Silvana – serie

This book is published on the occasion of an exhibition in Milan, which was first shown in Murcia (Spain) and after in Siena (September 2009 - January 2010), featuring a selection of 114 pictures, some of which are previoiusly unpublished, almost all of small size, by the famous American photographer Francesca Woodman. Born in Denver in 1958, daughter of the ceramist Betty and the painter George Woodman, Francesca started to work with the camera when she was only thirteen, by making her first self-portrait. In the nine following years, before her suicide in January 1981 when she was only twenty-three, she kept on taking pictures of herself at home, in the midst of nature, on her own or with friends, while in action shots or in studied poses. With texts by Isabel Tejeda, Marco Pierini and Lorenzo Fusi, a biography of the artist and a complete bibliography, this book is the most recent and most complete publication of the artist's work. Text in English and Italian.

What do we see when we observe? What do we see when we observe a photograph? Ghirri's work is distinguished by the tension between the object and its representation, and there is nothing that he loves more than those situations in which boundaries become permeable; his work has taught us a new way of seeing, giving meaning to what is seemingly obvious. This is not the landscape that is normally perceived, but the one that is supposed to be latent, inscribed on the reverse: landscape of memory and fairytale, the landscape of hidden figures and wonders. In this direction, Ghirri has always preferred common and familiar places, already seen, but for the first time 'observed' with different eyes, where everything is suspended between past and future and where, like in the countryside, the world can be imagined as a vision which still arouses wonder. A thought-landscape. Text in English and Italian.

The immense ambition and scale of Gordon Matta-Clark's projects, and their fearless reimagining of the urban landscape, challenged city-dwellers to reconsider the very notion of built structure and the fragility of seemingly unassailable edifices. Matta-Clark's first interventions took place in abandoned, derelict structures, upon which he performed his famous 'building cuts' and 'intersects'. First published in 2008 (for a show at SMS Contemporanea in Siena), and organised thematically and chronologically, this substantial volume looks at these and other bodies of work, such as the Food restaurant, the performances, the 'estates' and the artist's pursuit of alternative economical housing. The catalogue also includes a filmography and critical essays, plus an interview done by Judith Russi Kirshner in 1978. Text in English and Italian.

Throughout the nineteenth century, artists painted the Seine, its light, its banks, its bridges and its ports. Above all, however, it was the impressionists and their emulators, careful observers of modern life, who made it their favourite subject. From dawn to dusk, Claude Monet, Alfred Sisley, Gustave Caillebotte and Armand Guillaumin never grew weary of observing the play of reflections on the surface of the water. Often the Seine also enchanted Auguste Renoir, Camille Pissarro and Berthe Morisot.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of independence for seventeen African countries, the Museum for Fine Arts in Brussels in partnership with the Royal Museum of Central Africa presents during Summer 2010 the festival L'AFRIQUE VISIONNAIRE (VISIONARY AFRICA). This catalogue is published to accompany an exhibition celebrating fifty years of African photography, illustrating how collective identities of postcolonial Africa were built. Panafricanism has become something concrete in the exchange between artists, above all in connection with the elaboration of common aesthetic and research. Photography, in the process of emancipation and the writing of an endogenous history, is undoubtedly the best support: African photographers' innovative role will therefore be highlighted in the process of understanding generational and social changes. The catalogue will include an introduction by Simon Njami and a text by Jean-Loup Pivin.

Magnum Photographers on Film Sets takes readers behind the scenes of cinematic masterpieces including Charlie Chaplin's Limelight (with W. Eugene Smith), Billy Wilder's The Seven Year Itch (with Elliott Erwitt), Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause (with Dennis Stock), Orson Welles' The Trial (with Nicolas Tikhomiroff), John Huston's Moby Dick (with Erich Lessing), Joseph L. Mankiewicz's Suddenly, Last Summer (with Burt Glinn), Andrzej Zulawski's L'important c'est d'aimer (with Jean Gaumy), Michelangelo Antonioni's Zabriskie Point (with Bruce Davidson) and Volker Schlöndorff's Death of a Salesman (with Inge Morath). The publication features both classic and rarely-seen photos of Hollywood's finest such as Montgomery Clift, James Dean, Clark Gable, Katharine Hepburn, Charlton Heston, Dustin Hoffman, Buster Keaton, Klaus Kinski, John Malkovich, Marilyn Monroe, Gregory Peck, Anthony Perkins, Elizabeth Taylor, John Wayne, Natalie Wood and many more. Text in English, Italian and French.

This volume retraces the work of Elliott Erwitt through 136 black & white photographs he has personally selected. His is a sharp and original gaze capable of gently bringing out the humorous, unusual or even ridiculous side of certain aspects of life, especially through street snapshots: "It is a matter of reacting to what you see, without preconceptions; you can find subjects to photograph everywhere, all it takes is simply to notice things, take an interest in what surrounds us, and be concerned with people."Text in English, Italian and French.

Since easel painting began, the figure of Eve has been found in the work of painters from Masaccio to Rubens, taking in Michelangelo, Bosch and Brueghel along the way. In the 12th century, the image of the first woman emerged as being the common theme which brought painters and sculptors together around issues relating to the body. The first woman, or the only woman in an artist's world, Eve is the intrinsic representation of the nude. So many artists, from Gauguin with his exotic Eve or Bonnard with Marthe-Eve, succumbed to this portrayal of nudity as either shameful or as an ideal, inherently primitive. The catalogue presents nearly 70 works from Symbolists, Nabis, Fauvists, Cubists and Surrealists: Gauguin, Bonnard, Rodin, Sérusier, Denis, Redon, Matisse, Dufy, Picasso, Douanier Rousseau, Arp, Giacometti and Chagall. It endeavours to trace the story of Eve, the source for the figurative body, at greater length and in more depth, through essays by Jean Louis Schefer and Véronique Serrano, as well as focus pieces by Gilles Genty, Laurence Madeline, Aline Magnien and Elisabeth Pacoud-Rème. Roberto Mangú's contemporary view talks of the need that present-day painting, and art in general, has for the presence of Eve, in terms of her unchanging qualities.

Featuring over 100 black-and-white photographs, this collection of Bischof's images conveys his sense of empathy and humanity.Text in English, Italian and French.

This book coincides with a related exhibition presented at Palazzo Madama, Museo Civico d'Arte Antica, Turin, but does not specifically document the show. Throughout her long career, Eve Arnold photographed celebrities and Hollywood stars at the height of glamour - such as Marilyn Monroe (a close friend of Arnold's), Joan Crawford, Elizabeth Taylor and Marlene Dietrich - as well as the poor and dispossessed. Her work was sought out by presidents, royalty and political activists: Malcolm X personally asked Eve Arnold to document his fight against racism. For her international work, which took her from Afghanistan to Mongolia and was often commissioned by leading magazines, she received numerous honours and awards, culminating in her election as Master Photographer, the world's most prestigious photographic honour. Eve Arnold includes a biography of the artist, a foreword by Angela Madesani and text by Arnold's close friend Simonetta Agnello Hornby.  Text in English, Italian and French.

The graphics range from the advertising produced for the first steam ships of the 1880s to those for the ocean liners of the 1920s, cruise liners of the 1930s and, finally, those for the last transatlantic lines in the 1960s. Posters: The Sea Voyage collects placards, posters, announcements, advertising leaflets, brochures and pamphlets produced to promote passenger ships, cruises, sea journeys and Atlantic crossings. In addition to identifying these graphics, text by architect and scholar Pablo Piccione contextualises and historicises the development of Italian graphic styles and tastes. Text in English and Italian.

For leading magazines like Life and Regards, David Seymour covered the most significant events of his time: the Spanish Civil War; the places and faces of a Europe ravaged by the Second World War; the hopes placed in the new State of Israel. He also documented a post-war Italy filled with contradictions: the rising stars of the Cinecittà Studios, the Vatican palaces and Venice, along with religious processions and the small rural schools scattered through the South. This volume traces the career of this extraordinary photographer through over 120 shots in black and white. A man who honestly captured the spirit of his time, backed by a strong social conscience, and always determined to be in the middle of the action.Text in English, Italian and French.

The featured ceramics are a less well known facet of Fontana's oeuvre but a medium he continued to explore from his early days right through to the end of his life. Included in this catalogue is Concetto Spaziale (1962), the only ceramic which was exhibited in the acclaimed 1977 Guggenheim retrospective. The Lucio Fontana exhibition at the Hayward Gallery in 1999 went some way to rectifying this underrepresentation, as have other recent museum shows including the beautiful exhibition at the Musée d'Art Moderne de La Ville de Paris in 2014. This project is the result of many years' work and of the collaboration between Amedeo Porro Fine Arts and Ben Brown Fine Arts, with their in-depth knowledge of Fontana's work and close relationship with the Fondazione Fontana. Text in English and Italian.

Through frames, documents, publicity materials, texts, original screenplays, extracts from interviews, letters and declarations, this book traces the fundamental stages of Neorealism and puts the spotlight back on that unrepeatable moment which still fascinates and moves us today, capturing the reflection of what we were and the presage of what we were to become. Text in English and Italian.

Who other than Henri Matisse's daughter Marguerite could describe his engraving in this way? Responsible for validating her father's press-proofs, she is, along with her son Claude Duthuit, the author of this catalogue raisonné of his engravings. She has devoted a large part of her life to allowing this 'unknown continent' to be discovered which is nevertheless essential in understanding the progression of an artist known above all for his mastery of colour.The Matisse Departmental Museum, with the help of the Matisse family, Barbara Duthuit, and some most prestigious institutions, explores in this catalogue all of the engraving techniques used by Matisse from 1900 up to the end of his life. For him, engraving, drawing, painting, and sculpture all had the same importance, and in this work all the key themes that led him to build his research around the human figure, are represented.For the very first time the matrices (woodcut, lithograph, drypoint, etching, linocut...) accompany the works and help us to understand that high standards and hard work, along with an economy of means, led Matisse to transform black into a colour that he used to serve the purity of line.Text in English and French.

This is not the customary exposition by the members of the Faculty Board of the Mendrisio Academy of Architecture-Università della Svizzera italiana, of their vision of the discipline and professional practice of architecture. The contributions embody such themes in varying degrees, but above all they present the cultural frame of reference that each architect believes to be the most significant in explaining his or her personality. The term 'atlas' in the title should therefore be understood as the set of formative lessons, technological and historical curiosities, aesthetic explorations and intellectual orientations that form the expressive canon of each architect. Text in English and Italian.

The 'imaginary' journey that Gastel has developed through publication in magazines - from Vogue Italia to Harper's Bazaar - advertisement campaigns - from Dior to Guerlain - and exhibitions - from Gastel per Donna to Maschere e Spettri - is displayed through the reconstruction of forty years of experimental and commissioned work, in which 'serial' ensembles and individual products highlight the features of his storytelling, his unique use of light and his comparisons between people and objects.The goal is to document his operating method, based on the analysis and presentation of a subject in series: still life, portrait, fashion shot and personal research.

Using Caravaggio's The Cardsharps as the focus, we may understand how the three figures depicted are set in contrast: by social class, age and appearance. These differences are underpinned by the clothing that they wear, and on closer examination, it is apparent that the fabrics described in paint are directly comparable to those of the historic collections of Novara.In their insightful and detailed analysis, the authors of this volume present a comprehensive overview of the development of fashion and fabrics, from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century, when Italy's textile industry was at its peak.Text in English and Italian.

Ewa-Mari Johansson's work is endowed with a sort of internal coherence that appears as stages of a single dialectic path without a real beginning or a definite end. But it has developed in a circular manner - often returning to investigate the same field, but each time with a different and heightened critical and aesthetic awareness. Text in English and Italian.

The success of Christian Dior's first essence, Miss Dior, was so outstanding as to leave its permanent mark in history. Ten years on from the founding of his perfume factory, on 24 October 1957, Christian Dior's untimely death conferred a new dimension to a decade characterised by an uncommon destiny.Text in English and French.

ROMA55 is Maurizio Galimberti's personal tribute to the Eternal City. Following monographs on New York, Berlin, Venice, Beijing and Paris, the 'Instant Artist' redesigns routes and reinvents new perspectives of the districts, monumental architecture, squares and those scenes that have become part of the city's legend. Text in English and Italian.

On the occasion of the 150th anniversary of French painter Pierre Bonnard, the Bonnard Museum pays homage to him by gathering the major pieces from its own collections, along with a set of masterpieces lent by important French public and private collections, among which the Musée d'Orsay and the National Museum of Modern Art in Paris.Text in English and French.

The Monochrome of the Sala delle Asse is a portion of wall decoration left at the drawing stage and represents the roots of one of the sixteen mulberry trees that, regularly spaced on the walls of the room, intertwine above to create a polychrome arboreal pavilion on the vault. The decoration of the room, which was never completed, is historically tied to the name of Leonardo da Vinci by a letter written in April 1498 by Gualtiero da Bascapé, the secretary of Ludovico il Moro, to the duke of Milan, explaining that Lunedì si desarmarà la camera grande da le Asse c[i]oè da la tore. Magistro Leonardo promete finirla per tuto Septembre. The room was subjected to radically changing fortunes over the centuries, and was later the object of two complex restoration campaigns, the first carried out between 1893 and 1902 by Luca Beltrami and the second between 1955 and 1956 by Costantino Baroni. This volume provides an account of the result of these restorations. It describes the complex diagnostic research and the technical assessments that form the foundations of a broader project for the conservation of the painted area. Text in English and Italian.

Giacomelli's landscape is both real and invented, just as his eye is both visionary and visual. It is a pretext to represent another situation. His landscapes are 'written landscapes' in which the horizon is almost completely eliminated: a fusion of time and non-time. In his landscapes, the relationship between countryside and memory, between Giacomelli and a denied and accepted mother earth, is more dramatic, resulting in a dry and great representation. He captured the marks, material and furrows of the earth and in them he found parallels with human bodies, since the earth, in his poetics, is the flesh of man. Text in English and Italian.

"Marialuisa Tadei succeeds in giving the mystery of life abstract form, implying that it trascends the nature in which it ordinarily manifests itself suggesting that it is unwordly - beyond space and time - like God's creative wisdom." - Donald KuspitTadei's sculptures encourage the awareness of a vital and universal spirituality, leaving the mind free to find its sense of immortality. This monograph dedicated to the artist showcases her works, characterised by her bold use of colour and materials, including mosaic, glass, bronze and feathers, and by the lyrical and spiritual qualities of her artistic language.

An item of jewellery is traditionally thought of as an ornament and decoration, a useless object, with no particular function or use, an embellishment that has no practical purpose. This book investigates the evolution of functional jewellery from the past to present day, while the three prestigious introductory articles by Alba Cappellieri, Paola Venturelli and Elisabeth Fischer show how jewellery has always played a functional role, especially in regard to clothing, throughout the ages.The various functions of jewellery are then defined by the projects of young international designers, finalists in the Next Jeneration Jewellery Talent Contest, in an exhibition under the curatorship of Susanna Testa.Functional Jewellery is a valuable tool for understanding the complexity and beauty of jewellery, even in ordinary, everyday gestures, like pinning the edges of a cape, buttoning a coat, styling hair or protecting nail varnish.Text in English and Italian.

This book explores the different application of the concept of 'tesserae' by sculptors beginning in the 1930s, when Lucio Fontana and Mirko Basaldella first embarked upon their research on mosaic and the plastic arts. The peculiar creative process behind their creations was inspired by primitive Mesoamerican sculptures decorated with mosaics, viewed by the two artists in different times and places, and also by the growing interest in ancient Latin American art that was felt in Italy from the 1920s onwards. While Fontana and Mirko may be defined as the 'forerunners' of the happy union between sculpture and mosaic in the 1960s and 1970s, in the following decades it is Nane Zavagno and Riccardo Licata who set the main research trends - the former, especially for that which regards the use of 'untraditional' materials, and the latter for the use of mosaic tesserae in contemporary art. Subsequently, the art of mosaic sculpture unfolds following all of the main expressive moods of 20th and 21st century sculpture - iconic or aniconic, poetics or narrative, symbolic or conceptual - intensifying and emerging as a 'specific genre' at the close of the 1970s thanks to works by Antonio Trotta, Athos Ongaro and the Transavantgarde movement of Chia and Paladino. Ultimately, from the second half of the 1980s to the present, research and artistic production multiplies with varying and peculiar results - also thanks to some works of international relevance made in Ravenna, such as the tomb of Rudolf Nureyev in Paris. Hence the 'sculpture and mosaic' phenomenon witnesses a surge forwards with artists from all over the world who employ it in increasingly innovative and unexpected ways, consolidating the perception that mosaic sculpture has by now become an independent art form.Text in English and Italian.

This book explores De Martini's methods, based on the close dialogue between designers, artisans and art directors during the prototype development phase. De Martini's notable career includes partnerships with legendary producers such as Cassina, for whom he designed the 'La Barca' (1975) collection of domestic furniture, which - according to Patricia Urquiola - still represents a futuristic approach to furniture design. Text in English and Italian.

Each blow of the blacksmith's hammer transfers to the glowing hot iron the force that breaks through all reference to nature and asserts the idea of sculpture as integration of music, architecture and poetry, in a single harmonious context. It does not limit the spirit but begins with the very soul of the material, the most noble and the most neglected. Text in English and Italian.