Zbigniew Herbert – författare

A comprehensive overview of renowned Belgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere’s work since 2014, inspired by the figure of the angelBelgian artist Berlinde De Bruyckere has long been a leading light in the international contemporary art world whose sculptures, installations and drawings endeavor to find the meaning of humanity, physicality, suffering and vitality.Conceived in the loneliness and isolation of the COVID-19 pandemic, this book explores De Bruyckere’s recent, never-before-seen work inspired by the figure of the angel as portrayed in myths, stories, literature and art history. According to De Bruyckere, an angel—with its warm, dark wings—provides protection, a refuge from fear. The angel guards against a lonely existence and, even more importantly, against a lonely death. It symbolizes the fragile line De Bruyckere treads between artistic poeticism and engagement with current affairs.  This volume will serve as an essential resource on an artist whose works constitute a provocative and influential addition to the contemporary art canon.Distributed for MercatorfondsExhibition Schedule:Bonnefantenmuseum Maastrich, The Netherlands(March 29–September 26, 2021)

Selected and introduced by J. M. Coetzee and Alissa Valles, an essential gathering of poetry from one of the twentieth century’s pre-eminent literary voicesbe courageous when reason fails you be courageousin the final reckoning it is the only thing that countsBorn in Poland, Zbigniew Herbert was one of the great poets of the twentieth century, moved throughout his work by a powerful sense of humanity in the darkest of times. This new selection brings together poems from across the whole of his writing life, from his first volume Chord of Light in 1956, to works published posthumously in 2024. Direct, lucid, sometimes impish in his ironic humour, and deeply informed not only by the history of his own time, but by the Classical world, here is a poet of huge imaginative range and profundity, who desires always to ‘touch the essence’: to get to the heart of life."He offers what we all need in an age of darkening anxiety and mistrust: a voice of lucid, truly humane observation and integrity. Ethical, often ironical, full of self-doubt; quick, original and vivid." Ruth Padel