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In the German city of Dresden on June 7, 1905, the foundation of the Die Brücke artists’ group (1905–1913) is widely regarded as the birth of Expressionism. Led by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Fritz Bleyl, Erich Heckel, and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, the group sought to reject the limits of academia and, as their name suggested, to bridge the path to an artistic future. Their manifesto, printed with woodblock, insisted on absolute freedom from convention in their work as well as their lives.

This new, liberated art incorporated portraits, landscapes, and city scenes, but substituted an objective rendering of reality with an expression of interior geography. In paintings, as well as their favoured wood and linocut prints, the artists of Die Brücke would fill pictorial space with jagged lines, crude forms, and clashing colours, all to express their subjective experience of the world. Like the Fauves, the artists took stylistic lead from non-Western traditions of Oceanic and African arts, while also reviving the print and painting techniques of Albrecht Dürer and Lucas Cranach the Elder.

This richly illustrated book introduces this essential expressionist movement. We examine Die Brücke’s key works and protagonists; its varied, international inspirations; and its crucial influence on later 20th-century art. Along the way, we find candid nudes, crowded street views, and blissful bathing idylls, each of them vivid with energy and intent on a new kind of art.

About the series:

- Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre series features:
- approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions
- a detailed illustrated introduction plus a timeline of the most important political, cultural, and social events that took place during that period
- a selection of the most important works of the epoch, each presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and accompanying interpretation, as well as a portrait and brief biography of the artist

A major monograph on the artist widely regarded as the 16th century's greatest Netherlandish painter, published to mark the anniversary of his death 450 years ago

Pieter Bruegel the Elder and his work have attained a legendary status in our collective consciousness. The most important Netherlandish painter and draughtsman of the 16th century had already achieved great fame during his own lifetime, but was largely forgotten until his rediscovery by art historians in the early 20th century. Just over forty paintings by Bruegel’s own hand survive. His complex, multi-layered compositions, which draw on the earlier pictorial traditions of Hieronymus Bosch, are often moralizing, and teem with characters. The variety of subjects and their originality of execution inspire wonder to this day.

Published to accompany the major exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this spectacular catalogue allows readers to immerse themselves in the immensely rich pictorial world of the Netherlandish master. In uniting the artist’s works in different media – paintings, drawings and prints – it highlights his perfect handling and execution, his virtuoso use of colour and his draughtsmanship. The book is complemented by an e-book featuring five further essays by the curators, who present the fruits of recent research on the artist’s materials and techniques.

Bruegel’s inventions and stories create artworks with a timeless power, and this volume, presenting a full survey of the artist’s entire oeuvre, will be an indispensable resource for Bruegel fans and scholars alike.

About the Authors:

Manfred Sellink is the director of the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, and is the author of Bruegel: The Complete Paintings, Drawings and Prints.

Ron Spronk is a professor (by special appointment) specializing in Hieronymus Bosch and Early Dutch painting at Radboud University.

Sabine Pénot is Curator of Netherlandish and Dutch Paintings, Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) at Vienna, Austria.

Elke Oberthaler is Head of Painting Conservation at Kunsthistorisches Museum (KHM) at Vienna, Austria.

Contents List:

Foreword by Geert Bourgeois • Preface by Sabine Haag • Introduction to the exhibition by Elke Oberthaler, Sabine Pénot, Manfred Sellink and Ron Spronk, with Alice Hoppe-Harnoncourt • Short Biography of Pieter Bruegel the Elder • Cat. nos. 1 to 87 • Separate E-book featuring five essays

- This monograph documents the complete works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Milan, 1571 - Porto Ercole, 1610)
- It aims at highlighting the master's integrità and the fascination of his extraordinary art
- Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a milestone in Italian and European artistic culture

Caravaggio and his works have been in the past years the object of a sort of collective infatuation that on one side brought the value of the master's painting to very high levels and, on the other, generated a proliferation of new attributions, with a subsequent uncertainty and confusion among Caravaggio's devotees, but also a devaluation of the excellent level of the autographed works.

This new book, published on the fourth centenary of Michelangelo Merisi's death, is based on the analysis of the artistic production which is confirmed as Caravaggio's, thanks also to the discoveries of recent years.

The author tells the artist's life, characterised by lights and shadows, by marvel and scandal, thus presenting us an exceptionally real and alive profile of Caravaggio as a man, as well as his capability to innovate painting through creativity and technique. A complete work, with high-quality reproductions of the paintings, this volume presents the surprising and troubled style of the greatest genius of seventeenth-century Italy.

About the Authors:

Rossella Vodret is the Director of the Polo Museale in Rome, and Francesco Buranelli is the secretary of the Pontifical Commission for Cultural Heritage.

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- This monograph documents the complete works of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (Milan, 1571 - Porto Ercole, 1610)
- It aims at highlighting the master's integrità and the fascination of his extraordinary art
- Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio was a milestone in Italian and European artistic culture

Caravaggio and his works have been in the past years the object of a sort of collective infatuation that on one side brought the value of the master's painting to very high levels and, on the other, generated a proliferation of new attributions, with a subsequent uncertainty and confusion among Caravaggio's devotees, but also a devaluation of the excellent level of the autographed works.

This new book, published on the fourth centenary of Michelangelo Merisi's death, is based on the analysis of the artistic production which is confirmed as Caravaggio's, thanks also to the discoveries of recent years.

The author tells the artist's life, characterised by lights and shadows, by marvel and scandal, thus presenting us an exceptionally real and alive profile of Caravaggio as a man, as well as his capability to innovate painting through creativity and technique. A complete work, with high-quality reproductions of the paintings, this volume presents the surprising and troubled style of the greatest genius of seventeenth-century Italy.

400 years after the death of Caravaggio, some of the world’s most illustrious art historians comment on an extraordinary collection of 25 of his works.
How is it possible that an artist who lived over four centuries ago is still seen today as an icon of modernity? The answer must be sought in his works; this is where we will grasp Caravaggio’s aesthetic pursuit. His is a simple, non ideal, art.
He observed without prejudice, hewing close to the truth of things. In short, his was a revolutionary art, one which continues to fascinate laypeople and experts alike to this day.
The curators of the exhibition, which will take place in Rome in the spring of 2010, asked some of the world's preeminent Caravaggio scholars to share their feeling and insights about their favorite works by the artist.
The result is an original catalogue of great rigour yet expressed in deeply human and richly subjective tones.

- Pieces from museums all over the world: including the Nelson-Atkins in Kansas City and the Metropolitan Museum in New York City.
- The works include Crowning with Thorns from the Kunsthistorisches Museum of Vienna with comments by Wolfgang Prohaska; Amor Victorious of the Gemäldegalerie – Staatliche Museen of Berlin discussed by Bernd Lindemann; Bacchus from the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, chosen by Antonio Paolucci; Supper at Emmaus from the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan, in the eyes of Rossella Vodret; Saint Jerome Writing from St John’s Co-Cathedral Foundation, Malta, with comments by Stefania Maciocie; the Lute Player from the Hermitage Museum; Saint John the Baptist from the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City; and the Musicians from the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.
- Caravaggio is an extremely well-loved artist with an intriguing life story.
- World-class art historians comment on this extraordinary collection.

Divine apples and pears: Cezanne's quest for a harmony parallel to Nature. 

He was the founding father of modern art, the grandmaster who pointed painting forward on its way from Impressionism to the 20th century: Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906). In Paris, but above all in Provence, Cezanne quested tirelessly for a harmony parallel to Nature discovering it in still lifes of apples, in bathers, or in the renowned landscapes of his beloved Montagne Sainte-Victoire. 

This book discusses this extraordinary artist s major works and his theories of painting and colour.

About the series:

Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Art series features:

- a detailed chronological summary of the life and oeuvre of the artist, covering his or her cultural and historical importance
- a concise biography
- approximately 100 illustrations with explanatory captions

Widely regarded as the bridging link between late nineteenth-century Impressionism and Cubism, Cezanne's work is characterized by his intense study of his subjects. Overflowing with impeccably reproduced images, this book offers full-page spreads of masterpieces as well as highlights of smaller details - allowing the viewer to appreciate every aspect of the artist's technique and oeuvre.

The painter as poet. A world of floating symbols

For Marc Chagall (1887–1985), painting was an intricate tapestry of dreams, tales, and traditions. His instantly recognizable visual language carved out a unique early 20th-century niche, often identified as one of the earliest expressions of psychic experience.

Chagall’s canvases are characterized by loose brushwork, deep colors, a particular fondness for blue, and a repertoire of recurring tropes including musicians, roosters, rooftops, flowers, and floating lovers. For all their ethereal charms, his compositions were often rich and complex in their references. They wove together not only colors and forms, but also his Jewish roots with his present encounters in Paris, markers of faith with gestures of love and symbols of hope with testimonies of trauma.

Across scenes of birth, love, marriage, and death, this dependable artist introduction explores the many versions of Chagall’s rich vocabulary. From visions of his native Vitebsk in modern-day Belarus to images of the Eiffel Tower, we explore the unique aesthetic of one of the most readily identifiable modern masters and one of the most influential Jewish artists of all time.

About the Series:

Every book in TASCHEN's Basic Art Series features:

* a detailed chronological summary of the artist's life and work, covering the cultural and historical importance of the artist
* approximately 100 color illustrations with explanatory captions
* a concise biography

Featuring one hundred works from throughout Chagall’s career, this dazzling exhibition catalog focuses on the artist’s engagement with life’s most primal and universal themes.

Steeped in tradition yet alive with imagination, Chagall’s enormous body of work reflects a profound connection to cultural roots and to the boundless possibilities of creative expression. This monograph brings fresh eyes to the most relevant aspects of Chagall’s oeuvre. It traces how, over eight decades, Chagall responded to his contemporaries’ experimentations with cubism, fauvism, and surrealism by creating his own visual language.

It offers a lively examination of overarching themes ― love and romance; Jewish tradition and history; spirituality and the daily life, based on memory and nostalgia ― and the ways they are reflected through repetition and variation over the years. And it reveals how Chagall’s flexible use of symbols contributes to build a fantastic cosmos grounded on the “logic of the illogical”.

Readers will come to understand how Chagall was essentially a storyteller with an enormous gift for color and line, and a narrative artist who understood the power of symbolism in his own terms.

About the Author:

Gisela Kirpicsenko is curator at the Albertina Museum, Vienna.

The complex oeuvre of the American artist Cy Twombly (1928-2011) comprises a time period of around six decades, during which it never lost any of its expressive power. Twombly was one of the most productive artists in the history of more recent art. Acclaimed as one of the most important painters of the second half of the 20th century, he fused the legacy of American Abstract Expressionism with European and Mediterranean culture.

The book focuses to a degree never before seen on his major cycles: Nine Discourses on Commodus (1963), Fifty Days at Iliam (1978), and Coronation of Sesostris (2000). The artist's development as a whole is traced based on nearly 200 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and photographs. This thus provides unique insights into the overall intellectual and sensual richness of the oeuvre. From his early works at the beginning of the 1950s, which are characterised by the use of text, to his compositions of the 1960s, his reaction to the minimal art and conceptual art of the 1970s to his final paintings, the overview of the oeuvre underscores the significance of the series and cycles in which Cy Twombly invented history painting anew.

With its polyphonic conception, the monograph offers numerous approaches with essays that shed light on the various aspects and phases of Twombly's path as an artist. It comprises et al. the reflections and personal impressions of other artists as well as the memories of his assistant Nicola Del Roscio. These diverse testimonies make it possible to discover Cy Twombly not only as an artist, but also as an individual.

About the Authors:

Jonas Storsve is an art historian and head curator in the graphic arts department at the Musée National d'Art Moderne, Centre Pompidou. He has previously curated shows on Josef Albers, Alina Szapocznikow, and Jim Hodges, and has written extensively on modern art.

From politics to religion, psychology to nuclear physics, learn how Dalí's work embraces nearly every major historic development of the twentieth century

Although Salvador Dalí’s characteristically provocative behavior and bizarre pictorial language made him an outlier in high society, his body of work reflects his century’s most important innovations and concerns. This introduction to Dalí’s work features dozens of exquisite reproductions as it traces the artist’s development, life and career. Readers will learn how he was influenced by contemporaries Miró, Ernst, and de Chirico as well as by Raphael and Gaudí. It explores his early adoption of Surrealism, his fascination with the subconscious, and his antipathy toward war. It illustrates how Dalí’s return to the Catholic church and his interest in nuclear and atomic physics was manifested in his paintings; how he experimented in film and, later, even created holograms. By making Dalí’s often perplexing art accessible to audiences of every level, this engaging introduction helps readers understand why he remains one of the most influential―and imitated―artists of all time.

The perfect gift for Hockney fans and dog lovers everywhere, David Hockney's Dog Days, now in a gift edition, is an album devoted to two of the artist's closest friends, his dachshunds Stanley and Boodgie. This beautiful and engaging book includes almost all of Hockney's paintings and drawings of his two companions, dozens of new illustrations created specially for this book, and a text by the artist himself.

David Hockney introduces his two dachshunds, Stanley and Boodgie, in this delightful collection. The result of sharp observation and affection, these paintings and drawings are lyrical studies in form and design while the text by the artist gives a glimpse of how to work with models who don't necessarily want to sit still.

From September 1993, I painted and drew my dogs. This took a certain amount of planning, since dogs are generally not interested in Art (I say generally only because I have now come across a singing dog. Food and love dominate their lives.

I make no apologies for the apparent subject matter. These two dear little creatures are my friends. They are intelligent, loving, comical and often bored. They watch me work; I notice the warm shapes they make together, their sadness and their delights. And, being Hollywood dogs, they somehow seem to know that a picture is being made. - David Hockney

About the Author:

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the 20th century. He has produced work in almost every medium - painting, drawing, stage design, photography and printmaking - and has stretched the boundaries of all of them. Born in Bradford, England, in 1937, Hockney attended art school in London before moving to Los Angeles in the 1960s. There, he painted his famous swimming pool paintings. In a 2011 poll of more than 1,000 British artists, Hockney was voted the most influential British artist of all time. He continues to create and exhibit art.

Portrait of an Artist. A comprehensive chronicle of David Hockney’s life and work

Pop artist, painter of modern life, landscape painter, master of color, explorer of image and perception — for six decades, David Hockney has been known as an artist who always finds new ways of exploring the world and its representational possibilities. He has consistently created unforgettable images: works with graphic lines and integrated text in the Swinging Sixties in London; the famous swimming pool series as a representation of the 1970s California lifestyle; closely observed portraits and brightly colored, oversized landscapes after his eventual return to his native Yorkshire. In addition to drawings in which he transfers what he sees directly onto paper, there are multiperspective Polaroid collages that open up the space into a myriad of detailed views, and iPad drawings in which he captures light using a most modern medium — testaments to Hockney’s enduring delight in experimentation.

This special edition has been newly assembled from the two volumes of the David Hockney: A Bigger Book monograph to celebrate TASCHEN’s 40th anniversary. Hockney’s life and work is presented year by year as a dialogue between his works and voices from the time period, alongside reviews and reflections by the artist in a chronological text, supplemented by portrait photographs and exhibition views. Together they open up new perspectives, page after page, revealing how Hockney undertakes his artistic research, how his painting develops, and where he finds inspiration for his multifaceted work.

The artist:

David Hockney (born July 9, 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. He first emerged in the early 1960s during the height of British pop, then moved to Los Angeles in 1964, where he famously painted a series of swimming pools. Alongside the classic genres of portraiture and landscape, he always kept evolving his art, using technologies such as Polaroids, photocopiers and fax machines, digital video, or the iPhone and iPad as tools for his painting. Since his first big survey exhibition, which in 1970 traveled Europe from the Whitechapel Gallery in London, he has been one of the most widely shown and popular artists of our time.

The editor:

Hans Werner Holzwarth is a book designer and editor specializing in contemporary art and photography. His TASCHEN publications include the Collector’s Editions Jeff Koons, Christopher Wool, Albert Oehlen, Ai Weiwei, and the David Hockney SUMO A Bigger Book, as well as monographs like the XXL-sized Jean-Michel Basquiat.

About the series:

TASCHEN is 40! Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible publishing, helping bookworms around the world curate their own library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia at an unbeatable price. Today we celebrate 40 years of incredible books by staying true to our company credo. The 40 series presents new editions of some of the stars of our program — now more compact, friendly in price, and still realized with the same commitment to impeccable production.

Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528) is one of the most important and influential artists of the Northern Renaissance. He was a painter, printmaker and theorist and knew all the major Italian artists of his time, such as Raphael, Bellini, and Leonardo da Vinci.
His enormous talent and skills as a draughtsman were already manifest at a very young age, as can be seen in the Self-Portrait he produced in silverpoint drawing in 1484, when still barely thirteen years old.
With Emperor Maximilian I his patron from 1512, Dürer realized numerous engravings, altarpieces, portraits and self-portraits, watercolours and books.

His introduction of classical motifs into Northern art, through his knowledge of Italian artists and German humanists, secured his reputation as the most important figure of the German Renaissance.

Dürer in Detail reveals the work of the German master as never before, in breathtaking, large-format closeup. Till-Holger Borchert, the German art historian and director of the Bruges Museums, describes Dürer’s paintings, drawings, and graphic masterpieces, detail by detail, while offering original insights delivered in
clear and accessible language. The book is organized thematically and includes a biography, an annotated list of works, and a suggested reading list.

2021 marks the 500th anniversary of Albrecht Dürer’s year-long journey to the Low Countries from 1520 to 1521. Both the National Gallery in London (Spring 2021) Suermondt-Ludwig Museum in Aachen (Summer 2021) will hold Dürer exhibitions on that occasion.

A fascinating examination of Munch’s prints, which were central to his creative process and established his reputation as an artist

Edvard Munch (1863–1944) is best known today as a painter, but his reputation was in fact established through his prints, which were central to his creative process. His printmaking was experimental and innovative, and he continually revisited the subjects of his paintings in striking prints, in which he evoked a wide range of emotion and mood through the use of varied techniques.

Munch’s early life in the industrial town of Kristiania (renamed Oslo in 1925) was marked by sickness and poverty. His first works centred on the expression of deep emotional experiences, specifically the deaths of his mother and teenage sister, as well as passionate yet unhappy love affairs of which his deeply religious father disapproved. Encouraged by his encounters with a Bohemian society of artists, writers and poets, he developed a visual landscape that was a radical deviation from the slick society portraits and grand Scandinavian landscapes then so much in vogue. His efforts attracted considerable attention and much criticism, and he practised with little financial success as a painter for ten years before he started to gain his reputation as a profoundly innovative printmaker.

Written by a team of experts, and with an interview by writer Karl Ove Knausgaard, this book will shed new light on the production of some of Munch’s most remarkable works.

Contents List:

Foreword by the directors of the British Museum and the Munch Museum; Sponsor’s foreword • Introduction • 1. Transfigured continent: Impressions from Munch’s Europe • 2. The inner soul of an artist: Munch’s background and the development of his Frieze of Life • 3. Munch and the world of printmaking • 4. Munch and the theatre in Paris • 5. ‘Is art influenced by too much business?’: Cultural capital and the market for Munch • 6. Plates, stones and blocks: Munch’s printing matrices • Reflections on Edvard Munch: an interview with Karl Ove Knausgaard • Checklist of works in the exhibition • Chronology; Checklist of exhibited items; Notes; Selected bibliography; Prints by Munch in UK public collections; Acknowledgments; Picture credits; List of contributors; Index

About the Authors:

Giulia Bartrum is Curator of German Prints and Drawings at the British Museum.

Karl Ove Knausgaard is a Norwegian author, known for six autobiographical novels titled My Struggle.

Munch’s pictorial worlds – the initial impetus for modernism

Edvard Munch’s radical modernity in painting was a challenge for his contemporaries. This applied in particular to the art scene in Berlin around 1900 which the Norwegian Symbolist artist influenced profoundly. In return, he received support there and was able to continue to develop his work. The publication is lavishly illustrated and describes knowledgeably the story of Munch and Berlin.

In 1892 the Association of Berlin Artists invited the still-unknown Edvard Munch (1863–1944) to an exhibition. The public was shocked by the colourful, sketch-like pictures. The artist enjoyed the furore and moved to the city on the Spree, where he repeatedly sojourned until 1908. Here he learned the techniques for printed graphics and presented for the first time paintings in several continuous series which would become central to his oeuvre. In Berlin, before long, the concept of the “Magic of the North” (Stefan Zweig) was no longer associated with romantic or naturalistic fjord landscapes, but with Munch’s psychologically concentrated pictorial worlds.

About the Authors:

Thomas Köhler has been the director of the Berlinische Galerie, the State Museum of Modern Art, Photography and Architecture in Berlin since 2010.

Stefanie Heckmann has been the head of the fine art collection at the Berlinische Galerie since 2014 and is the curator of the exhibition.
 

Edward Hopper’s world-famous paintings articulate an idiosyncratic view of modern life. With his impressive subjects, independent pictorial vocabulary, and virtuoso play of colors, Hopper continues to influence to this day the image of the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. He began his career as an illustrator and became famous around the globe for his oil paintings. They testify to his great interest in the effects of color and his mastery in depicting light and shadow. The Fondation Beyeler is devoting its large exhibition in the spring of 2020 to Hopper’s iconic images of the vast American landscape. The catalogue gathers together all of the paintings, watercolors, and drawings from the 1910s to the 1960s on display in the exhibition, and supplements them with essays focused on the subject of depicting landscape.

About the Artist:

Edward Hopper (1882–1967) is the master of American Realism. His paintings captured life during his era. His method of painting rapidly became the stylistic foundation of a type of American modernism. A source of inspiration for countless painters, photographers, and filmmakers, his body of work continues to be influential to this very day.