Julia Zaunbauer – författare

Gothic Modern illuminates the pivotal discovery of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz and their artist contemporaries. It explores their deep attraction to the Gothic art of Europe’s north and German lands via paintings, prints and. in other artistic media to imagine a new ‘Gothic modernity’, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories.    The book sheds light on the profound importance. of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe. Kollwitz and their contemporaries. It explores their reimagining of Gothic art between the 1870s and 1920s to create new visions of the artist, ‘belonging’, modern society, sexuality, spirituality and identity. In these ways, a distant Gothic age is recreated as tantalisingly close to ‘modernity’, in short, to making modern art. Dark or radiant, enchanted or uncanny, these sites of ‘Gothic modernity’ inspired Munch’s and Kollwitz’s generation with urgent imaginaries for creating worlds. Artists: Albrecht Altdorfer, Hans Baldung Grien, Ernst Barlach, Max Beckmann, Arnold Böcklin, Edward Burne-Jones, Lovis Corinth, Otto Dix, Albrecht Dürer, Akseli Gallen-Kallela, Vincent van Gogh, Matthias Grünewald, Jacoba van Heemskerck, Hans Holbein d. J., Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Theodor Kittelsen, Paul Klee, Gustav Klimt, Max Klinger, Oskar Kokoschka, Käthe Kollwitz, George Minne, Paula Modersohn-Becker, Edvard Munch, Egon Schiele, Helene Schjerfbeck, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Hugo Simberg, Martin Schongauer, Marianne Stokes

Albrecht Dürer is the undisputed genius of the Northern Renaissance, a visionary unbound by a single medium. He carved a career spanning painting, printmaking, drawing, and art theory, mastering each with dazzling skill. Famous in his own lifetime for his portraits of princes and patricians, his luminous drawings and watercolors transformed the sketch into an art form in its own right: works such as Young Hare stand as marvels of observation, capturing life with a precision and sensitivity that still amaze today. He was native to the bustling city of Nuremberg, but his travels brought him face-to-face with Renaissance humanism, Venetian color, and classical ideals of beauty. These he absorbed and reimagined with northern precision. As court artist to Maximilian I, and confidant of humanists like Erasmus, he moved easily among the great minds of his age, his musings on measurement and proportion establishing him as one of Europe’s great thinkers. But he never stopped producing work of startling intimacy, from unflinching self-portraits and elaborate prints to meticulously observed studies of nature.Featuring every known painting—many reproduced with brand-new photography—and nearly 500 drawings, this graceful volume captures the sweep of Dürer’s genius. From monumental altarpieces to intimate portraits, from delicate studies of the world around him to bold experiments, it reveals an artist both of his time and ahead of it, an innovator whose vision still feels urgent today. More than a compendium, it is a celebration of a polymath who continues to astonish and inspire.