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after in Siena (September 2009 - January 2010), featuring a selection of 114 pictures, some of which are previoiusly unpublished, almost all of small size, by the famous American photographer Francesca Woodman.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 elusive oeuvre of the German photographer Herbert List is hard to categorise. He worked in almost every genre that photography has to offer: architecture, still life, street-photography, portraiture, documentation and cataloguing. Yet he also blurred the demarcation between those fields: architectural shots seem like composed still lifes or surreal compositions, documentation of the Greek sculpture or African artefacts borders on portraiture, and when capturing the classical beauty of the male physique, one does not quite know if we look at painstakingly composed arrangements or a private photo-diary, shot spontaneously. With this book we invite the reader to discover List's multifaceted work, by exploring many masterpieces and some lesser known work side by side. The result is a visual journey leading from enigmatic night shots, surreal and dark compositions, to the Mediterranean sunlight on the bodies of young men and the ruins of ancient Greece. 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.

The question of the portrait in the exploration of signs of the times, the dead body in a classical presentation of pictorial inspiration, the abstract space of the studio and the artist's recent immersion in the city, violence in the relationship with the other on the path from procreation to creation, poverty and its relation to place, religious feeling and the collective dynamics of the group portrait are some of the subjects Andres Serrano addresses. The questions he poses give rise to debate and sometimes violence. These freely chosen subjects are thus joined by themes imposed on the work, namely vandalism and censorship. Four experts develop an original discourse on Serrano's work: Nathalie Dietschy, PhD in art history at the University of Lausanne, a specialist on the figure of Christ in contemporary art; Jan Koenot, Jesuit, theologian, PhD in philosophy and specialist on contemporary art; Germano Celant, art critic and specialist on contemporary art, currently artistic director of the Prada Foundation in Milan; Quentin Bajac, curator of photography at the Musée d'Orsay and currently chief curator of photography at the MoMA in New York.

With over six thousand objects coming largely from Europe and Asia, the Villa San Luca in Ospedaletti (province of Imperia) is a splendid villa-museum set up by antique dealers and collectors Luigi Anton and Nera Laura, donated to the FAI - Fondo Ambiente Italiano, in 2001. It is one of Italy's most important private collections dedicated to the decorative arts.This catalogue presents a selection of the most representative pieces of the vast and diverse collection of silver produced in various European nations from the 17th to the first third of the 19th century: from the old Germanic States to those of the Italian peninsula, from France to England. The objects described in these pages testify to the great skill of master silversmiths in forging the precious metal while following the artistic trends of the moment, as well as proposing a 'nearly complete' compendium of the main types of tableware and household utensils in use on the tables of the upper classes over three centuries of European history.Text in English and Italian.

Through photographs, plans, sketches, text and quotations, this volume looks back at the 50-year career of Italian architect and designer Mario Bellini (born 1935), examining his buildings, museums, fairground complexes, international competitions and major exhibition designs.  Text in English and Italian.

Pierre Alechinsky: Marginalia highlights an aspect of the artist's work that is perhaps less familiar: his long-standing interest in the illustrated book. This fascination has fed Alechinsky's collaborative projects with writers and his incorporation of 'marginal remarks' into his own monumental paintings over many years. Maintaining a deep engagement with the written word in literary and painting contexts, Alechinsky has worked with writers such as André Breton, Eugene Ionesco, Christian Dotremont, Roger Caillois, Hélène Cixous, Joyce Mansour, Michel Butor, Hugo Claus, E.M. Cioran, Marcel Moreau, Pierre-Andre Benoit and Roland Topor. Pierre Alechinsky: Marginalia presents Alechinsky in three characteristic modes - as reader, illustrator and artist. 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.

Born in Iraq in 1966, Mahmoud Obaidi's artistic career is marked by transition, conflict, fragmentation and exile. Encompassing sculpture, conceptual objects, film and painting, his work is a series of politically-charged fragments which are herewith brought together within this publication and exhibition.This book captures the multiple elements that constitute Obaidi's work. In addition to literature, film, music and installation, he has also embarked on architectural projects, such as the Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha where he produced drawings and worked with civil engineers to design this structure.War, terrorism, pollution and ecology are just some of the topics that are filtered through his work. The central display structure of the exhibition - the rope - evokes Duchamp's Twine (1942), which is here re-purposed into the precarious connecting device that holds each element together. As is always present within Obaidi's work, however, connection and unity has the potential to be broken through war and its capacity to segregate and isolate. The taut rope holding everything together is quickly broken with the cut of a knife.

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.

This book traces the history of tin boxes in Italy from their origins to their spread across the various industry sectors. We present a selection of over 500 boxes produced between 1885 and the post-war period. Alongside anonymous designers whose decorations draw on the most diverse sources for inspiration and references, we find the names of great poster artists such as Cappiello, Mauzan, Dudovich, Golia and Sepo, who transpose their creations onto the surface of tins, marking the early history of this style of product packaging. Text in English and Italian.

The works presented - Italian, but also European and American, dating from the end of the First World War to 1929 - are the expression of well-known artists who marked the history of Italian ceramics at the beginning of the century, and are of absolute international importance. Domenico Rambelli, Francesco Nonni, Pietro Melandri, Riccardo Gatti, Giovanni Guerrini, to mention some of the best-known names.Text in English and Italian.