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The world’s most famous portraits and the hidden stories behind their subjects are explored in this fascinating and highly entertaining book.

Portraiture is one of the oldest and most studied genres of art. While most scholars will look at a painting’s composition, style, and themes, often questions remain unanswered—who were these people and why were they painted? This entertaining book reveals the identities and lives of some of the most famous characters that populate art history — from the Renaissance to the 21st century. Readers will learn how the fifteen-year-old subject of da Vinci’s Lady with an Ermine nearly destroyed a marriage; that van Dyck’s depiction of Prudence in wild clothes is actually one of the most controversial aristocrats of the seventeenth century; and that Francis Bacon’s character George Dyer was a man he met in a Soho nightclub.

These and other stories behind works by Picasso, Klimt, Rubens, Warhol, and dozens of other artists show how portraiture remains one of the most enthralling genres.

Based on art scholarship and conveyed in an accessible tone, these fascinating tales of power, lust, intrigue, jealousy, vengeance, and romance will help readers understand masterpieces of art history in an entirely new light.

Paul Cézanne, Georges Seurat, Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec and others began as Impressionists but soon extended their explorations of the world around them to create highly personal work. 

With their foundations in the bright colours of Impressionism and the break from traditional representational art, the Post-Impressionists worked alone but collectively created the bridge into the expressionism of the 20th Century. Their delightful and evocative masterpieces are celebrated in this gorgeous new book.

In art history, we tend to be on first-name terms only with the most revered of masters. The Renaissance painter and architect Raphael Santi (1483–1520) is one such star. The man we call simply Raphael has for centuries been hailed as a supreme Renaissance artist. For some, he even outstrips his equally famous, equally first-named, contemporaries, Leonardo and Michelangelo.

From 1500 to 1508, Raphael worked throughout central Italy, particularly in Florence where he secured his reputation as a painter of portraits and beautifully rendered Madonnas, archetypical icons within the Catholic faith. In 1508 he was summoned to Rome by Pope Julius II and later embarked on an ambitious mural scheme for the Stanza della Segnatura in the Vatican. Within this room, Raphael’s The School of Athens is considered a paradigm of the High Renaissance, merging Classical philosophy with perfected perspectival space, animated figures, and a composition of majestic balance.

This essential introduction explores how in just two decades of work, Raphael painted his way to legendary greatness. With highlights from his prolific output, it presents the mastery of figures and forms that secured his place not only in the trinity of Renaissance luminaries but also among the most esteemed artists of all time.

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

Crowned the “Prince of Painters” by Giorgio Vasari, Raphael (1483–1520) was one of the most popular artists of the Italian Renaissance. Famous for his serene and harmonious series of Madonnas and his work at the Vatican Palace, he was an extremely influential painter, both during and after his own lifetime. Pope Julius II hired Raphael as his chief architect and his first commission charged him with the task of decorating the papal apartments at the Vatican in 1509. Now known as the Raphael Rooms, these astonishing displays continue to attract visitors from all over the world.

Raphael in Detail shows his beautiful masterpieces in unprecedented, large-format details. The art historian and specialist of the Italian Renaissance, Stefano Zuffi, takes the reader on a surprising voyage into Raphael’s life and work. The book is organized thematically and includes a biography and a list of works.

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. For Ludion, he has written about Caravaggio, Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael.

Rembrandt van Rijn (1606–1669) never left his homeland of the Netherlands but in his massive body of painting, drawing, and etching, he changed the course of Western art. His prolific oeuvre encompasses religious, historical, and secular scenes, as well as one of the most extraordinary series of portraits and self-portraits in history.

Rembrandt’s work foregrounds texture, light, and acute observation. Like sudden, startling apparitions in a shadowy street, his subjects are illuminated against deep, dark backgrounds and rendered with immense physical as well as psychological scrutiny. Whether biblical or mythological figures, powerful patrons, or fellow citizens, each subject is bestowed not only with meticulous facial features but also with the intrigue of thoughts and feelings so that even age-old narratives such as the bible story of David and Bathsheba find a new level of human drama. Rembrandt also left one of the most extensive series of self-portraits of any artist, chronicling his own face from his youth to the year of his death.

Rembrandt’s rise coincided with the blossoming of the Dutch Golden Age, an era of prosperity in the Netherlands. He was encouraged by wealthy patrons, but was above all driven by a profound fascination with people. In this book, we tour some of Rembrandt’s key paintings, etchings, and drawings to introduce his techniques, inspirations, and exceptional achievements. From the Baroque Belshazzar’s Feast to the world-famous Night Watch we uncover a world of deep, rich tones, masterful draftsmanship, and a remarkable sensitivity for the human condition.

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

Illustrious turning point - Augsburg as the centre of the German Renaissance.

Hans Holbein the Elder and Hans Burgkmair are regarded alongside Albrecht Dürer as the forerunners of Renaissance painting in Germany. The prosperous Imperial and trading city of Augsburg was an important centre during this artistic golden age. By means of high-quality works this volume presents a comprehensive insight into the epochal revolution from the Middle Ages to the modern age.

Augsburg was influenced by the humanist culture of Italy from an early stage. Thanks to the art-loving trading houses with international operations like the Fuggers, as well as the long sojourns of Emperor Maximilian I and the frequent Imperial diets, the city offered artists like Holbein the Elder and Burgkmair an ideal setting for the development of a new form of art. Together with the works of Dürer, Holbein the Younger and others, many of their most important works bear witness to the highly fertile and yet contrasting ways in which the two artists adopted the Italian Renaissance.

About the Authors:

Guido Messling is the curator for German Painting in the Gallery of Painting at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna.

Jochen Sander is the deputy director and head of collections for Dutch, Flemish and German Painting before 1800 at the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

One of the leading lights of the Impressionist movement, Pierre-Auguste Renoir (1841–1919) remains a towering figure in art history with enduring public appeal. Sun-kissed, charming, and sensual, his work shows painting at its most lighthearted and luminous, while championing the plein air and colour innovations of his time.

Renoir’s oeuvre was prolific, with some several thousand works in his lifetime. Much influenced by forerunners such as Courbet, Degas, Manet, Delacroix, he worked with contemporary peers such as Monet to explore fresh uses of colour and brushwork, rendering texture and depth with different-hued daubs. Drawn to intimate and tender human scenes, his subjects include lovers, mothers, and numerous nudes.

As his career progressed, Renoir investigated different styles and techniques, shifting away from the feathery Impressionist touch to a more robust, classical corporeality, sometimes called his “Ingres period,” and later to monumental pieces such as The Bathers. From the abundant output of his lengthy career, this essential artist introduction selects key Renoir works to explore his innovations in the art of painting, as much as his traditions in pursuit of beauty, harmony, and the female form.

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

Pierre-Auguste Renoir's timelessly charming paintings still reflect our ideals of happiness, love, and beauty. TASCHEN's Renoir: Painter of Happiness, the most comprehensive retrospective of his work yet published, examines the personal history and motivation behind the legend. Though he began by painting landscapes in the Impressionist style, Renoir (1841-1919) found his true affinity once he started painting portraits, after which he abandoned the Impressionists altogether. Though often misunderstood and criticized, Renoir remains one of history's most well-loved painters — undoubtedly because his works exude such warmth, tenderness and good cheer.

In an incisive text tracing the artist's career and stylistic evolution, Gilles Néret shows how Renoir reinvented the female form in painting, with his everyday goddesses and their plump forms, rounded hips and breasts. This last phase in Renoir's work, in which he returned to the simple pleasure of painting the female nude in his baigneuses series, was his most innovative and stylistically influential, and an inspiration to both Matisse and Picasso.

With a complete chronology, bibliography, index of works, and 600 sumptuous, large-format colour reproductions, as well as photos and sketches illustrating Renoir's life and work, here is the essential work of reference on this enduring master artist.

Realism vs. Abstraction. A colorful exploration of the life and work of Gerhard Richter

Meet Gerhard Richter, the German artist who redefined painting. Between abstract works and photography-based paintings, Richter pushes the medium’s boundaries and reminds us of its urgency and importance in a world overwhelmed by digital images. This introduction to one of the greatest artists of our time explores his entire career.

An encounter with Gerhard Richter, the German artist who widened horizons in the relationship between painting and reality. From early photographic paintings, along with his famous RAF cycle, to late abstract paintings, experiencing Richter’s work always offers us the unexpected and unseen. Where he once set out to liberate the medium from ideological ballast, today, faced with the overwhelming presence of digital images, he shows us the unsurpassed impact and intensity of painting. A definitive introduction to one of the greatest artists of our time spanning not only his entire career, but also 50 years of cultural, economic, and political events.

The author:

Klaus Honnef was honorary professor of photography theory at the Kassel Art Academy. He was one of the organizers of documenta 5 and documenta 6 in Kassel, and has been the curator of more than 500 exhibitions in Germany and abroad. He has written numerous books, including TASCHEN’s Contemporary Art, Andy Warhol, and Pop Art.

About the series:

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 

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

Rebel with a cause. A revolutionary spirit in modern art

Diego Rivera (1886 -1957) is a loud presence on the art historical stage. With devout political principles and a turbulent romantic history, he was at once husband and paladin of Frida Kahlo, advocate and adversary of Stalin's Soviet Union, and liberator and traitor of Leon Trotsky.

Vibrant, graphic, and often monumental, Rivera's paintings carry the same live political and passionate charge as his personal biography. Fusing European influences such as Cubism with socialist ideology and an exaltation of Mexico's indigenous and popular heritage, he created a new iconography for art history and for his country. He became one of the most important figures in the Mexican mural movement and won international acclaim for his public wall paintings, in which he presented a utopian yet accessible vision of a post-revolutionary Mexico. In 1931, Rivera was the subject of MoMA s second ever monographic exhibition.

This book explores the unique blend of influence and ideology which secure Rivera's place as both a unique and a universal painter, bound to the particular turbulent experience of early 20th century Mexico, and yet preoccupied with subjects such as revolution and class inequity which continue to speak to us today. 

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

This illustrated catalogue is published to accompany the retrospective exhibition devoted to American artist Mark Rothko, curated by Suzanne Pagé and the artist’s son, Christopher Rothko. The show will feature over one hundred works. Born Markus Rothkowitz in Latvia in the early 20th century, the man who would soon become known as Mark Rothko began painting in the 1930s. While his early works were influenced by mythology and Surrealism, his first abstract paintings emerged in the 1940s with the Multiform series, followed by his Classic Years and the Black and Gray paintings. A key figure on the New York art scene, Rothko was an uncategorisable artist who deployed an extensive palette of colour and light with a talent that consistently triggers emotion. His great sensitivity shaped a poetic, enigmatic universe that leaves no one untouched.

• A catalogue of the major exhibition of remarkable paintings by Mark Rothko at the Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris, from October 18, 2023 to April 2, 2024
• This publication has been produced in close collaboration with the artist’s family
• Two page fold-outs plunge the reader deep into Rothko’s oeuvre
• Contains previously unpublished works and archive material
• Represents a major cultural event for Paris and the world

About the Author:

An internationally renowned art historian, Suzanne Pagé is currently artistic director of the Fondation Louis Vuitton. Formerly the director of the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, she curated the previous French retrospective of Rothko’s work, back in 1999.

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Mark Rothko's iconic paintings are some of the most profound works of twentieth-century Abstract Expressionism.

This collection presents fifty large-scale artworks from the American master's color field period (1949-1970) alongside essays by Rothko's son, Christopher Rothko, and San Francisco Museum of Modern Art curator of painting and sculpture Janet Bishop. Featuring illuminating details about Rothko's life, influences, and legacy, and brimming with the emotional power and expressivecolor of his groundbreaking canvases, this essential volume brings the renowned artist's luminous work to light for both longtime Rothko fans and those discovering his work for the very first time. A textured case and large-scale tip-on on the front cover round out this sumptious package.

About the Authors:

Mark Rothko (1903-1970) was one of the foremost members of the Abstract Expressionist movement. He is known for his colour field paintings, which used staining techniques to create abstract fields of colour on large canvases. Rothko was a guest instructor at the California School of Fine Arts, San Francisco, and taught at Brooklyn College, the University of Colorado, Boulder, and Tulane University. From 1958 to 1969, he worked on three major commissions: monumental canvases for the Four Seasons Restaurant and Seagram Building, both in New York; murals for the Holyoke Center, Harvard University; and canvases for the chapel at the Institute of Religion and Human Development, Houston, known worldwide as "The Rothko Chapel." His work is held in gallery and museum collections worldwide.

Janet Bishop is the Thomas Weisel Family Curator of Painting and Sculpture at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. While the museum underwent expansion construction, she oversaw "SFMOMA on the Go," an innovative program of exhibitions presented throughout the Bay Area and beyond. She is best known for her curatorial work on Matisse/Diebenkorn; The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde; and Robert Bechtle: A Retrospective.

Dore Ashton is an award-winning critic of modern and contemporary art. An authority on Abstract Expressionism and the New York School of the 1950s and 1960s, she is the author and editor of more than 30 books, including About Rothko, a celebrated biography of Mark Rothko. Ashton is a professor of Art History at the Cooper Union in New York City.
 

Baroque and Roll. Meet Sir Peter Paul Rubens, master painter and polymath

A painter of dramatic battles as much as erotic mythologies, Sir Peter Paul Rubens was a key figure in the 16th-century art world and a flag bearer for Baroque color, motion, and sensuality. His prolific oeuvre includes altarpieces, portraits, landscapes, historical paintings, as well as his famous, bountiful nudes.

There are over 1,000 catalogued works by Sir Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640), the 16th-century flag bearer for Baroque drama, movement, and sensuality. This essential introduction takes in the most important works from this astonishingly prolific oeuvre to explore Rubens’s influences and innovations, and his remarkable visual, and art historical, impact.

The richly illustrated survey takes in Rubens’s portraits, landscapes, and historical paintings, as well as his famed and bountiful nudes. Along the way, we examine the artist’s astonishing technique and his deft ability to depict narrative in a compelling and legible visual form, whether an erotic mythological scene or a tender biblical story. This remarkable artistic bravura is placed in context both within Rubens’s long art historical legacy through Van Dyck, Velázquez, and beyond, and his other talents as a classical scholar, diplomat, and knight.

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:

Born back in 1985, the Basic Art Series has evolved into the best-selling art book collection ever published. 

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 self as a subject is one of the most fascinating and fruitful of artistic enterprises. From the 15th century to today, this collection brings together some of the best examples of self-portraiture to explore the genre’s evolution over the centuries as well as the enduring questions of selfhood and self-representation that have besieged human experience for centuries before social media and the selfie.

Is a self-portrait of an artist a medium of reflection? Or is it merely a black void, the “false mirror,” as the Surrealist René Magritte entitled his 1928 painting of an eye? How much does it impart about contemporary notions of beauty, power, and status? From Albrecht Dürer to Egon Schiele, Fra Filippo Lippi to Frida Kahlo, this far-reaching collection explores the numerous ways in which artists have taken themselves as subjects, the variety of ingenious methods and perspectives they have used, and the intriguing questions they raise.

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

Published on the occasion of a major retrospective, this gorgeous new survey focuses on the paintings related to the years Joaquín Sorolla spent in Paris. A native of Valencia, Spanish Impressionist Joaquín Sorolla (1863–1923) first went to Paris in 1885 as a young artist at the age of twenty-three. He exhibited at international salons, winning the Grand Prix at the Exposition Universelle in 1900, and in 1906, he exhibited for the first time at the Galerie Georges Petit, one of the principal galleries of the Impressionists. The exhibition was a resounding success and helped establish Sorolla’s international reputation. Known for his vigorous compositions, unusual colour palette, and loose, radiant brush strokes, Sorolla’s sun-drenched landscapes, beach scenes, and luminous portraits even impressed such contemporaries as Claude Monet. Richly illustrated and with newly researched essays by noted scholars, this important book reveals much new information about Sorolla’s activities and relationships with other artists in Europe. Included are more than one hundred paintings reflecting the artist’s career, from his early work in Paris in which the influence of the French Impressionists is clearly evident, to the distinctive pictures that reflect his mature and celebrated style.

About the Authors:

Véronique Gerard-Powell is chief curator and senior lecturer in the history of art at the University of Paris-Sorbonne and is a specialist in Spanish painting and the history of collecting.
Dominique Lobstein is former head of documentary studies in the painting department of the Musée d’Orsay, Paris.
María López Fernández is chief curator at Mapfre Foundation, Madrid.
Blanca Pons-Sorolla is the foremost scholar on the work of Joaquín Sorolla and has written and contributed to numerous books, including Sorolla: The Masterworks (Skira Rizzoli, 2012). She is the artist’s great-granddaughter.

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