Сборники работ по искусству

In 1889, Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) organized the independent L’Exposition de Peintures du Groupe Impressionniste et Synthésiste at Café Volpini with his followers on the occasion of the Paris World’s Fair. The French artist presented an extraordinary portfolio of prints in this framework for the first time: the so-called Suite Volpini, an ensemble of eleven lithographs printed on radiant yellow paper.

The publication examines the year 1889 as a defining moment in Gauguin’s development in which his autonomous, revolutionary new painting style and the central motifs of his work were unmistakably formed. It reconstructs the Volpini exhibition in the process, demonstrating the radicality of the works produced by Gauguin’s artistic circle. The Suite Volpini – for Gauguin a visual résumé that was intended to advertize his role as the founder of a new style – will be comprehensively described and seen in the context of the artist’s related paintings, woodcuts, ceramics, prints, and drawings.

A comprehensive, illustrative monograph on the life and work of Paul Klee
All of the masterpieces in one volume

Paul Klee (1879–1940) is one of the most important representatives of modern art. His oeuvre is as universal as it is individual, standing tall among all of the currents and “isms” of his day. His overwhelming body of paintings, drawings, and other visual works; his letters, journal entries, and, last but not least, his teaching notes form the background for this pointed depiction of the life and work of the meditative artist and visual thinker.
This richly illustrated volume traces Klee’s eventful biography, ranging from his artistic beginnings with caricature-like drawings and nudes, his encounter with the avant-garde and the famous watercolors from his journey to Tunisia, the abstract color compositions from the Bauhaus era, to the mysterious, inventive images of his last years in Bern.

Art critic and scholar Philippe Dagen approaches Picasso as a subject through a series of questions. What does it mean to be an artist in the twentieth century? What does it mean to be an artist in the time of newspapers and museums, in a time when the art market has expanded to reach the entire western world? Is modern civilization so different that it gives an artist a new attitude and causes him to redefine his role for the public, the market, and, therefore, to invent entirely new artistic practices?

Picasso is considered here in view of this last, and most probable, hypothesis. He is a product of his situation and time, in the broadest sense of the term. Refusing to confine himself to his studio or the small artistic community in Paris, Picasso responded forcefully to world affairs, giving pictorial and sculptural form to the passions and events he witnessed around him. This is a thoroughly modern Picasso, constantly and consciously confronting the modernity of the world.

Dagen's original exploration of his techniques, materials, and images shows how the artist both allowed modernity to infiltrate his work and at the same time to react against it. Picasso moved between acceptance and rejection, a perpetual confrontation that is, perhaps, the most satisfying explanation of his will to create change that drove him to leave the most varied and diverse body of work in the entire history of art.

About the Author:

Philippe Dagen is an art historian, professor at the Sorbonne in Paris, critic for the newspaper Le Monde, curator, and novelist. He has published and contributed to numerous titles on art history, including George Grosz: Berlin-New York, Otto Dix: The War, and Bettina Rheims: Can You Find Happiness.

"I wanted to be a painter, and I became Picasso," declared Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) in an apt survey of a triumphant career. He had good grounds for the confidence palpable in his statement, for in the history of 20th-century art, his name stands out over all the others. In Picasso`s paintings, drawings, lithographs, ceramics, and sculptures, he was tirelessly inventive and innovative, exhibiting an aesthetic bravado that kept him one step ahead of his contemporaries. From subject matter to new forms and techniques to new media, Picasso got there first. The Spanish artist's enormous output, from the eight-year-old beginnings to the late work of a man of ninety-one, is surely one of the most diverse and creatively energetic in the whole history of art, and it is no exaggeration to see him as the genius of the century. Carsten-Peter Warncke's study is a thorough review of Picasso's entire oeuvre, from the early Blue and Rose Periods, through the analytic and synthetic cubism and classicist phase all the way up to the art of the old savage Picasso.

Our study of Picasso, the most exhaustive record of his work to date, contains almost 1500 illustrations - from his earliest drawings to the master's very last painting.

A groundbreaking study of Pablo Picasso, it documents all Picasso's major works from 1917 to 1937 including La Suite Voillard from the National Gallery of Canada. The title intends to be a metaphor. Harlequin can be anything you wish, a chameleon who constantly changes look and is never where we expect to find him, and Picasso, who could contemporaneously adopt the styles of cubism, neoclassicism, surrealism and expressionism, had many things in common with this legendary theatre character. Defined by some as a cannibal, a ruthless monster who devoured whatever he came across, Picasso was surprisingly all-inclusive. As a consequence he was, for a long time, an inevitable point of reference for many younger artists.

This lavish edition comes in three striking colour combinations that will be shipped to customers at random.

The Musée Picasso Paris, housed in the magnificent Hôtel Salé since 1985, includes more than 5,000 pieces, constituting the finest public collection of the artist’s works ever assembled. This definitive reference, which features an extensive album showcasing more than 450 of Picasso’s masterpieces, is arranged chronologically and by theme. It traces every stage in the development of his oeuvre, from the Blue Period to his late portrait The Young Painter (1972).

The museum’s authoritative team provides in-depth essays that examine Picasso’s paintings, as well as his proficiency in all artistic forms ― from sculpture or ceramics to photography, drawing, and engraving. His personal art collection and ephemera from his private archives provide insight into the great twentieth-century artist himself, and the comprehensive tome is completed with a detailed chronology.

The greatest works by prolific artist Picasso are reproduced in this massive cloth-bound volume that features a handsome slipcase, ribbon page marker, and is printed on three types of paper to present the diverse artworks to their best advantage.

This publication explores Pablo Picasso’s use of a black-and-white palette throughout his entire career.

Picasso Black and White examines the artist’s lifelong exploration of a black-and-white leitmotif through paintings and a selection of sculptures and works on paper. Picasso continued the tradition of engaging the color black that had been employed throughout a centuries-long history of Spanish painting by fellow artists José de Ribera, Diego Velázquez, Francisco de Zurbarán, and Francisco de Goya. Moreover, he made highly effective use of isolated black, white, and gray hues in a nod to monochromatic grisaille painting and to drawing, line, and form. As this volume attests, the recurrent motif of black and white appears throughout Picasso’s oeuvre, including his blue and rose periods, his investigations into Cubism and Surrealism, his interpretations of historical subject studies for his celebrated painting "Guernica", World War II, and an homage to old masters, as well as the powerful paintings of his last years. Featuring reproductions of more than 150 works, this book examines the extraordinary complexity and power of these expressive artworks, which purge color in order to highlight their formal structure. Including essays by leading Picasso scholars, this book is a unique and coherent perspective on one of the world’s most innovative and influential artists.

The Rizzoli Art Classics series brings you Piero della Francesca, Titian, Caravaggio, and Velázquez, all in beautifully illustrated monographs, offering high-quality reproductions in compact, accessible volumes.

These books feature a literary introduction by a renowned art historian, a thoroughly researched essay, and captions describing the artist's most famous canvases. A useful appendix section includes an extensive chronology of the artist's life and important historical events of his time; a compilation of writings by well-known historians, insight into each painter's stylistic development; a geographical table detailing the location of each painting in the book; and a concise bibliography with suggested further readings.

With an authoritative text by leading art historians, these lavishly illustrated editions provide fresh insight into the art and lives of some of the most fascinating artists in the history of painting.

Piero Fornasetti was a master of the decorative imagination. He employed illusionism, architectural perspectives and a host of personal leitmotifs - the sun, playing cards, still lifes, libraries, harlequins, newspapers, the face of a once-famous opera singer - in seemingly endless variations on plates, chairs, desks, screens, scarves, cabinets and decorative objects of every kind. As Gio Ponti, his friend and collaborator, said: 'he makes objects speak.'

Fornasetti's oeuvre is celebrated here in a publication that marks him out as a virtuoso conjurer of dream and illusion. Captured in paintings, drawings and photographs from the family and studio archives, Fornasetti's designs testify to a unique imaginative genius.

The Complete Bruegel. New photography of the Dutch master’s works in XXL resolution
Sense of a Scene. Pieter Bruegel’s mastery of composition and community

Discover the complete works of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, the most significant artist of Dutch Renaissance painting. Marking the 450thanniversary of his death and his first-ever monographic exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this XXL monograph gathers all 39 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 etchings — each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel’s time.

The life and times of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1525–1569) were marked by stark cultural conflict. He witnessed religious wars, the Duke of Alba’s brutal rule as governor of the Netherlands, and the palpable effects of the Inquisition. To this day, the Flemish artist remains shrouded in mystery. We know neither where nor exactly when he was born. But while early scholarship emphasized the vernacular character of his painting and graphic work, modern research has attached greater importance to its humanistic content.

Starting out as a print designer for publisher Hieronymus Cock, Bruegel produced numerous print series that were distributed throughout Europe. These depicted vices and virtues alongside jolly peasant festivals and sweeping landscape panoramas. He would eventually increasingly turn to painting, working for the cultural elite of Antwerp and Brussels.

This monograph is a testament to Bruegel’s enlightenment as an artist, one who bravely confronted the issues of his day all the while proposing new inventions and solutions. Rather than idealizing reality, he addressed the horrors of religious warfare and took a critical stand against the Catholic Church. To this end, he developed his own pictorial language of dissidence, lacing innocuous everyday scenes with subliminal statements in order to escape repercussions.

This XXL-sized collection gathers all 39 paintings, 65 drawings, and 89 etchings, each piece a unique witness to both the religious mores and the close-knit folk culture of Bruegel’s time. We discover how, in spite of his early death, Bruegel’s work revealed a development against the tide of the Italian Renaissance. Surviving satirical verses and critical motifs illustrate the divide with his Rome-oriented fellow artists, admirers of Michelangelo and Raphael.

Marking the 450th anniversary of his death and his first-ever monographic exhibition at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, this monograph is the most immersive journey into Bruegel’s unique visual universe.

About the Authors:

Jürgen Müller has worked as an art critic, a curator, and a visiting professor at various universities, and has published extensively on cinema and art history. Currently, he holds the chair for art history at the University of Dresden. Müller is the editor for TASCHEN’s movies by decade series.

Thomas Schauerte manages the Albrecht Dürer House, the City Museum, and the art collections at the Museums of the City of Nuremberg. He is a graphic design specialist and teaches at the universities of Erlangen and Regensburg.

Piranesi's fantastic worlds. The great 18th-century architectural artist and master engraver

One of the greatest architectural artists of all time, and certainly the most famous copper engraver of the 18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is best known for his terrifyingly original series of etchings of labyrinthine and megalomaniac prisons, Carceri d’Invenzione. In his own day, he was most celebrated for his Vedute, 137 etchings of ancient and modern Rome; so renowned were these startling and dramatic chiaroscuro images, imbued with Piranesi’s romantic feeling for archaeological ruins, that they formed the mental picture of Rome for generations after. Indeed, Piranesi could be said to have shaped a whole strain of contemporary architecture, as well as the wider visualization of antiquity itself. In our time, he has had a direct influence on writers such as Borges and Kafka and on filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam and Peter Greenaway. Anyone who contemplates Piranesi’s etchings will confront the existential nightmare of human existence and its infinite mysteries.

One the greatest architectural artists of all time, and certainly the most famous copper engraver of the 18th century, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720-1778) is most known for his terrifyingly original series of etchings of labyrinthine and megalomaniac prisons, Carceri d'Invenzione. In his own day, he was most celebrated for his Vedute, 137 etchings of ancient and modern Rome; so renowned were these startling and dramatic chiaroscuro images, imbued with Piranesi's romantic feeling for archaeological ruins, that they formed the mental picture of Rome for generations after. Indeed, Piranesi could be said to have shaped a whole strain of contemporary architecture, as well as the wider visualization of antiquity itself. In our time, he has had a direct influence on writers such as Borges and Kafka and on filmmakers such as Terry Gilliam and Peter Greenaway. Anyone who contemplates Piranesi's etchings will confront the existential nightmare of human existence and its infinite mysteries…

Archaeology and Imagination. Impossible staircases and startling ruins from Italy’s master engraver

The most famous 18th-century copper engraver, Giovanni Battista Piranesi (1720–1778) made his name with etchings of ancient Rome. His startling, chiaroscuro images imbued the city’s archaeological ruins with drama and romance and became favourite souvenirs for the Grand Tourists who travelled Italy in pursuit of classical culture and education.

Today, Piranesi is renowned not just for shaping the European imagination of Rome, but also for his elaborate series of fanciful prisons, Carceri, which have influenced generations of creatives since, from the Surrealists to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Edgar Allan Poe, Jorge Luis Borges, and Franz Kafka.

Loosely based on contemporary stage sets rather than the actual dingy dungeons of Piranesi’s day, these intricate images defy architectural reality to play instead with perspective, lighting, and scale. Staircases exist on two planes simultaneously; vast, vaulted ceilings seem to soar up to the heavens; interior and exterior distinctions collapse. With a low viewpoint and small, fragile figures, the prison scenes become monstrous megacities of incarceration, celebrated to this day as masterworks of existentialist drama.

About the series:

Bibliotheca Universalis — Compact cultural companions celebrating the eclectic TASCHEN universe at an unbeatable, democratic price!

Since we started our work as cultural archaeologists in 1980, TASCHEN has become synonymous with accessible, open-minded publishing. Bibliotheca Universalis brings together more than 100 of our all-time favourite titles in a neat new format so you can curate your own affordable library of art, anthropology, and aphrodisia.

Bookworm’s delight — never bore, always excite!

This definitive portrait of Camille Pissarro by one of the world’s foremost authorities on Impressionism and French painting reveals the deep connection between Pissarro’s humanitarian concerns and his creative output.

Throughout his career, the Impressionist artist Camille Pissarro produced a vast oeuvre of paintings, drawings, and prints inspired by his fascination with and commitment to politics. Many of these works reflect the tensions between his anarchist ideals and the realities of life in a capitalist society, however, most examinations of Pissarro have approached his art and politics as separate spheres. Published to accompany a major exhibition, this survey by a renowned expert on Impressionist painting offers a selection of canvases and works on paper that embody Pissarro’s pictorial humanism at the highest level. Exhaustive archival study, interviews with surviving family members, and research drawn from thousands of newly discovered letters inform this rich and authoritative book. Including individual portraits of each of the family members Pissarro so often inserted into his paintings, it also examines his relationships with fellow artists, writers, neighbors, merchants, and domestic servants. The result is a refreshing and landmark reconsideration of the artist’s magnificent body of work.

A tragic icon of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912-1956) took influences from Picasso and Mexican surrealism and developed his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing. Though his name inevitably conjures up images of the drip paintings for which he is most famous, this technique was only developed midway through his career. The progression from his earlier work to his final "action" paintings —a veritable revolution of painting as a concept—reveals the genius of this tortured artist whom many call the greatest modern American painter.