, everywhere, realisation that a work of art was no longer made in the spirit of the old aesthetics of imitation as if taken from nature, but rather rises from its own independent dimension of existence. A work of art is now autonomous. In this book, the author traces and analyses the origins and the history of abstract art as well as iconic movements and groundbreaking visionaries in an original and exciting way.

Art History Abstract art

Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528) is widely regarded as one of the most significant artists of the Northern Renaissance. Born in Nuremberg, Germany, Dürer became renowned for his mastery of various mediums, including painting, printmaking, and wood-cutting. Throughout his life, Dürer produced a vast array of works that demonstrated his technical skill and innovative vision. His art often incorporated religious and classical themes, and his use of perspective and realism helped to establish new standards in European art. Beyond his artistic achievements, Dürer was also a prolific writer and thinker. His treatises on geometry, human proportion, and the theory of perspective remain influential in the fields of art and science to this day. In this comprehensive biography, readers will gain insight into Dürer's life and work, exploring the cultural and political context in which he lived and the impact he had on the art world. Drawing on extensive research and analysis, this book presents a compelling portrait of one of the most important figures of the Renaissance.

Albrecht Dürer 1471-1528

Modigliani (1884-1920) was a painter of great unhappiness in his native Italy and felt only sorrow in his adopted country of France. Out of this discontent came forth Modigliani’s original work, which was influenced by African art, the Cubists, and drunken nights in Montparnasse. His portrayal of women—sensual bodies, almost aggressive nudity, and mysterious faces—expresses their suffering and feelings of being unloved and unjustly disregarded. Modigliani died at the age of 36.

Modigliani

To speak about art is to evoke the hand of the creator who produced the work. It is to confer to its gestures the importance of thoughts and to explore their point of convergence on the canvas or the stone. With this text, Henri Focillon delivers one of the most beautiful odes to the hand and, simultaneously, to the talent of artists, studying Hokusai, Cézanne, and even Rodin. What do artists such as Rembrandt, David, Gauguin, and Hokusai have in common? A virtuosity of the hand, replies Henri Focillon. The viewer often forgets that behind the works, it is first and foremost a hand and its fingers which guide the paintbrush, the pen, or the stylus. Focillon’s text recalls the importance of this part of the body, in which the artist’s talent comes to life. Within his text, he grants the hand the recognition that it deserves.

In Praise of Hands

„All living beings are Buddhas and have wisdom and virtue within them. (Buddha) Buddha ranks among the most often depicted holy figures of the world  perhaps appearing more than Christ, a subject widely treated by Western artists. Venerated in all the nations of Asia, and even beyond, his image took form along the Silk Road, the birthplace of many schools of Buddhism. Indeed, the Buddhist religion recognises many Buddhas representing various traditions: such as Buddhism of „the Ancient Teaching‰ (Theravada), of „the Great Vehicle‰ (Mahayana) and Tantric Buddhism (Varjrayana). A figure adored by all, Buddha has been depicted in every art form: sculpture, often of monumental size, like the now destroyed Buddhas of Bamyan, painting, and above all in countless cave murals, such as those of Ajanta in India or Dunhuang in China. Perfect for all those passionate about Asian art, from neophytes to Buddhists, this fascinating work invites the reader to discover or rediscover Buddha, his history, his codes, but also his innumerable faces through one thousand representations selected from among the most beautiful works held in the worldÊs greatest museums.

1000 Buddhas of Genius

Dada shocked the world between the years 1916 and 1922. Dada was not an art movement in the normal sense. It was a storm that broke over the art scene of the time, as the war upon the peoples. They consciously staged anti-art events. According to Max Ernst, it was the 'outbreak of anger and zest for life' at the same time. The indignation about the monstrous genocide during World War I was great and equally at the 'civilization that had brought it about.' Dada was an international uprising. The war radically changed the art scene in the vibrant cities of Europe. The international links that had brought forth artistic masterpieces, primarily between France, Italy, Germany and Russia, were abruptly torn apart. The intellectual elite that had stayed at home and those who had come back from the war sobered sought new ways to express their experiences and insights. Among the contributors were Duchamp, Picabia, Taeuber-Arp, Man Ray, Schwitters and Arp.

Dada

The watercolour technique was for a long time the great companion to drawing. A mixture of water and pigments permitting great artistic freedom, it was often employed for preparatory sketches. Albrecht Dürer was one of the first to take advantage of all that watercolour offered. In the 18th century, English artists created of it an autonomous medium freed from academic constraints, an evolution which would have a considerable impact for following generations. Amongst the most famous artists to have produced watercolours, we find Turner, Whistler, Constable, Sargent, Van Gogh, Kandinsky, Klee, and Schiele.

1000 Watercolours of Genius

Deriving from the French word rocaille, in reference to the curved forms of shellfish, and the Italian barocco, the French created the term ‘Rococo’. Appearing at the beginning of the 18th century, it rapidly spread to the whole of Europe. Extravagant and light, Rococo responded perfectly to the spontaneity of the aristocracy of the time. In many aspects, this art was linked to its predecessor, Baroque, and it is thus also referred to as late Baroque style. While artists such as Tiepolo, Boucher and Reynolds carried the style to its apogee, the movement was often condemned for its superficiality. In the second half of the 18th century, Rococo began its decline. At the end of the century, facing the advent of Neoclassicism, it was plunged into obscurity. It had to wait nearly a century before art historians could restore it to the radiance of its golden age, which is rediscovered in this work by Klaus H. Carl and Victoria Charles.

Rococo

Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, “the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile.” His completed works (the Casa Batlló, 1905-1907 and the Casa Milà, 1905-1910) and his incomplete works (the restoration of the Poblet Monastery and the altarpiece of Alella in Barcelona) illustrate the importance of this philosophy. His furniture designs were conceived with the same philosophy, as shown, for example, in his own office (1878) or the lamps in the Plaza Real in Barcelona. The Sagrada Familia (1882-1926) was a monumental project which eventually took over his life (it was still incomplete at the time of his death).

Antoni Gaudí and artworks

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