Малая серия книг по живописи

Painting with light and color

On April 15th, 1874, in the Parisian studio of photographer Nadar, was the opening of the first group exhibition that was uninhibited by government interference and the dictates of an official selection committee. This date has gone down in the annals of art history because it marks the birth of the Impressionism. Impressionistic paintings now rank among the most popular works of art and are the pride of any museum or collection worldwide. However, in 1874 the public response to the exhibition, and to Impressionist painting, was not adoration but rather shock and even outrage. The Impressionists and the succeeding Neo-Impressionists were avant-gardist and revolutionary, paving the way for modern art. Present-day viewers, hardly realizing this revolutionary potential, can be content to enjoy the aesthetic of light and color.

Artists featured in detail: Frederic Bazille, Marie Braquemond, Gustave Caillebotte, Mary Cassat, Edgar Degas, Vincent Van Gogh, Armand Guillaumin, Max Liebermann, Claude Monet, Berthe Morisot, Guiseppe de Nittis, Camille Pissarro, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Medardo Rosso, Giovanni Segantini, John Singer Sargent, Georges Seurat, Paul Signac, Walter Richard Sickert, Alfred Sisley, Max Slevogt, Fritz von Uhde, Federico Zandomeneghi

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

• 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 of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist
• approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Berlin-based Karin H. Grimme works as a historian, art historian, and author for museums, exhibitions, and media, focusing on the history of the 19th and 20th centuries and in particular on the history of the Jews in Europe. She is the author of numerous journalistic and academic publications in the press, in broadcasting, and in the multimedia sphere; as author and editor she has produced works on, among other things, the Jewish bourgeoisie in the 19th century.

The delicate splendour and fairytale beauty of Islamic art

The art which arose from the 7th century in the Islamic empires reached from Spain and Morocco to the borders of China. It bore the stamp above all of Arabs, Persians and Turks, but outstanding contributions also came from Egypt and India. "Islamic Art" presents prominent examples: luxury ceramics, prayer mats, goldsmithery, as well as witnesses to the decorative arts and calligraphy – and above all the masterpieces of the splendidly colourful courtly book illumination of Persia and the Mughal emperors of India. The book examines the contributions of the different countries and how they influenced each other, and in this way vividly illustrates the unfolding of the delicate splendour and fairytale beauty of Islamic art from its beginnings into the modern era.

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

• 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 of which is presented on a 2-page spread with a full-page image and with an interpretation of the respective work, plus a portrait and brief biography of the artist
• approximately 100 colour illustrations with explanatory captions

The author:
Annette Hagedorn studied the history of oriental art, German literature, and art history at the universities of Bonn and Mainz. She has held part-time teaching posts at the universities of Bonn, Mainz and Utrecht. In 1991 she was awarded the Alice-Boner-Memorial Prize from the Alice Boner Foundation in Zurich for her dissertation on Islamic metalwork in the 13th and 14th centuries. Since 2000 she has been co-editor, responsible for art history and archaeology, of the journal Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft.

Common symbols reinterpreted

Though his work is often categorized as Pop Art for its use of popular iconography and household objects, Jasper Johns can also be described as a Neo-Dadaist. Using wax-based paint, plaster relief, collage, and even commonplace objects such as brooms and rulers in his paintings, Johns achieves a sculptural texture in his work. He is arguably most known for his flag paintings of the 1950s (the Museum of Modern Art in New York recently paid over $20 million for White Flag), though other themes, including targets, numbers, letters, and maps, are also famously recurrent. Johns is widely considered one of the most important American artists of the 20th century.

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:
Barbara Hess (b. 1964) is an art historian, critic and translator, resident in Cologne. Her numerous articles on contemporary art have featured in Camera Austria, Flash Art, Kunst-Bulletin and Texte zur Kunst. She co-curated the touring exhibition Ready to Shoot: Fernsehgalerie Gerry Schum/videogalerie schum at the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf and the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris. Her TASCHEN titles include a monograph on Willem de Kooning.

A radical innovator, a pioneer of new artistic form

German expressionist painter and graphic artist Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880-1938), co-founder of the Brücke movement, produced some of the most outstanding woodcuts and powerful expressionist works of the 20th century. Tragically, he committed suicide after having his work condemned as "degenerate" by the Nazis.

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:
Norbert Wolf graduated in art history, linguistics and medieval studies at the universities of Regensburg and Munich, and earned his PhD in 1983. He held visiting professorships in Marburg, Frankfurt, Leipzig, Düsseldorf, Nuremberg-Erlangen, and Innsbruck. His extensive writings on art history include many TASCHEN titles, such as Diego Velázquez, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Caspar David Friedrich, Expressionism, Romanesque, Landscape Painting and Symbolism.

"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.