Great Masters of Art – serie

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.

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.

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.

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.

The art academy failed to recognise his talent; he rejected the contemporary art scene in Vienna; and his visionary work was largely neglected during his lifetime: the painter Richard Gerstl (1883–1908), whose creative period lasted for just four intensive years, is regarded today as one of the most important representatives of Austrian Expressionism for his portraits and landscapes. With his early pictures Self-Portrait against a Blue Background and The Sisters Karoline and Pauline Frey Richard Gerstl began to create an oeuvre which was well ahead of his times and which made him one of the pioneers of Abstract Expressionism. In 1906 Gerstl met the musician Arnold Schönberg. He embarked upon an affair with the latter’s wife Mathilde, who briefly left her husband but then returned to him in 1908. Gerstl not only lost his lover but was also socially isolated; he committed suicide during that same year. His work sank into oblivion

Vivid descriptions provide an insight into his painterly work: “… At the moment I am immersed in my work with the clear-sightedness or blindness of a man in love. This mixture of colours is something that is quite new for me and when I see it I am beside myself …” It is not for nothing that the letters are regarded by art historians as one of the most important sources for their research. The excerpts from the letters quoted in this volume are often dramatic snapshots. They provide readers with easy access to Van Gogh’s personality as an artist and to his work and may even surprise some art experts. The colour illustrations, some of them double-page spreads, a detailed biography of Van Gogh and an essay which reflects a contemporary painter’s view of the artist, make this volume a special gift for every admirer of Van Gogh.

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.

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 – 1938) is one of the most important artist personalities of the twentieth century; many of his works have become icons of Expressionism. Vacillating between self - doubt and egocentricity, the artist created an incomparably mult i - faceted oeuvre with a remarkable instinct for the trends and imbalances of his time. Kirchner was the driving force behind and the most radical member of the artists’ association “Die Brücke”. He embarked on a promising career which reached a first zeni th in the expressive works of his Berlin years. His ecstatic creative impulse was the result of one of the “loneliest times of my life, in which an agonising restlessness constantly drove me out by night and day.” Even after Kirchner had found a new home i n Davos in 1917, his life continued to be full of tension and marked by phases of mental instability and unbroken creative energy. Anxious to ensure the correct reception of his works, during these years Kirchner invented the art critic Louis de Marsalle a nd published reviews of his own works under this pseudonym. This colourful and fascinating artist personality is presented by Thorsten Sadowsky, the author of this volume, in a knowledgeable and lucid manner through examples of his works and the stations of his life

Elegant sailing ships, expansive seascapes, crystal - clear spread - out views of architecture – with his unique pictorial language and range of subjects Lyonel Feininger became one of the most important artists of Classic Modernism, whose works remain very popular to this day.It was in Paris that Lyonel Feininger (1871 – 1956) abandoned his successful career as a caricaturist and began a life as an independent artist. Initially his pictures are peopled with grotesque, wild, travesty - like figures inspired by the street scenes of Paris. Shortly afterwards he discovered the typical pictorial subjects which would make him world-famous. Seldom has Feininger’s artistic development from his early works to his last pictures in the United States been shown with such brilliance. With unpublished photographs and extracts from the unpublished diary of his wife Julia, this artist monograph provides an in-depth insight into the life and work of Feininger and will even surprise those who are familiar with his art.

Admired by contemporaries as an artistic “jack - of - all - trades”, Koloman Moser (1868 – 1918) is regarded today as one of the most important representatives of the Viennese Secession of around 1900. As a graphic artist and designer Moser was unparalleled in his artistic diversity, creating furniture, textiles, and objects – for the Wiener Werkstätte among others – that are icons of Modernism, as well as leaving behind an impressive oeuvre of paintings.A group of progressive artists, including Koloman M oser, founded “The Association of Visual Artists of Austria, Secession” under the leadership of Gustav Klimt in 1897. Moser in particular is considered the outstanding graphic artist of the Secession, thanks to his design of posters, exhibition concepts, a nd of the journal Ver Sacrum. He was the ideal master for the formation of the Gesamtkunstwerk “Vienna circa 1900”, hardly surpassed in imagination and productivity. He applied his incredible virtuosity and inexhaustible fantasy to a variety of materials. In 1903 Moser founded, together with Josef Hoffmann and the industrialist Fritz Waerndorfer, the “Wiener Werkstätte” [Viennese Workshops]. The close cooperation between the designing artists and the master craftsmen allowed a completely new level of qualit y of to be attained in artisan craftwork. After 1907 Koloman Moser concentrated on painting once more. This publication presents exceptional examples of his art, drawn primarily from the Leopold Collection and situating them in a biographical and art histo rical context.

In 1926 22 year - old Dutchman Willem de Kooning (1904 – 1997) travelled to the USA on a British freighter – without papers and hidden in the machine room. The young art student eked out a living by painting houses, signs and façades, before he was able aft er eight years to dedicate himself entirely to painting.In the United States he established contacts with the art scene and forged friendships with artists such as Arshile Gorky, Franz Kline, Clifford Still, Jackson Pollock, and Mark Rothko. Today De Ko oning belongs to the outstanding painters of Abstract Expressionism and together with Jackson Pollock is regarded as a pioneer of Action Painting. This publication vividly examines De Kooning’s life, marked by self - doubts, successes, new beginnings, excess es, and scandalous paintings, as well as the evolution of his artistic work. In addition, author Corinna Thierolf opens up exciting perspectives on De Kooning’s work by revealing entirely new, surprising relationships with the works of fellow artists such as Franz Marc, Piet Mondrian, or Wassily Kandinsky.

Marianne von Werefkin was not only a talented artist but also a shrewd free thinker and hostess: at the beginning of the twentieth century famous artists including Wassily Kandinsky, Gabriele Münter, Alfred Kubin, Adolf Erbslöh, Erma Bossi, Franz Marc and August Macke assembled in Marianne von Werefkin’s salon in the Schwabing district of Munich. After a long break from painting in order to further her companion Alexej Jawlensky, Werefkin returned to her own art in 1906 and created fascinating works in a new, expressive style. Descended from a family of Russian aristocrats, the artist was an important forerunner and co-founder of the “Neue Künstlervereinigung München” (Munich New Artist’s Association), from which the “Blauer Reiter” developed. In addition to the artist’s early works from Russia and the Expressionist pictures which resulted from her sojourns in the region around Murnau, the Werefkin specialist Brigitte Salmen presents an appreciation of the artist’s later work, which is less well known and which was created in Ascona, where she lived in exile in Switzerland.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), painter, photographer, Bauhaus teacher and founder of the “New Bauhaus” and the “School of Design” in Chicago, is one of the most important artist personalities of the modern age. As one of the first artists to work in multiple media, who practised painting, sculp-ture, photography, film and design as equally valid art genres, he set stan-dards which are still relevant today.Appointed to the Bauhaus in Weimar by Walter Gropius in 1923, Moholy- Nagy also followed him to Dessau before leaving Nazi Germany in 1933, eventually finding a second home in Chicago in 1937. Both as a teacher and an artist he pursued his revolutionary vision of uniting art and life in order to permit artistic activities to flow over into everyday life. Moholy- Nagy made an important contribution in particular in the recognition of photography, which as a new medium had hitherto not been regarded as art. This volume provides excellent insight into the life and work of the avant-garde artist.

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.

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.

“I was thrilled”, was Andy Warhol’s enthusiastic reaction to the pictures of Florine Stettheimer (1871–1944). Many of the elements of her work inspired his Pop Art. During Stettheimer’s life her sensuous and ironic paintings with their numerous figures were valued highly by artists and curators, although the general public remained largely unaware of their merits. Only after her death did her close friend Marcel Duchamp organise a retrospective in the Museum of Modern Art. The art and literature scene of Roaring Twenties New York gathered at Florine Stettheimer’s extravagant parties. Surrounded by the cultivated and yet unconventional “Dada flair”, the artist staged her pictures as a performance – and was thereby well ahead of her time. As an outstanding painter she was not only at the heart of the American art business, but also attracted attention with her eccentric, subversive and often humorous poems, as well as demonstrating her talent as a stage and costume designer in the theatre. This bibliophile monograph about the multitalented artist is lavishly illustrated and tells a new, exciting history of the modern age through her artworks.

The painter Hans Purrmann (1880–1966) ranks among the most important colourists of twentieth- entury art. Drawing on Henri Matisse and the expressionists, he developed a distinct and acclaimed artistic practice over the course of a life lived in places from Munich to Paris to Berlin to Florence to Switzerland. Part of the secret of Hans Purrmann’s art is that in his work he translated the visible in a very specific and vibrant manner. With irrepressible curiosity, attentiveness and an unerring eye for beauty and the primal and essential, he produced works whose classification as “representational painting” falls short. In fact, his place in art history is one which continues to offer points of departure for modernism [“einen für die Moderne bis heute anschlussfähigen Rang”: in der Kunst ist die Moderne eine abgeschlossene Epoche]: in 1955 Purrmann was included in documenta I in Kassel, and in 1962 he was the subject of a major retrospective at the Haus der Kunst in Munich which was hailed by the press as a sensation. Based on new sources, Christoph Wagner presents the life and work of Hans Purrmann and places the painter as a prominent protagonist within the coordinates of twentieth-century art history.

His paintbrush set everything in motion: the landscape of Provence, the colourful still lifes, his portraits and the picturesque coast of southern France. More than any other artist, Paul Cézanne, the “Father of Modernism”, captured the light and the play of colours of the South in his pictures and lent them through his new pictorial language a liveliness and dynamism which continue to fascinate viewers to this day.Paul Cézanne (1839 – 1906) painted the Montagne Sainte-Victoire, a rocky massif near his birthplace Aix-en-Provence, some 80 times. The artist translated the interplay of sunlight and shadow on the constantly changing stone into pictures on the threshold of abstraction. Today they are seen as icons of art history and they underline Cézanne’s reputation as one of the most important pioneers of Classical Modernism. Countless artists, including Matisse, Derain, Picasso, Braque and Léger found inspiration in Cézanne’s ideas on colour modulation and pictorial composition. In this publication the author Christoph Wagner positions Cézanne as an artistic genius who opened up for future generations a completely new view of the world through his paintings and watercolours.

Conrad Felixmüller (1897–1977) is regarded as one of the most important representatives of the Second Generation of German Expressionism. He celebrated initial major successes with his art during the Weimar Republic. This volume illustrates the life and work of this unusual artist, whose creative career reflects more than half a century of art and contemporary history.In January 1919 Felixmüller founded the avant-garde Dresdner Sezession Gruppe 1919, whose members also included Otto Dix and Peter August Böckstiegel as well as other fellow artists. The works from the early 1920s reflect not only his interest in these people but also his political commitment. Under National Socialism Felixmüller’s works were proscribed as “degenerate”; after 1945 he endeavoured to continue his work in the GDR, albeit under new auspices. Ten years before his death, Felixmüller moved to West Berlin, where he lived to see the rediscovery of his work.

The youngest member of the Blauer Reiter group was overshadowed for a long time by fellow painters such as Wassily Kandinsky, Franz Marc, August Macke, and Paul Klee. But in recent years, Heinrich Campendonk has enjoyed an unparalleled rediscovery and a new critical assessment of his extensive oeuvre.Biermann described Campendonk’s early work as a unique symphony of color and rhythm. Just a few years later, his pictures would be defamed as “degenerate,” driving him into exile in the Netherlands, where he remained until his death in 1957. In this beautiful volume, the author reveals Campendonk to be one the most fascinating artists of the last century, bringing to life the extraordinary overlap of his artist development with his life and times.

“I want to have an effect at this time, in which people are at such a loss and so much in need of help.” Käthe Kollwitz is the woman artist from 20th-century Germany whose works are best-known internationally. She also enjoys the highest esteem beyond the boundaries of Europe. The inimitable, touching language of her graphic and sculptural works is universally understood and her haunting message is more topical than ever. Outraged at the societal and social ills of her time, Kollwitz devoted herself throughout her life to the representation of people, giving a voice through her works to the distress and grief of the poor and underprivileged. Equally inspired in both expression and artistic execution, she took up topics like parting and death, peace and the sufferings of war. Her intimate portrayal of mothers and children and her self-portraits are full of strength and beauty. They, too, form part of Käthe Kollwitz’s oeuvre and show how multi-faceted her creative works were.

Life and work of the artist and style icon Frida Kahlo in a compact overview. Frida Kahlo has become an icon of art with her powerfully expressive work. Her pictures not only reflect a view of herself, her fears, the biography of her illness, her passions and her joie de vivre; they also take up subjects which were regarded by society as taboo. As a pioneer of the feminist movement, this Mexican artist serves women the world over as a figure of identification. Pride and strength, vulnerability and bitterness all lie close to each other in Frida Kahlo’s art. Her self-portraits, which make up the principal part of her work, not infrequently show a charismatic woman dressed in traditional Tehuana costume, which the artist wore as a visible sign of her culture and her Mexican roots, but also to hide her wounds. Kahlo’s biography had a direct influence on her subjects: her not uncomplicated marriage to the artist Diego Rivera, her tragic accident, and her childlessness, loneliness and grief.