Книги по живописи

Leonardo da Vinci was the original Renaissance Man, an artist, mathematician, inventor and writer amongst his many talents. His skilful observations of the mechanics of the body informed both his work, and the generations that followed. But his drawings are elegant too, with the gentle features of his female subjects in particular graced with unrivalled care and eloquence. Da Vinci's illustrations lie at the heart of our heritage and this new book offers a breadth and scale that will satisfy both the casual and informed reader.

Da Vinci in Detail. The life and work of the ultimate Renaissance artist

One of the most accomplished human beings who ever lived, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) remains a quintessential Renaissance genius. The perfect companion to the Leonardo Graphic Work edition, this book is a compact catalogue raisonné of all of the artist’s masterful paintings.

Drawn from our best-selling XXL edition, the book traces the artist’s life and work across 10 chapters, presenting all known paintings and drawing on his letters, contracts, diary entries, and writings to explore the man behind such groundbreaking artworks. From Virgin of the Rocks to Virgin and Child with St. Anne to the ever-beguiling Mona Lisa, you’ll find some of the finest treasures of the Louvre, Prado, and National Gallery, London here, as well as Leonardo works lost to time, but no less startling in their precision and poise.

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!

Leonardo da Vinci is the archetypal universal man, a multi-talented genius who left an indelible mark on all the realms of art and knowledge he ventured into – painting, drawing and architecture, natural science, anatomy, mathematics, engineering and astronomy. His genius as a painter was reinforced by an analytical understanding of not only the human body but also nature and the physical laws of light. On the five-hundredth anniversary of Leonardo’s death in 1519, this book celebrates the artist by highlighting thirty masterpieces, including the Annunciation, the Baptism of Christ, the Lady with an Ermine, the Mona Lisa, the Virgin of the Rocks and the Last Supper, as well as a selection of his finest drawings. 

Accompanied by clear, concise commentary and arranged according to theme, enlargements of significant details from these works guide the reader in discovering this greatest exponent of Renaissance humanism.

About the Author:

Italian art historian Stefano Zuffi specializes in the period from the Renaissance to the Baroque. He has over sixty publications to his credit, notably on Dürer, Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Vermeer, Titian and Caravaggio.

Comic genius

One of the most important exponents of Pop Art

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:
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

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.

Drawing on five centuries of artistic expression, this lushly illustrated and beautifully designed celebration of romance is the perfect keepsake for lovers young and old.

How many ways can you paint a kiss? Ask Picasso, Lichtenstein, Toulouse-Lautrec, Klimt, and Fragonard. Rediscover mythology’s great love stories through the works of Botticelli, Correggio, Titian, and Canova. Meet ordinary and extraordinary couples in paintings by Kahlo, Van Eyck, Rubens, Rembrandt, Freud, and Rossetti. These are just some of the bounty of artists collected in this glorious book, featuring brilliantly colored reproductions and love-inspired writings. Organized to show the progression of love from first meeting to marriage, this exquisite volume travels the centuries through various artistic traditions. The stories these artists tell are as varied as the works themselves: sentimental, tragic, intellectual, ironic, sensual, and comic. For lovers of art, or just lovers, this book gloriously illustrates the endless facets of love.

British artist Lucian Freud is widely considered the most important figurative painter working today. Master portraitist and specialist in nudes, Freud uses impasto to create depth and intensity while restraining his color palate to mostly muted hues. His portraits may be physically unflattering to their subjects, but they are honest, frank, and unapologetic. "I paint people," Freud has said, "not because of what they are like, not exactly in spite of what they are like, but how they happen to be."

Lucian Freud Portraits surveys his portraits and figure paintings from across his long career.

Drawing together the finest portraits from public and private collections around the world, the book explores Freuds stylistic development and technical virtuosity. A series of previously unpublished interviews conducted by Michael Auping between May 2009 and January 2011 reveals the artists thoughts on the complex relationship between artist and sitter, the particular challenges of painting nudes and self-portraits, and his views on other painters he admired.

Freuds psychological portraits are often imbued with a mood of alienation. A private man, the artists close relationship with his sitters was played out behind the closed door of the studio. Frequently there is the sense of an emotionally charged drama unfolding, but his subjects remain elusive. Sitters represented in the book include family members, particularly his mother, Lucie, and artists such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon and David Hockney. In the early 1990s Freud produced a series of monumental paintings of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and Bowerys friend Sue Tilley, the benefits supervisor, examples of which are reproduced in this book.

'Everything is autobiographical and everything is a portrait, even if it's only a chair.'

Portraits were central to the work of Lucian Freud.

Working only from life, the artist claimed 'I could never put anything into a picture that wasn't actually there in front of me.' Lucian Freud Portraits surveys his portraits and figure paintings from across his long career. Drawing together the finest portraits from public and private collections around the world, the book explores Freud's stylistic development and technical virtuosity. A series of previously unpublished interviews conducted by Michael Auping between May 2009 and January 2011 reveal the artist's thoughts on the complex relationship between artist and sitter, the particular challenges of painting nudes and self-portraits, and his views on other painters he admired.

Freud's psychological portraits are often imbued with a mood of alienation. A private man, the artist's close relationship with his sitters was played out behind the closed door of the studio. Frequently there is the sense of an emotionally charged drama unfolding, but his subjects remain elusive. Sitters represented in the book include family members, particularly his mother, Lucie, and artists such as Frank Auerbach, Francis Bacon and David Hockney. In the early 1990s Freud produced a series of monumental paintings of the performance artist Leigh Bowery and Bowery's friend Sue Tilley, the 'benefits supervisor', examples of which are reproduced in this book.

Authoritative survey of more than 130 works, accompanying the first major exhibition focussed on seven decades of Freud's portraits.

Exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery, London (9 February-27 May 2012) and the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, Texas (2 July-28 October 2012). Includes new, illuminating interviews with Freud by Michael Auping. Contribution by John Richardson (friend of Freud and biographer of Picasso). Features an illustrated chronology of Freud's life. Essay and interviews with Lucian Freud by Michael Auping With a contribution by John Richardson This book accompanies the National Portrait Gallery's major Spring 2012 exhibition on Lucian Freud Portraits and the subsequent tour to Fort Worth, Texas in July 2012

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

Large-format hardcover edition at a new low price

The works of René Magritte (1898 – 1967) and the ideas that underlie them are a special case both in the history of modern art and in surrealist painting. In the search for the "mystery" in which things and organisms are enveloped, Magritte created pictures which, taking everyday reality as their starting point, were to follow a different logic from that to which we are accustomed. Magritte depicts the world of reality in such unsecretive superficiality that the beholder of his pictures is forced to reflect that the mystery of it is not evoked by some sentimental transfiguration, but rather by the logic of his thoughts and associations. Magritte thus invented an inimitable pictorial language which he uses to question our usual comprehension of pictures. In this book, Jacques Meuris traces Magritte`s artistic development from its beginnings until the end of his life, and in doing so underlines the originality of this great Belgian Surrealist.

The author:

Jacques Meuris is a writer, photographer, and art critic; he is the author of numerous books, catalogue articles and commentaries on modern art, literature and photography. Meuris is Professor Emeritus of the Ecole Supérieure des Arts Visuels (La Cambre, Brussels), a member of the Libre Académie de Belgique, and a director of the Association Internationale des Critiques d’Art (AICA).

Kazimir Malevich (1878 - 1935) was a painter and a great art theorist but first and foremost he was the founder of Suprematism (pure abstraction), a style based on geometrical forms. “Suprematism,��? he wrote, “has led me to discover something that had not been understood until then… there is in human consciousness an imperious desire of space and the will to escape from Earth.��?
This new publication presents the brilliant works of Malevich, the original painter, who until the age of twentyseven had no professional background as a painter, and who learned to draw out of curiosity and out of his will to learn. Gerry Souter once more offers us the works of a brilliant artist as well as a new perspective on the artist’s personality.

The Author:
Gerry Souter earned his degree at The Art Institute of Chicago and then went on to do further studies in art at the University of Chicago. Himself an artist, Souter has exhibited his paintings and photographs at The Art Institute of Chicago, the Phoenix Art Museum and a number of other galleries. A professional author, he has written more than twenty books since 1997, with great success. His continuing studies in Art History and Architecture, the sharpness of his writing, and his visual experience add a dynamic aspect to the study of the lives of artists and the description of their works, keeping the reader captivated, page after page.

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

After flirtations with Realism, Impressionism, and Symbolism, Kiev-born Kazimir Malevich (1878-1935) found his metier in dissolving literal, representational figures and landscapes into pure, emotionally-charged abstraction. 

In 1915, he created what is widely lauded as the first and ultimate abstract artwork: Black Square (1915), a black rectangle on a white background, hailed as the "zero point of painting," a seminal moment for modern and abstract practice.In this book, we follow Malevich's key innovations and ideas and place his groundbreaking achievements within the context of both the Russian and global avant-garde. 

Through rich illustrations of his work, we explore the artist's theory of Suprematism, based on severe geometric abstraction and "the supremacy of pure feeling in creative art;" his leading role in the development of Constructivism; as well as his interests in philosophy, literature, Russian folk art, and the fourth dimension.

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 Élie Faure Prize in 1981 for his publications. His TASCHEN titles include Salvador Dalí: The Paintings, Matisse, and Erotica Universalis.

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

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.