Малая серия книг по живописи

"A new world calls for a new man"

In the mid-Fifties, Yves Klein (1928-1962) conquered the world of art, declaring that "a new world calls for a new man". His idiosyncratic style and huge charisma set him on a youthful career in the great art capital, Paris. Soon his famous blue pictures, large-format canvases conceived as spaces for meditation, were making him a name far beyond France.

In a short but intense creative life of just seven years, Klein painted over a thousand pictures which are among the classics of modern art. This book offers an exciting sample of his work.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The landscape from Renaissance to Pop

The landscape has been, for many centuries, one of the most important genres in painting. This book examines the landscape from the late Middle Ages to modern times, comprising a synopsis of the genre and covering a selection of the most important landscapes in the history of art. From Titian to Warhol, readers will discover the evolution of this popular genre.

Artists featured (in chronological order):
Jean, Paul und Herman von Limburg, Titian, Joachim Patinir, Albrecht Altdorfer, Veronese, Pieter Brueghel, El Greco, Adam Elsheimer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Claude Gellée, gen. Lorrain, Jacob van Ruisdael, Caspar David Friedrich, John Constable, William Turner, Eugène Delacroix, Albert Bierstadt, Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot, James Abbot McNeill Whistler, Arnold Böcklin, Claude Monet, Vincent van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Paul Cézanne, Georges Braque, Paul Klee, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Yves Tanguy, Andy Warhol

About the Series:
Each book in TASCHEN's Basic Genre Series features:

* a detailed introduction with approximately 35 photographs, plus a timeline of the most important events (political, cultural, scientific, etc.) that took place during the time period
* a selection of the most important works of the epoch; each is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and, on the facing page, a description/interpretation of the work and brief biography of the artist as well as additional information such as a reference work, portrait of the artist, and/or citations

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Landscape Painting - Пейзажная живопись

Tamara de Lempicka and the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity

As the "Goddess of the Automobile Age", Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) stood at the centre of the sophisticated Paris art world of the Twenties and Thirties. Her love for beautiful women, elegant automobiles and the modern metropolis provided not only motifs for her pictures, but also influenced her artistic style.

Simultaneously with her career as artist, Tamara de Lempicka pioneered a new image of life on the screen, evident in the new, self-confident woman and the changing aspects of femininity and masculinity. The same sense of style was reflected in a futuristic cult of speed, domestic design forms promulgated by the Bauhaus, and the dandyism of a George Brummell. Tamara de Lempicka’s best-known painting, "Self-Portrait, or Tamara in a Green Bugatti", presents the artist as a female dandy brimming with cool elegance.

Whether as an Art-Déco artist, a post-Cubist or a Neoclasissist, de Lempicka struck the taste of a cosmopolitan (and wealthy) public that found its own image reflected in her work.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:

Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Lempicka - Лемпицка

The non-specialist. From key points in anatomy to plans for vehicles, planes, helicopters and submarines

One of the most fully achieved human beings who has ever lived, Leonardo remains the quintessential Renaissance genius. Creator of the world’s most famous painting, scientist, philosopher, builder, he is credited with defining the accomplishments of the great flowering in human consciousness. And yet, so wide-ranging and prolific were his interests that he brought hardly any major undertaking to a final end.

If Leonardo seems so modern, it is perhaps because of his non-speciality, his magpie mind and curiosity, and his thousands of notes and sketches. In these pages he would anticipate some of the great discoveries and inventions that would follow him, from key points in anatomy - such as the principles behind blood circulation - through to plans for armoured military vehicles, planes, helicopters and submarines.

As well as all that, Leonardo also managed to advance numerous artistic techniques, and implicated a complex psychology into his paintings of the "Last Supper" and the enigmatic "La Gioconda", or "Mona Lisa". Famous horseman, rival to Michelangelo, military engineer to the Borgias, he died in 1519, in a chateau given him by the King of France, Francis I. Not bad for the illegitimate son of Florentine notary.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

About he Author:

Frank Zöllner wrote his doctoral thesis on motifs originating from Antiquity in the history of art and architecture of the Medieval and Renaissance periods (1987). He is also the author of a post-doctoral treatise on motion and expression in the art of Leonardo da Vinci, published in 2010. He has published numerous works on Renaissance art and art theory, and on 20th-century art. Since 1996 he has been Professor of Medieval and Modern Art at the University of Leipzig. For TASCHEN he has authored the XL monographs on Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

From the funny pages to the canvas, comics recontextualized

In the late 50s and 60s, American painter Roy Lichtenstein (1923-1997) became one of the most important exponents of Pop Art - that movement which transformed products of mass consumption and the entertainment industry into subjects for art. This apotheosis of banal, everyday objects simultaneously constituted a criticism of the traditional elitist understanding of art.

Almost alone among artists, Lichtenstein pursued the question of how an image becomes a work of art. Wholly in keeping with the spirit of the Classical Modern, he held that it was not the "rank" of the picture’s subject that lends the picture its artistic character, but rather the artist’s formal treatment of it. To Lichtenstein, however, this position seemed far too broad to be seriously pursued.

Developed in the early 60s, Lichtenstein’s grid technique, with its allusion to the mass-production of graphic art, allowed the painter to give vent to his own artistic scepticism. In the 60s and 70s, Lichtenstein expanded his formal repertoire of techniques for creating distance and irony by means of an idiosyncratic process of abstraction and especially by his use of his numerous art quotations.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Janis Hendrickson studied art history at Smith College and gained her doctorate in Hamburg under Martin Warncke. She is presently a writer and curator.

A style of his own

The colorful work of a truly avant-garde painter

In the course of his short life, German painter August Macke (1887–1914) combined inspirations from extremely different sources into a unique and personal style. Macke was engaged with the world, closely following the development of abstract art and at the same time feeling tied to the Blauer Reiter movement of Munich. Macke developed a “flat” yet ornamental style, but always remained true to objective representation. His cheerful scenes of parks, zoos, and promenades with shop windows are filled with bold yet harmonious colors. Their brilliance reached its zenith in 1914 when he traveled with Klee and Moilliet to Tunis and became acquainted with the light of the African sun.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The supremacy of pure feeling

Dabbling in fauvism and cubism before founding the Suprematist movement, Russian painter and sculptor Kasimir Malevich (1879-1935) was a leading figure of the avant-garde and a pioneer of the non-objective style that he felt would "free viewers from the material world." In 1915, the same year he produced his most famous painting, "Black Square," he published the manifesto From Cubism to Suprematism. To critics who accused his work of being devoid of beauty and nature, he responded "art does not need us, and it never did." His 1918 painting "Suprematist Composition: White on White," one of the most radical artworks of its time, fetched $60 million at auction in 2008.
The supremacy of pure feeling

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Malevich - Малевич

The inventor of modernity

Violently criticized during his lifetime for his supposedly provocative paintings, French painter Edouard Manet (1832-1883) is now considered a master of inestimable importance in the history of painting. His 1863 painting "Déjeuner sur l’herbe" depicting two clothed men picnicing with a nude woman—now considered one of the most memorable images of the 19th century—stirred up controversy for what many considered its vulgar audacity. It was famously rejected by the Paris Salon and exhibited in the Salon des Refusés. Manet’s bold style helped pave the way from Realism to Impressionism, and in doing so ushered in the age of modern art.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Gilles Néret (1933–2005) was an art historian, journalist, writer and museum correspondent. He organized several art retrospectives in Japan and founded the SEIBU museum and the Wildenstein Gallery in Tokyo. He directed art reviews such as L'Œil and Connaissance des Arts and received the Elie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

Animal expressions. Franz Marc’s search for a universal art

Franz Marc (1880–1916) became known principally for his images of animals: blue horses, yellow tigers, red fawns. What was it that led him to concentrate on painting animals? Marc himself explained his choice of subject matter in these words: “From an early date I felt humankind to be ‘ugly’; animals seemed to be possessed of greater beauty and purity...” Seeing Marc merely as a painter of animals proves, however, premature. Marc, cofounder of the Blauer Reiter group of Expressionist artists, was deeply dissatisfied with the impurity of the world and was on a quest for a universal art which would resolve the contrarieties of life in the harmony of creation. Using pure colours highly charged with symbolic values, adopting crystalline shapes, and absorbing the influence of Cubism, he moved steadily towards an abstract order of image, coming closer to his own understanding of a better world. At the age of 36, Franz Marc’s life was cut short when he died in the Battle of Verdun.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

About the Author:

Susanna Partsch (born in 1952) studied art history first in Heidelberg and, between 1980 and 1985, at the Wilhelm Hack Museum in Ludwigshafen, Germany. Presently a freelance writer in Munich, she has written books on Rembrandt, Gustav Klimt, Franz Marc and Paul Klee.

A color harmony that is analogous to a musical composition

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is known not only as one of the most important French painters of the 20th century but also as co-founder and leading exponent of Fauvism. His work reflects an ongoing quest for the expressive power of pure, brilliant colors and simple forms; as a result, the realistic presentation of nature often retires to a secondary position.

For Matisse, color did not serve as a tool for the expression of subjective feelings, but rather became the equivalent of light itself: it functioned as a pure medium in the creation of an autonomous pictorial space: "Out of my fruitful work with discovered tones there must emerge a vital color harmony, a harmony that is analogous to a musical composition."

As a creative artist, Matisse was not only a painter, but also experimented with other materials: he produced glass windows and theatre designs and created significant sculptures in bronze, ceramic and clay. In old age, confined to a wheelchair, he created collages with coloured paper, glue, and scissors: his famed gouache cut-outs.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:

Volkmar Essers, born in 1944, studied art history, archaeology, and German in Bonn, Munich and Berlin. In 1972 he earned his doctorate with a work on the sculptor Johann Friedrich Drake. For many years, he has been the curator for the Art Collection of North Rhine-Westphalia, where he organized exhibitions of Paul Klee, Pablo Picasso, Max Ernst, Jackson Pollock and other artists. Essers has also published numerous essays and books on art of the 19th and 20th centuries.

The controversial darling and target of the popular press. Scandalous Amedeo Modigliani

To contemporaries, Amedeo Modigliani was the very definition of Parisian Bohemia, the controversial darling and target of the popular press and the model on which many a novel, play and film was based.

As an artist, the scandalous Modigliani made his name chiefly with his celebrated pictures of women, with almond eyes and long necks and bodies. His style had ancient roots that lay deep in classical antiquity or Africa. But his portraits of intellectual giants of the age, friends such as Pablo Picasso, Jean Cocteau or Diego Rivera, were inimitable also. In Doris Krystof’s study, the scene Modigliani was the hero of comes alive, and his sensitive paintings and sculptures speak in tongues.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:

After studying the history of art, history and literary studies in Freiburg im Breisgau and Cologne, Doris Krystof worked as an academic associate at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in Düsseldorf and as curator at the Kunsthalle Wien. Since 2001 she has been curator for the collection and changing exhibitions at the K21 Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen, Düsseldorf. She has authored numerous publications on modern and contemporary art.

The quest for "universal harmony"

Less is often more - such is Piet Mondrian’s approach to art. His main pictorial elements are horizontals and verticals, his preferred colours yellow, red and blue.

Throughout his life, Mondrian (1872-1944) applied these simple elements in his quest for "universal harmony". This publication in our Basic Art Series presents an extra-ordinary painter and art theoretician whose influence on architects and designers is as profound today as it ever was.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Mondrian - Мондриан

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

Minimalist bodies, sensual forms

The sensual, voluptuous shapes in the work of British sculptor Henry Moore (1889-1986) are the sign of his unmistakable signature style. Often depicting human or human-like forms—especially female—Moore`s sculptures, with their abstract style, brought a distinctive brand of Modernism to fine art. His cast bronze and carved marble sculptures grace the gardens and galleries of the world`s finest museums and have earned him a devoted following. Particularly beloved are his many mother-and-child compositions.

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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Jeremy Lewison is an expert on modern British and contemporary art. After being Director of Kettle's Yard, Cambridge he worked at the Tate Gallery for 18 years where he was Director of Collections until 2002. Among his many publications are books on Jackson Pollock, Barnett Newman, Ben Nicholson and Anish Kapoor. He has curated many exhibitons of modern and contemporary art and is preparing a retrospective exhibition of the work of Alice Neel. He is now a freelance curator and art consultant.

Fear, desperation, and death. Painting as an act of self-liberation

For Edvard Munch (1863-1944), painting was an act of self-liberation. His treatments of fear, desperation, and death still exert a powerful visual and psychological effect on modern viewers. Of all Munch’s paintings, "The Scream" (1893), representing a figure tortured by horror, is the most well-known-and certainly one of the most expressive.

The artist reflected his innermost feelings in his work: "In reality, my art is a free confession, an attempt to clarify to myself my own relation to life..." Although Edvard Munch cannot be clearly identified with any single movement, he is deemed a pioneer of Expressionism.

Посмотреть русскоязычное издание книги Munch -  Мунк
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 colour illustrations with explanatory captions