Available for the first time in an English translation, this selection of René Magritte’s writings gives non-Francophone readers the chance to encounter the many incarnations of the renowned Belgian painter—the artist, the man, the aspiring noirist, the fire-breathing theorist—in his own words. Through whimsical personal letters, biting apologia, appreciations of fellow artists, pugnacious interviews, farcical film scripts, prose poems, manifestos, and much more, a new Magritte emerges: pa...

This is the life of one of the most revolutionary artists in history, told through the story of six of his greatest masterpieces: “The one indispensable guide for encountering Michelangelo on his home turf” (The Dallas Morning News).Michelangelo stands alone as a master of painting, sculpture, and architecture, a man who reinvented the practice of art itself. Throughout his long career he clashed with patrons by insisting that he had no master but his own ...

A unique look at the treasures of the Vatican Museums, the Sistine Chapel, and the Basilica of Saint Peter from an official guide of the Eternal City.In a tiny enclave in the heart of Rome lies the world's smallest independent state—the Vatican. Over the course of fifteen hundred years, successive popes have commissioned and assembled an extraordinary collection of artistic works within Vatican walls.Eminent expert Professor Enrico Bruschini takes readers on a fascinating p...

This book is an irresistible addition to those interested in the art of Paul Klee. An emblematic figure of the early 20th century, Paul Klee participated in avant-garde movements in Germany and Switzerland.From the vibrant Blaue Reiter movement to Surrealism at the end of the 1930s, and throughout his teaching years at the Bauhaus, Klee attempted to capture the organic and harmonic nature of painting by alluding to other art forms such as poetry, literature and, above all, music. While he ...

Spanish architect and designer, Antoni Gaudí (1852-1926) was an important and influential figure in the history of contemporary Spanish art. His use of colour, application of a range of materials and the introduction of organic forms into his constructions were an innovation in the realm of architecture. In his journal, Gaudí freely expressed his own feelings on art, “the colours used in architecture have to be intense, logical and fertile.” His completed works (the Casa Batlló, 1905-1907 ...

At fifteen, Turner was already exhibiting View of Lambeth. He soon acquired the reputation of an immensely clever watercolourist. A disciple of Girtin and Cozens, he showed in his choice and presentation of theme a picturesque imagination which seemed to mark him out for a brilliant career as an illustrator. He travelled, first in his native land and then on several occasions in France, the Rhine Valley, Switzerland and Italy. He soon began to look beyond illustration. However, even in wor...

Famed poet and critic Cosmo Monkhouse discusses the works of Edward Burne-Jones, artist in oil and stained glass who is closely associated with the Pre-Raphaelite movement.

Have you ever wanted to know more about the Flemish painter named Jan van Eyck?Are you writing a research paper about him, or are just curious as to what some of his most famous paintings are?If these questions peak your interest, then this book is for you! Over 1500 words all about the 15th century Flemish oil painter flowing out of this book.This book includes when he was born, what he was known for, who employed him, and what made him famous.

The self-appointed “leader” of the artists’ group Die Brücke (Bridge), founded in Dresden in 1905, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner was a key figure in the early development of German Expressionism. His first works show the influence of Impressionism, Post-impressionism and Jugendstil, but by about 1909, Kirchner was painting in a distinctive, expressive manner with bold, loose brushwork, vibrant and non-naturalistic colours and heightened gestures. He worked in the studio from sketches made very rap...

This sensitive and compelling biography sheds new light on John Singer Sargent’s art through an intimate history of his family. Karen Corsano and Daniel Williman focus especially on his niece and muse, Rose-Marie Ormond, telling her story for the first time. In a score of paintings created between 1906 and 1912, John Singer Sargent documented the idyllic teenage summers of Rose-Marie and his own deepening affection for her serene beauty and good-hearted, candid charm. Rose-Marie married Ro...

Charles Baudelaire’s flâneur, as described in his 1863 essay "The Painter of Modern Life," remains central to understandings of gender, space, and the gaze in late nineteenth-century Paris, despite misgivings by some scholars. Baudelaire’s privileged and leisurely figure, at home on the boulevards, underlies theorizations of bourgeois masculinity and, by implication, bourgeois femininity, whereby men gaze and roam urban spaces unreservedly while women, lacking the freedom to either gaze or...

Egon Schiele’s work is so distinctive that it resists categorisation. Admitted to the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts at just sixteen, he was an extraordinarily precocious artist, whose consummate skill in the manipulation of line, above all, lent a taut expressivity to all his work. Profoundly convinced of his own significance as an artist, Schiele achieved more in his abruptly curtailed youth than many other artists achieved in a full lifetime. His roots were in the Jugendstil of the Viennes...