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From his first compositions to the colorful flower images of his late years, Vincent van Gogh repeatedly painted still lifes. In this genre, he could try out various pictorial techniques – from depicting space through light and shadow to experimentation with color. Although many of his still life compositions employed traditional approaches to the genre, he ultimately formulated an unmistakably unique artistic style. This lavishly illustrated book revisits the development of Van Gogh’s career and focuses on his still-life paintings, offering new insights into the working process and creative evolution of one of the most radical innovators in the history of modern art.

This publication is the first to focus solely on the abstract strategies and processes contained in Gerhard Richter’s body of work. In the early 1960s, the artist began to call painting into question, an exploration that continues to occupy him to this day. In the 1970s, he responded to the rejection of painting by creating a series of monochrome works in gray. Moreover, he viewed the colour gray as a means of addressing political themes without depicting them in an idealized manner. In his Inpainting series of the 1970s, Richter made brushstrokes and the application of paint his subject. In other works, he photographed small details from his palette and transferred them onto large canvases in a photorealistic manner. In his colour charts, he subjected painting to an objective process by leaving the arrangement of the colours to chance. Since 1976, Richter has created a series of abstract works by applying paint with a brush, scraper, and palette knife, alternating between conscious decision-making and random processes.

Take a journey through art history with legend’s most popular creature. The unicorn has stimulated the imagination like no other animal. It has been documented in many cultures for centuries. Fascination with it continues to this day. While it might have been appropriated as a cute toy or pop culture icon, the history of the unicorn as a symbol is profound and multi-layered— in Western and non-European art, in religion and mythology, in literature, natural science, and medicine. Contributions by Adrien Bossard, Béatrice de Chancel-Bardelot, Barbara Drake Boehm, Séverine Lepape, Michael Philipp, Annabelle Ténèze and Stefan Trinks trace the unicorn back to the ancient world, to medieval manuscripts, altarpieces, sculptures, cabinets of curiosities, and tapestries.Since the nineteenth century, artists such as Arnold Böcklin, René Magritte, and Rebecca Horn have rediscovered the mythical creature for themselves. For the first time, this publication presents a comprehensive summary of the unicorn’s artistic journey from the second millennium BCE to the present day, situating it in the context of art and cultural history.

This stunning exhibition catalog celebrates Max Liebermann, the pioneering figure of German Impressionism, whose own painting and artistic leadership transformed the nation’s cultural landscape.As a groundbreaking painter and head of the Berlin Secession, Max Liebermann championed modernism and introduced French Impressionism to the German Empire. His influence reached far beyond Berlin, sparking a diverse movement that flourished in cities such as Dresden, Stuttgart, Karlsruhe, and Munich.Focusing on Liebermann’s life and legacy, the catalog also examines his achievements as a collector and advocate for the avant-garde. It showcases his celebrated masterpieces alongside works by prominent peers such as Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth, as well as contributions from more underappreciated figures including Gotthardt Kuehl, Maria Slavona, Lesser Ury, and Fritz von Uhde.With numerous chapter introductions and five longer research essays, the book offers a wide-ranging perspective, including topics such as the artistic exchange between France and Germany; the role of Jewish patrons in fostering Germany’s embrace of French art; and the challenges Liebermann faced during the rise of the Nazi regime.Lavishly illustrated and expertly curated, this catalog provides an essential study of Max Liebermann as the central figure of German Impressionism while situating his work within the broader artistic and historical contexts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Among the most celebrated works of Modigliani’s brief butbrilliant career are his large-format nudes. Drenched in colorand glowing with the artist’s deep appreciation of women andthe female form, these works ushered in a new era of nudeportraiture, while also causing an enormous scandal. Thisstunning exhibition catalog offers a new perspective on thisaspect of Modigliani’s work by examining for the first time hisportraits of emancipated women sporting coupe garçonneshaircuts and wearing loin cloths. Modigliani was one of thefirst chroniclers of the femme moderne, which also influencedhis nude painting and the scandal they caused. Featuringlavish reproductions and astute texts by leading scholars, thisvolume also examines Modigliani’s cultural context in EuropeanClassicism, from Toulouse-Lautrec and Cezanne to the work ofhis contemporaries, including Paula Modersohn-Becker, GustavKlimt, Egon Schiele, Jeanne Mammen and Wilhelm Lehmbruck;and traces his impact on future European Modernism and NewObjectivity.

This lavishly illustrated exhibition catalog features seventy career-spanning works by the French avant-garde painter, one of the twentieth century's great colorists and a major proponent of Fauvism.After his participation at the Paris Salon d’Automne of 1905, Maurice de Vlaminck (1876–1958) quickly established himself as a leading figure of the French avant-garde. More than any other member of the Fauves, he keenly identified with the attribute of wildness and early on propagated the image of a modern artist rebel who resolutely turned his back on the rules of academic painting. His central source of inspiration was the oeuvre of Vincent van Gogh, whose works Vlaminck studied at the large solo exhibition which took place at the Bernheim-Jeune Gallery in 1901. Van Gogh’s training as an autodidact as well as his burgeoning myth as an artist genius and social outsider strengthened this identification, which would remain key throughout Vlaminck’s later career. This catalog provides a wide-ranging overview of the painter’s entire oeuvre: from the first compositions he executed at the beginning of the 20th century, through the experiments with Cubism that were inspired by Cézanne and Picasso, to some of his very last landscapes. Throughout, the book recalls Vlaminck’s vital contribution to the development of 20th-century painting, notably his role as one of the most important precursors of Expressionism.

This stunning exhibition catalog celebrates one of Impressionism’s pivotal figures with a comprehensive look at his life and artistic evolution.Born in the Caribbean, Camille Pissarro arrived in France an outsider but quickly became a central figure within the Impressionist collective, where he found like-minded people who valued progressive ideals and revolutionized the art world with their groundbreaking approach to capturing light and everyday life.Filled with high-quality reproductions of landscapes, cityscapes, still lifes, and figure paintings, this volume traces Pissarro’s artistic journey from detailed realism to vibrant Impressionism, his pioneering use of light and color, and his later exploration of post-impressionist techniques. This volume also looks at the social implications of his art, exploring how his beautiful and heroic depictions of farmers and laborers were informed by his utopian ideals and how he envisioned art as a necessary vehicle for social commentary and reform.

Spanning six decades, three continents, and multiple mediums, this exhibition catalog explores one of the most significant and influential artistic movements of the twentieth century.At the beginning of the twentieth century, painting underwent a profound transformation. Artists no longer wanted to depict the visible; they aspired to a new visual language that reduced artistic expression to an interplay of colors, lines, and shapes; reflected the modern world; and transcended national boundaries. A central figure of this art movement was Wassily Kandinsky, who laid the theoretical foundations with his work Point and Line to Plane. This lushly illustrated and highly researched volume showcases how Geometric Abstraction found radical expression in all its variations in Europe, the USA and beyond. It features more than one hundred works by over seventy artists, including Josef Albers, Sonia Delaunay, Barbara Hepworth, El Lissitzky, Agnes Martin, Piet Mondrian, Bridget Riley, Frank Stella, and Victor Vasarely.Essays by leading scholars illuminate the ways these artists were inspired by the advanced technologies and theories of their time, including concepts of the fourth dimension and the space- time continuum. The authors explore the movement through a transnational lens—from Belgium, Germany, and Great Britain, to France, Italy, the Netherlands, Russia, Spain, and the United States; and emphasize the long-neglected role of women in the movement’s advancement. Through its insightful essays and stunning visuals, this volume offers a definitive exploration of how geometric abstraction revolutionized modern art and continues to inspire artists across the globe.

Capturing fleeting natural impressions played a central role in the art of Claude Monet. He deeply engaged with the landscape and light of different places, from the metropolis of Paris to the Seine villages of Argenteuil and Giverny. This lavishly illustrated new paperback edition explores the development of Monet’s art from the 1850s to the 1920s, focusing on the places, both at home and on his frequent travel, from which he drew inspiration for his painting. In addition, the book traces the critical shift in Monet’s art that occurred when he began to focus on series of the same subjects such as haystacks, poplars, and the water lilies and pond at his meticulously designed garden in Giverny. Insightful and revealing, the book deepens our appreciation of Monet’s art and allows us to experience anew his gift for bringing the natural world to life.

Following World War II, Western painting went in completely new directions. A young generation of artists turned their backs on the dominant styles of the interwar period: Instead of figurative representation or geometric abstraction, painters in the orbit of Abstract Expressionism in the US and Art Informel in Western Europe pursued a radically impulsive approach to form, color, and material. As an expression of individual freedom, the spontaneous artistic gesture gained symbolic significance. Large-scale color-field compositions created a meditative space for ruminating the fundamental questions of human existence. The exhibition and catalogue examine the two sister movements against the background of a vibrant transatlantic exchange, from the 1940s through to the end of the Cold War. This lavishly illustrated volume brings together works by more than 50 artists, amongst them Alberto Burri, Jean Dubuffet, Helen Frankenthaler, K. O. Götz, Franz Kline, Lee Krasner, Georges Mathieu, Joan Mitchell, Ernst Wilhelm Nay, Barnett Newman, Jackson Pollock, Judit Reigl, Mark Rothko, Hedda Sterne, Clyfford Still, and Jack Tworkov.

This sumptuous art book offers a unique perspective on the Impressionist achievement, celebrating the magic of the past and revealing its legacy in the reality of the present.In their light-filled landscapes, Impressionist artists created a new way of seeing nature, but what do the places they painted look like one hundred and fifty years on? Inspired by the Barberini Museum’s collection of Impressionist masterpieces, photographer Christoph Irrgang traveled to dozens of European places immortalized in paintings to document the effects of time and modernization on the landscape.Here his photographs are placed side-by-side with gorgeous reproductions of the original paintings—and the results are, in turn, astonishing and illuminating. Readers will discover how artists imbued their settings with a certain aura and how their magic flows into the reality of the present. At Le Havre, where Monet painted the busy port, the efforts of rebuilding after World War II led UNESCO to inscribe it a World Heritage Site. They will travel to the town of Louveciennes, outside Paris, where Renoir painted his gently shaded pathway. And they will inspect the concrete and iron railroad bridge in the town of Argenteuil on the Seine, which Caillebotte depicted as a modern landscape where nature mingled harmoniously with industry. In addition to informative texts about each painting and each location, this book features precise GPS coordinates of each site.This fascinating study in the juxtaposition of art and photography of past and present will have readers desperate to travel in the footsteps of the Impressionists.

For as long as humans have been making art, they have turned to the sun as the source of light, warmth and life itself. It appears as a symbol of limitless power, as the personification of gods and of Christ, and as a harbinger of change. Artists have also used the sun as a means of exploring light and color and as an entrée into discussions about climate. The first of its kind, this catalog investigates visual representations of the sun from antiquity to the present day. It is divided into seven roughly chronological sections that look at both epoch-spanning and period specific examples, including symbolic, allegorical representations, the iconography of mythological subjects, and mimetic qualities such as typology, phenomenology, and emotional effect. It includes more than two hundred stunning reproductions of well- and lesser-known works. Incisive and enlightening texts explore how solar symbolism figured in pre-Christian objects through 17th-century depictions of the “Sun King” Louix XIV; how artists such as Rubens and Monet employed the sun in their narrative paintings; how the Impressionists first investigated the sun’s effects on a landscape; how Neo-Impressionist such as Seurat experimented with color based on the Newtonian analysis of the solar spectrum; and how 20th-century artists incorporated a broad array of abstract, surrealistic, and transformative modes of solar representation into a variety of media.

Signac’s breathtaking artistry comes fully alive in this luxurious exhibition catalog that explores the artist’s influence on Neo-Impressionism—as a painter of light, visionary theorist, and steadfast advocate.This richly informed publication offers a comprehensive view of Paul Signac’s artistic legacy and his decisive impact on the development of Neo-Impressionism. Through more than 70 works from over 30 collections, the book traces Signac’s evolution from a young painter inspired by Seurat to a pioneering figure who helped define one of modern painting’s most radical approaches. It situates Signac within a dynamic network of artists whose shared ideals and innovations shaped the Neo-Impressionist style.Works by Seurat, Cross, Luce, van Rysselberghe, and others— many once held in Signac’s own collection—highlight the spirit of collaboration that sustained the group. Essays by leading scholars examine not only Signac’s artistic innovation but also his roles as theoretician, mentor(?), organizer, and political thinker, offering fresh insights into the movement’s aesthetic and social ambitions. Drawing from previously unpublished archival material, including Signac’s correspondence and diaries, the book offers a rare glimpse into the personal and professional ties that defined the “Néos.” It also revisits key moments—such as the annual Salon des Indépendants—that helped establish Neo-Impressionism’s avant-garde position.With crisp reproductions and a generous layout, this catalog is both a visual celebration and a thoughtful reappraisal. It affirms Signac’s enduring significance—not just as a painter of shimmering light and color, but as a force who helped reshape the trajectory of modern art.

This visually stunning exhibition catalog traces the social and international networks that transformed Impressionism from a Parisian experiment to a global phenomenon.Offering a fresh account of how Impressionism developed, circulated, and gained international momentum, the volume brings together more than 80 key paintings with period documents and new research that reframes the movement as one shaped by relationships as much as by aesthetics.Works by Monet, Morisot, Pissarro, Sisley, Renoir, and their contemporaries reveal how artistic ideas traveled through friendships, shared working sites, and recurring motifs. Rather than presenting painters as solitary innovators, the catalog illuminates the network of figures whose support proved essential to the movement’s growth. Early critical champions such as Émile Zola and Octave Mirbeau shaped public perception; collectors across Europe and the United States helped stabilize new markets; and dealers like Paul Durand-Ruel forged pathways that carried Impressionist painting far beyond France. Clear, concise essays examine the structures that nurtured the avant-garde—cross-border collecting, the rise of independent exhibitions, evolving patterns of taste, and the social settings that connected artists to audiences.At once authoritative and accessible, the catalog offers a compelling perspective on how one of art history’s most celebrated movements gained its momentum, revealing Impressionism as a story of collaboration, exchange, and lasting influence.

Barcelona’s transformation into a crucible of modern art, design, and architecture is explored in this exhibition catalog that setsits artistic flowering in vivid relief.Presenting more than 140 works across painting, architecture, decorative arts, and works on paper, the book offers a wide-ranging portrait of Catalan Modernism between 1880 and 1914—a period during which Barcelona became Spain’s most innovative metropolis and a magnet for artists, architects, writers, and intellectuals.The volume explores this important chapter in Spanish art as the product of a complex cultural environment shaped by social upheaval, rapid industrialization, political volatility, and international artistic influences. Masterpieces by Ramon Casas, Santiago Rusiñol, Isidre Nonell, Joaquim Mir, and Hermen Anglada Camarasa appear alongside architectural models and furnishings by Antoni Gaudí, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, and Josep Puig i Cadafalch, revealing the interplay between the visual and the built environment.Early works by Pablo Picasso underscore the city’s role in the formation of one of the twentieth century’s most influential artists. Beautifully illustrated and intellectually expansive, the catalog offers a fresh and compelling understanding of a city whose art, architecture, and ideas helped reshape the contours of European modernism.