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The spiritually inspired pictures of Agnes Pelton (1881–1961) have their roots in the desert of California, a place where the artist settled in 1932 and where she lived until her death. She wrote of her highly symbolic paintings that her pictures were “like little windows”, which opened up a view into the interior, her “message of light to the world”.In the 1920s Agnes Pelton started to explore abstract painting, because this offered her the possibility of translating esoteric topics into pictures as well as interpreting earth and light in a spiritual way. Like her fellow-artist Georgia O’Keeffe, Pelton deliberately turned her back on the art scene of the East Coast. She was celebrated for her abstract compositions: “… it is simply an oasis of beauty for the eye”, was how American Art News eulogised her work. After her death Pelton’s work disappeared from the public focus for a long time; today her important artistic contribution to American modernism is acknowledged once more.

Fresh from their success with "Modernism London Style", hailed by The Financial Times on 29.6.13 as 'this gorgeous photographic survey', photographer Niels Lehmann and editor Christoph Rauhut present their latest exciting project. Fragments of Metropolis documents all the remaining Expressionist buildings in Berlin, arguably the movement’s most important architectural centre. The architecture of Expressionism heralded the onset of the roaring twenties. Berlin's remaining Expressionist buildings demonstrate a great creativity of form and a skilful use of light, colour and material. In contrast to the Bauhaus architecture of the same era, they sought complexity, vertical enhancement and drama to create the modern metropolis. Fragments of Metropolis documents 120 buildings in Berlin and its environs with Niels Lehmann's new photographs, drawings, an illustrated index of every building, and maps that divide the locations into areas. In celebrating the birth of the metropolis Berlin, the book is the rediscovery an important part of the city's heritage.

A journey back to eighteenth-century Europe: this volume vividly reveals how the two painters Canaletto and Bellotto used the latest optical instruments and analytical observation to create a fascinatingly lifelike image of urban architecture. At the same time, through theatrical staging, they transformed streets and squares into vibrant platforms for human society – populated by aristocrats and street vendors, courtly ceremony and everyday labour. Their pictures offer a wealth of narrative detail in which viewers are only too happy to lose themselves.

The astonishing work of T. Lux Feininger (1910–2011) – from aquatic worlds to the cosmos of animal and plant life all the way to geometric abstraction, this lavishly illustrated volume provides a multifaceted new approach to the artist. Paintings and drawings, photographs, set designs, and commercial graphic works offer a comprehensive view of the artist and an expression of modern romanticism.The play of light and shadow, visionary images, and vibrant colours shaped the work of T. Lux Feininger. The son of the famed Bauhaus master Lyonel Feininger studied at the Bauhaus himself and later worked in America. Over the course of nine decades, his consistently superb output was shaped by romantic ideals of primordial inspiration. An artistic oeuvre full of dream worlds and longing, wit and imagination!

Josef Sudek, the 'Poet of Prague', had a legendary career spanning almost six decades. His craftsmanship and technical virtuosity were unparalleled among his contemporaries. Faced with the legacy of cubism, surrealism and the Czech avantgarde, Sudek sought his own approach, characterized by a striking mastery of light.

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

All the leading figures of French Impressionism found their way to the gallery of Paul Cassirer (1871–1926). This richly illustrated volume traces the footsteps of the art dealer from Berlin whose engagement in cultural circles and work as a gallerist contributed decisively to Impressionism’s eventual acceptance and appreciation in Germany.Degas, Cézanne, Manet, Monet and van Gogh – that these great names are found in so many German collections today is due in particular to Paul Cassirer. The Berlin art dealer was also committed to German Impressionism, supporting Berlin Secession painters such as Liebermann, Corinth, and Slevogt and championing avant-garde artists including Munch, Barlach, Kirchner, and Modersohn-Becker. This volume presents outstanding works of Impressionism and classical modernism that found their way into German museums and collections thanks to Cassirer’s influence.Artists: Paul Cézanne Edgar Degas August Gaul Vincent van Gogh Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Georg Kolbe Max Liebermann Édouard Manet Paula Modersohn-Becker Claude Monet Gabriele Münter Auguste Renoir Max Slevogt

“I am not aiming to provoke. For me, art is a possibility to defend myself, to retaliate.” Gottfried Helnwein’s (b. 1948) paintings of children are both touching and disturbing. The hyperrealistic character of his images serves to intensify this effect still further. The vulnerable and defenseless child serves as the central motif in the artist’s examination of the themes of pain, injury and violence. The catalogue provides an overview of his creative work during the past twenty years. The child in Helnwein’s works embodies and serves as proxy for psycho logical and societal fears. The artist also uses his images to denounce Nazism or to address the Holocaust as well as the taboo subject of abuse. Helnwein is considered a provocateur to this day. He still succeeds in shaking up people with his works, which are produced from photographic references and which captivate us through their technical perfection.

Three hundred works from twenty-one countries form a European panorama of the many facets of realism in art that were ubiquitous in Europe during the 1920s and 1930s. They tell of poverty and misery, economic upheaval, artistic flourishing and progress, urban culture, nightlife, emancipation and diversity.A devastating world war, the Spanish flu, poverty, global economic crisis, National Socialism – such was the 1920s. No other epoch has as many parallels to today as the period between the two world wars. This richly illustrated volume brings together treasures from across Europe, offering fresh inspiration through superb works of art that remain strikingly relevant. The eclectic period known as the Golden Twenties promises to be a magnet for visitors in Chemnitz, the European Capital of Culture in 2025. Artists: Aleksandra Beļcova, Maria Blanchard, Otto Dix, Pranas Domšaitis, Stina Forssell, August Jansen, Jean Jacoby, Alexander Kanoldt, Pyke Koch, Béla Kontuly, Ivan Kos, Sonja Kovačić-Tajčević, Lotte Laserstein, Rafał Malczewski, Milada Marešová, Ubaldo Oppi, Sergius Pauser, Cagnaccio di San Pietro, William Roberts, Ángeles Santos, Franz Sedlacek, Ilona Singer-Weinberger, Ludomir Sleńdziński, Niklaus Stoecklin, Marijan Trepše, Kiril Tsonev, Gerda Wegener, Carel Willink.

It was a rivalry that sparked artistic masterpieces. The lavishly illustrated publication looks at the relationship between the two towering figures of Austrian Modernism, Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele. They were rivals and masterful networkers; their race for success and recognition opens up a previously untold chapter of modern art.Oskar Kokoschka and Egon Schiele were rising stars in early 20th-century Vienna, and their early work laid the foundations for Austrian Expressionism. Their rivalry is as exceptional as their networks and artworks. When Egon Schiele died in 1918 at the age of only 28, his attempt at reconciliation with Kokoschka having failed, the older artist still had six decades ahead of him, during which he would be celebrated internationally as a major Austrian figure. But he never escaped Schiele’s shadow; quite the contrary. With historical documents and art reproductions, the publication shows in detail the feud that these two artists fought.

The Architecture of Expressionism is the upheaval of architecture in the roaring twenties – with regionally different emphases, schools and protagonists. The series’ third volume documents all surviving buildings in Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovak ia. The shared heritage of this important European region is presented in a fascinating rediscovery.The enthusiasm for the expressionist metropolis, an architecture of complexity, verticality and theatricality, in the 1920s captured also East - Central Euro pe. Despite regional differences, the surviving fragments bear witness to a determined will of form and a rich, skilful handling of colour, material and light. Joint together, the buildings tell the story of the expressionist vision of a new modern society . In contemporary photographs and plan drawings Fragment of Metropolis – East documents 170 buildings in Bratislava, Brno, Gdansk, Hradec Králové, Katowice, Kraków, Legnica, Prague, Szczecin, Ústí nad Labem, Warsaw, Wroclaw, as well as many other places. A detailed index and clearly arranged maps complete the reference work.

Louis Alphonse Poitevin was an outstanding inventor, chemist, engineer, scientist, artist and photographer. This publication provides a unique opportunity to cast a wide-ranging gaze at the life and work of the famous pioneer of photography on the basis of a large number of photographs and the results of the latest research.For over 35 years Poitevin (1819–1882) experimented with chemical and mechanical processes in order to make photographs printable and more durable. Poitevin recognised how important photography would become as a means of illustrating printed books. He developed the first practicable processes which could be applied in order to make the printing of books illustrated with photos possible for the very first time. This volume assembles photographs and the results of experiments which permit a comprehensive insight into Poitevin’s work and which set his achievements in a technical and art-historical context.

Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) is the one artist whose name we associate in particular with Viennese Jugendstil and the “Golden Age”.As a sought-after painter of frescoes and the founding president of the Vienna Secession, as the portraitist of fashionable ladies and as an illustrator of unashamed eroticism, Klimt was both the enfant terrible and the darling of Viennese society, who created icons of art history with works like The Kiss and his portraits of Adele Bloch-Bauer.

In a time like our own, where a young generation feels a great need to change our way of living, thinking and organizing ourselves, the publication on the artist group Brücke feels particularly relevant. These young artists also wanted to renew art and life in the German Imperial Empire and have ever since inspired younger generations of artists.In bright paintings with simplified forms and large fields of color they expressed rather their feelings than an external reality. They were interested in topics like man and nature, the naked body, portraits, self-portraits, the merging of life and art and life in the vibrant metropolis of Berlin. The catalogue discusses among others how we today perceive and can take on challenging themes like inspiration from African and Oceanian colonial cultural objects and of very young female models.

An international group of experts recount the history of Dada from its beginning in 1916 through to the 1930s. The volume’s focus is on the movement’s political motives and social activity, which served to unite this heterogeneous group of visual artists, writers and figures from the theatre. Emerging from the experience of the First World War, Dada artists issued strong warnings about the rise of the Nazi dictatorship. The book vividly demonstrates how vital artistic voices can be in resisting inhumane and anti-democratic tendencies. Artists: Johannes Baader, Hugo Ball, Erwin Blumenfeld, Paul Citroen, Otto Dix, Otto Griebel, George Grosz, John Heartfield, Marta Hegemann, Emmy Hennings, Hannah Höch, Heinrich Hoerle, Richard Huelsenbeck, Franz Jung, Walter Mehring, Rudolf Schlichter, Kurt Schwitters, Sophie Taeuber-Arp.

In 1921/22 Édouard Vuillard created a cycle of six paintings for the entrance hall of the Villa Bauer in Basel. Four large-format pictures show exhibition rooms in the Louvre from Antiquity to French Rococo painting. Two overdoors provide an intimate insight into the artist’s art collection.The cycle of paintings is of outstanding quality as regards both content and form, but it to date has seldom been examined and exhibited. It was created immediately after the end of the First World War and the re-opening of the Louvre. Vuillard’s Louvre pictures are a humanist manifesto for the social importance and responsibility of museums as places that preserve the evidence of human creativity for future generations.

Desire, eroticism, playing with gender – these qualities in the works of queer artists are not regarded here as external to the creative process, but rather as foundational. By approaching the art through a perspective of queer aesthetics, the aim is to discover the visual worlds of hitherto little-known figures of international Modernism, from Eastern and Western Europe and from North and South America. Experimenting with alternative lifestyles is reflected in new visual languages, perspectives, and a different aesthetic. “Modern utopias of abolishing the gender binary,” “Queer avant-gardes” and “The potential in queer readings of abstraction” are only some of the compelling topics presented in this volume, which also recounts the history of queer lives during war, persecution, and resistance. Artists: Natalie Clifford Barney, Richmond Barthé, Rosa Bonheur, Romaine Brooks, Til Brugman, Paul Cadmus, Claude Cahun, Heinrich Campendonk, Jean Cocteau, Ithell Colquhoun, Nils Dardel, Beauford Delaney, Leonor Fini, Gluck, Hannah Hoch, Ludwig von Hofmann, Valentine Hugo, Robin Ironside, Lotte Laserstein, Marie Laurencin, George Platt Lynes, Maria Martins, Marcel Moore, Marlow Moss, Ismael Nery, Richard Bruce Nugent, Meret Oppenheim, Milena Pavlovic-Barili, Glyn Warren Philpot, Gregorio Prieto, Anton Prinner, Sonja Sekula, Florine Stettheimer, Pavel Tchelitchew, Toyen, Paule Vezeley, Ethel Walker, Nicolaas Warb, Gerda Wegener, Irene Zurkinden.

Emil Nolde was one of the most important exponents of Expressionism, and is consid ered one of the main precursors of modernism. His virtuoso handling of colour and the incomparable expressiveness of his paintings, watercolours, and Unpainted Pictures astound viewers again and again, and ensure that every exhibition of his work is a great success.This volume was produced in close collaboration with the Nolde Stiftung Seebüll. The authors — both noted Nolde experts — illuminate Nolde’s life and work and provide extended discussions of key compositions. The richly illustrated essay section and biography are supplemented by rarely seen documents from the artist’s archive, making the book especially attractive to bibliophiles.

Dazzling mosaic pictures made of glittering shards of light-reflecting colored glass embellish Rome’s oldest churches and tell an enduring story of beauty, faith, and artistry across a thousand years. This book brings these little-known masterpieces to life while exploring their meaning, historical context, and spiritual power.Through brilliant full-color photographs with lavish details, Wendy A. Stein presents twelve ensembles of mosaic preserved in nine churches. The subjects reveal their glory as their imagery is decoded, telling the story of an ideal Rome whose power was derived from both its imperial past and its Christian legacy. Together, the mosaics embody the interpretation of light as an expression of the divine. With a detailed map to easily locate the churches, this volume is a perfect travel companion.

Boomtown Amsterdam – light and shadow of a metropolis reflected through outstanding portraits During the 17th century, Amsterdam became one of the leading economic centres in Europe. The city and its population grew rapidly, trade and art flourished. The influential bourgeoisie shaped the fortunes of the city and confidently celebrated itself in magnificent group portraits by the city’s leading artists, first and foremost Rembrandt.More than in any other city, the group portrait developed in Amsterdam as a mirror of a powerful social elite, especially the members of the marksmen’s guilds and the regents of social institutions. And yet their good fortune had its price, for the roots of the city’s Golden Age lay in a colonialist trading policy and a rigid social order. This volume shows both sides of the coin, with images and stories of a plural society telling of wealth and inequality, good fortune and ruin, power and impotence.

Munch’s pictorial worlds – the initial impetus for modernism Edvard Munch’s radical modernity in painting was a challenge for his contemporaries. This applied in particular to the art scene in Berlin around 1900 which the Norwegian Symbolist artist influenced profoundly. In return, he received support there and was able to continue to develop his work. The publication is lavishly illustrated and describes knowledgeably the story of Munch and Berlin. In 1892 the Association of Berlin Artists invited the still-unknown Edvard Munch (1863–1944) to an exhibition. The public was shocked by the colourful, sketch-like pictures. The artist enjoyed the furore and moved to the city on the Spree, where he repeatedly sojourned until 1908. Here he learned the techniques for printed graphics and presented for the first time paintings in several continuous series which would become central to his oeuvre. In Berlin, before long, the concept of the “Magic of the North” (Stefan Zweig) was no longer associated with romantic or naturalistic fjord landscapes, but with Munch’s psychologically concentrated pictorial worlds.

When the State Bauhaus opened in Weimar in 1918, the Swiss artist and art theorist Johannes Itten (1888 – 1967) was one of the first teachers to be appointed by Walter Gropius. With his preliminary course, Itten had a considerable effect on the creative training in the Bauhaus; to this day his insights into the theory of colours set standards in art education and in the field of design. Enquiring mind and lecturer, painter and art teacher – Johannes Itten was a very thoughtful artist personality which was reflected in numerous theoretical texts and artworks covering a wide range of styles. Constantly in dialogue with students and colleagues as well as in a study of other cultures and artistic ideas, Itten created works in which he examined colours, their aura, contrasts and forms. Inspired by Adolf Hölzel, his teacher at the Stuttgart Academy, Itten developed, amongst other things, the famous doctrine of colour types whose significance extends far beyond the realms of art into everyday culture. The acknowledged Itten expert Christoph Wagner introduces the artist with his complex and symbolic work and traces an arc from the revolutionary Bauhaus teacher and founder of various art schools to the art theorist of the theory of colours.

When Paula Modersohn-Becker’s artistfriends examined her extensive estate afew weeks after her death, they were overwhelmed.They only gradually realised thatin the painter, who had died so young, theyhad had an outstanding artist in their midst.Modersohn-Becker was largely unrecognisedduring her lifetime but is regarded today asone of the pioneers of Expressionism.The sculptor Bernhard Hoetger was one of the few who recognised hertalent from an early stage. Hoetger’s memories of Paula Modersohn werepublished in 1920 as an authentic contemporary document in the seriesJunge Kunst. They are reprinted as a facsimile in this revised and extendededition. The volume is a bibliophilic highlight with an essay explaining theartist’s life and work from a present-day perspective, together with herbiography and some 40 illustrations of her most important works.

Helen Frankenthaler’s (1928–2011) radical approach to paint and material creates images pulsating with colour. During the postwar period in the United States, she was a leading figure in abstract art. This volume brings together nearly fifty works, providing a comprehensive overview of the world’s largest private collection of Helen Frankenthaler’s works – on display at the recently opened Museum Reinhard Ernst in Wiesbaden. In Frankenthaler’s works, paint and canvas become one. The soak-stain technique she developed allows the paint to seep directly into unprimed fabric. The result is a pictorial effect like no other: colour spaces open up, flowing into one another, sometimes saturated, sometimes transparent. Above all, the pictures show an artist willing to take risks: by setting no limits to her artistic work, Frankenthaler was able to create liberated, large-scale paintings full of radiance. Her groundbreaking body of work remains highly relevant today.

A master of Belgian Symbolism rediscovered! Félicien Rops’s (1833–1898) erotic works remain provocative today – and in the nineteenth century, they transgressed every boundary of art. With a keen eye and a sharp pen, Rops exposed the hypocrisies of the respectable middle class. “I am Rops, and I wish to be no other!” he declared, and adhered to this maxim throughout his life.The most poisonous berry of Symbolism, a scourge of the bourgeoisie – many terms have been used to describe Rops’s radical art. Celebrated by writers such as Charles Baudelaire and Joris-Karl Huysmans, he was a transgressive figure who deliberately aimed his works against the double standards of bourgeois society. His pictures – representing an absolute highpoint of printmaking and draughtsmanship from the period – invite a critical examination of fin-de-siècle social attitudes, particularly with regard to gender roles.

The monograph on Egon Schiele edited by Rudolf Leopold in 1972 forms the basis for Egon Schiele’s world fame. This important document of art-historical literature has long been out of print, but it is now available once more in a revised edition with an updated catalogue raisonné. At the same time this magnificent volume provides an insight into the artist’s life through letters, sketches and documents.Rudolf Leopold recognised back in the 1950s Schiele’s outstanding significance for art. He was largely responsible for ensuring that the artist received the place he deserved in art history and public awareness. The monograph presented Schiele’s paintings, watercolours and drawings chronologically in large-format colour plates. It is complemented by a profound examination of his motifs, studies, sketches and documents and provides a comprehensive overview. The current edition pays tribute to Leopold’s achievement and the revised catalogue raisonné reflects the current state of research.

In a time like our own, where a young generation feels a great need to change our way of living, thinking and organizing ourselves, the publication on the artist group Brücke feels particularly relevant. These young artists also wanted to renew art and life in the German Imperial Empire and have ever since inspired younger generations of artists.In bright paintings with simplified forms and large fields of color they expressed rather their feelings than an external reality. They were interested in topics like man and nature, the naked body, portraits, self-portraits, the merging of life and art and life in the vibrant metropolis of Berlin. The catalogue discusses among others how we today perceive and can take on challenging themes like inspiration from African and Oceanian colonial cultural objects and of very young female models. Artists include Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Max Pechstein, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff.

In 1883 Paul Gauguin abandons his prominent banking career and decides that »from now on I will pai nt every day«. The co - founder of Synthetism and trailblazer of Expressionism turns his back on the bourgeois world, leaves his wife and children, and, in 1891, sets out for the South Sea, financing his journey through the sale of thirty paintings. His thou ghts on art, his existential worries, his discovery of color and his search for paradise come to life again in the excerpts from his letters and statements compiled in this volume. Together with some forty color reproductions of his works, his biography, a nd a preface by an expert, the book introduces readers in a very special way to Gauguin’s universe.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Alfons Mucha went to the United States for four years as a lecturer, the world-famous poster designer, Art-Nouveau book illustrator, designer, photographer and painter was greeted with enthusiasm. Mucha is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Jugendstil; he knew how to move between the various genres more skilfully than virtually any other artist of his day.After training as a stage decorator in Vienna, Mucha travelled via Munich to Paris. There he created a stir in the 1890s with his stylistically refined and elegantly executed posters. These designs were not only his artistic breakthrough; they also revolutionised the aesthetic of what was still a new medium. Mucha’s later works also demonstrated the inimitable “Mucha style,” which celebrated floral elements, lines and beauty and which is lavishly illustrated in this book.