In their remarkable art project Eyes as Big as Plates, ongoing since 2011, the two artists Karoline Hjorth and Riitta Ikonen explore the relationship between humans and nature. To this end, they have travelled the world and created portraits of 52 people in diverging landscapes. The resulting series of photographs presents people whose age is typically over 50, wrapped in artistic, almost living sculptures made of the most diverse natural materials that Hjorth and Ikonen collected from the subjects’ surroundings: their floral, faunal, and fungal cohorts. The sensitively shot photographs open up new aesthetic worlds full of playful effortlessness that convey a strong message: We are nature!

For the Norwegian-Finnish duo, it is not just about a successful photographic image. This second volume of the series consolidates these atmospheric portraits with concise descriptions of those portrayed, who, rather than remain solely as props in the picture, present themselves and their life stories. The Field Notes section compiles further photographic material composed around the portraits. The artists offer insights into the portraits’ process of creation and provide us with the opportunity to accompany the artists on their journeys.

Based on the omnipresent term ‘Industry 4.0’, the publication #material4.0 reflects the interplay between the virtual world and the physical-real space. As part of the exhibition at Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen, 13 international artists, mostly ‘digital natives’, examine how computer dependent automation and digitalisation are reflected in an art context. How does art output change from production to the aesthetic? How is this kind of media used in posing artistic questions? The positions of digital art pioneers fill us in. The publication documents the exhibition with numerous illustrations of works and a collection of complementary texts. Artists: Christian von Borries, Kate Cooper, JAK, Kanta Kimura, Mathilde Lavenne, Jung Lee, Florian Model, Manfred Mohr, Marco Schmitt, Lidia Sigle, Adam Slowik, Ivar Veermae, Ryszard Winiarski. With contributions by Manfred Mohr, Frieder Nake and Peter Weibel.

Exhibition at the Galerie Stadt Sindelfingen (DE), 6 October 2018 – 3 March 2019.

Text in English and German.

This richly illustrated monograph is published within the context of Eternal Resonance, a major retrospective of Bedri Rahmi Eyüboğlu (1911–1975), a seminal figure in the 20th-century artistic circles in Turkey. Held across Dirimart’s Dolapdere and Pera galleries from December 2023 to February 2024, the exhibition brought together rarely seen works and archival material, shedding new light on the life and legacy of an artist whose influence continues to resonate. Eyüboğlu was not only a pioneering painter but also a celebrated poet and devoted educator. Blending Anatolian folk traditions with modernist aesthetics, his work defied boundaries between disciplines and mediums. This bilingual (Turkish–English) publication offers an in-depth look into his creative journey, contextualising his practice within Turkish art history and beyond. Eternal Resonance celebrates Eyüboğlu’s enduring commitment to art as a form of cultural memory, resistance, and renewal. With its thoughtful scholarship and carefully curated visuals, this monograph is an essential resource for anyone interested in discovering one of Turkey’s most influential and multifaceted modern artists.

Text in English and Turkish.

The Padua School originated from the Istituto Pietro Selvatico in Padua. The distinctive features of this jewelry are the use of gold reminiscent of the goldsmith’s art in antiquity and a modern and abstract formal expression within the group. Mario Pinton, who brought the goldsmith movement international recognition and acclaim in the 1950s and ’60s, is credited with founding the experimental goldsmith movement in Padua. Francesco Pavan has enlarged the scope of the Padua School with his kinetic and geometric formal idiom.

The breakthrough on the international jewelry scene took place in the late 1960s with Giampaolo Babetto, under whose support the geometric and Minimalist tendency was most pronounced. Other distinguished artists in jewelry such as Graziano Visintin, Renzo Pasquale, Annamaria Zanella, Stefano Marchetti and Giovanni Corvaya continued along these lines or went their own highly individual ways by experimenting with the use of new materials including plastic. The work of these creative artists is beautifully displayed through color photographs, which serve to highlight their great talent.

A bond of thin yet strong threads unites the two minds, that of the writer Italo Calvino (1923–1985) and that of the sculptor Fausto Melotti (1901–1986), similar in intent and manifestation. What they have in common is certainly lightness, speed, exactitude, visibility, multiplicity and coherence, words chosen by Calvino to define the topics and key concepts of the lectures that he planned to deliver at Harvard. Words that could, in fact, also define and encapsulate Melotti’s work. Both artists were gifted, in a formidable way, with the ability to experience the space of the ineffable with such familiarity as to render it, with the acrobatic ability of a tightrope walker, domestic and intelligible.

Texts by: Michelina Eremita, Letizia Modena, Riccardo Castellana, Giovanni Marzari, Ilaria Muoio.

Text in English and Italian.

The Galleria Borghese not only houses an extraordinary collection of ancient and modern sculpture, but also one of the most extraordinary collections of paintings in the world, with masterpieces by the most important European painters, including Giovanni Bellini, Correggio, Dosso Dossi, Parmigianino, Raphael, Titian, Caravaggio and Rubens.

In two volumes – the first is presented here divided into two tomes and dedicated to works created between the 15th and 16th centuries – the intention is to continue the work begun with the catalogue raisonné of modern sculpture, also published by Officina Libraria (2022), thanks to updates, discoveries, archive research and analysis of works.

The entries in this volume, preceded by introductory essays illustrating the main nuclei of paintings produced between the Renaissance and Mannerism periods in the museum, have been entrusted to scholars specialising in the productions of individual artists or regional schools, experts in the history of the gallery and a large group of younger experts in 15th and 16th century painting. The individual texts present a significant degree of in-depth study both chronologically and in terms of attribution, with notes on restorations and archival documents. 

Text in Italian.

Samuel Palmer was one of the most original artists Britain has produced. Still a teen when he was plucked from “the pit of modern art,” he embarked on an intensely personal journey that led to an astonishing outpouring of mystical drawings and later to England’s first artistic colony, “The Ancients,” based in the idyllic landscape of Shoreham. This book reprints the first major writings on Palmer, which were published for a retrospective exhibition in 1881. They include a biography by his son, A. H. Palmer, and a critical appreciation by Pre-Raphaelite artist and critic F. G. Stephens.

For generations, Black artists from the American South have forged a unique art tradition. Working in near isolation from established practices, they have created masterpieces in clay, driftwood, roots, soil, and recycled and cast-off objects that articulate America’s painful past – the inhuman practice of enslavement, the cruel segregationist policies of the Jim Crow era, and institutionalised racism. Their works date from the early twentieth century to today and respond to issues ranging from economic inequality, oppression and social marginalisation, to sexuality, the influence of place, and ancestral memory. Among the sculptures, paintings, reliefs and drawings included here are works by Hawkins Bolden, Thornton Dial, Sam Doyle, Bessie Harvey, Lonnie Holley, Ronald Lockett, Joe Minter, Nellie Mae Rowe, Mary T. Smith, Henry and Georgia Speller, Mose Tolliver, Charles Williams and Purvis Young. Also featured are the celebrated quiltmakers of Gee’s Bend, Alabama, among them Mary Lee Bendolph, Marlene Bennett Jones, Loretta Pettway and Martha Jane Pettway.

At first glance, there may appear to be more to separate Michelangelo (1475-1564) and Bill Viola (b. 1951) than to unite them: one, the great master of the Italian Renaissance; the other, the creator of state-of-the-art immersive sound and video installations. And yet, when Martin Clayton showed Viola Her Majesty The Queen’s unsurpassed collection of Michelangelo drawings at Windsor in 2006, parallels began to emerge. This book presents a new perspective on both artists’ works. Stills and sequences from ten key video pieces by Viola are reproduced alongside fourteen of Michelangelo’s presentation drawings, as well as the Taddei Tondo, the only Michelangelo marble sculpture in the UK and a treasure of the Royal Academy’s collection. Texts by Martin Clayton examine how existential concerns – the preoccupation of many Renaissance artists, not least Michelangelo – are explored in Viola’s often profoundly moving video installations, while Kira Perov provides insight into Viola’s working processes.

In 2008 and 2013 the GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts in Leipzig presented two representative inventory publications under the title Vessel / Sculpture. German and International Ceramics since 1946, which attracted great interest from across the globe and were regarded as standard reference works. This third volume continues the series, against a backdrop of a renewed and extensive increase of modern studio ceramics in the museum’s collection. As in the previous publications, the objects in the book enter into aesthetic dialogues, thus facilitating interesting perspectives in the development of artistic ceramics up to the present day. In doing so it becomes clear how ceramic objects are developing from a servient-functional gesture into ever consistent autonomous artworks yet without necessarily losing the vessel theme. Its multitude of current artists’ biographies and illustrations of makers’ marks make this a highly recommendable reference work.

Contents: Contributions from selected artists: Felicity Aylieff, Thomas Bohle, Werner Bünck, Carmen Dionyse, Allesandro Gallo, Louise Hindsgavl, Beate Kuhn, Sonngard Marcks, Ken Mihara, Sarah Pschorn, Elke Sada, Carolein Smit, Julian Stair, Robert Sturm and Henk Wolvers.

Published to accompany an exhibition at GRASSI Museum of Applied Arts Leipzig (DE), 10 November 2018 – 13 October 2019.

Text in English and German

Can We Stop Killing Each Other? wrestles with the darkest side of humanity. It explores the fundamental question of why humans are led to kill, examining the artworks, films, video games and television programmes that grapple with and manifest themes of death and destruction.

Using material culture linked to moments of extreme violence, such as the Holocaust and the 1994 genocide against the Tutsi in Rwanda, this publication offers a challenging but eye-opening consideration of some of the most horrifying events in human history as explored through art.

Using historical and contemporary art as a lens to explore these themes, the book will include a new interview with Ethiopian artist Tesfaye Urgessa (b.1983), who creates emotive paintings reflecting on the refugee crisis. It will also explore the role of art as sanctuary from violence, through new approaches to the work of Claude Monet (1840–1926)

Open Space – Mind Maps pursues the current development in art jewellery that is positioned far from the merely decorative in the aesthetic and artistic discourse of our era. Thirty international artists present their works in this publication, which is arranged thematically by the buzzwords inhabiting current trends, such as the nomadic aspect and the tendency towards narrative imagery to provocation that infringes on boundaries and to the poetic imagination in jewellery. All these facets as open-ended chapters illustrate the iconographic focus of each of these protagonists from across the world. Contents: Berndt Arell: Foreword; Ellen Maurer Zilioli: Open Space – Mind Maps. Positions in contemporary jewellery; Inger Wästberg: The Swedish Perspective; Philip Warkander: Art Jewellery. A reflection on terminology; Catalogue; Appendix; Artists’ biographies; Authors’ biographies

The only contemporary account of the life and work of George Stubbs, unavailable since it was privately printed over 125 years ago. George Stubbs (1724-1806) was one of the most original artists Britain has produced. Far from being merely a horse painter, Stubbs’ perfectionism and passion transformed the possibilities of nature painting. His extraordinary dedication to accuracy caused him to spend 18 solitary months dissecting and drawing horses to make his book, The Anatomy of the Horse, a landmark in the study of anatomy and used by artists and scientists alike long after Stubbs’ death. His portraits of horses as well as people combine an unflinchingly accurate gaze with profound psychological truth; yet he also created some of the most lyrical paintings of the age. Ozias Humphry was a colleague and friend of Stubbs and brought together recollections of many conversations with the painter in an as yet unpublished manuscript now in Liverpool. This manuscript was the basis for the present book, which was edited by the famous Liverpudlian patron and historian Joseph Mayer for private circulation in the 1870’s. Although it is almost the only biographical source for Stubbs, it has never been reprinted. This edition is the first publication since 1876 of Ozias Humphry’s Memoir. It is introduced by one of the leading experts on the painter, Anthony Mould, who discusses Stubbs’ career, his posthumous reputation, and the context and value of Humphrys’ and Mayer’s work. Forty-two pages of colour illustrations cover the span of Stubbs’ output.

Swiss artist Silvie Defraoui realised a significant part of her work beginning in 1975 together with her husband Chérif (1932–1994). Silvie and Chérif Defraoui compiled their photo and video works, installations, sculptures, and performances under the title Archives du Futur. They taught together at Geneva’s École supérieure des Beaux- Arts (today HEAD–Genève), where they founded the legendary studio Média Mixte and counted a number of renowned artists among their students. 

The Archives du Futur, to which Silvie Defraoui has continued adding works since Chérif’s premature death, has been made available as a digital catalogue raisonné to browse online. This book accompanies, supplements, and expands on the digital documentation. It gathers 14 commentaries on individual works of the two artists by distinguished art theorists and curators, originally published from 1984 onwards, in various art journals and exhibition catalogues or newly written for this book.

They reflect on the artists’ joint oeuvre as well as on work created independently by Silvie Defraoui. Interviews with her and selected lecture texts from the couple’s shared teaching activities shed light on their artistic stance and thematic focuses.

The volume invites an exploration of an artistic body of work that is highly topical through its merging of dualities – memory and the present, Orient and Occident, man and woman, tradition and invention.

Text in English, French and German.

The Lumas Gallery brings the claim “Liberation of Arts” to life. It succeeds in making high-quality art accessible to a large audience at fair prices. The illustrated book Liberation of Arts — 20 Years of Lumas delivers the liberation in book form and a fascinating overview of the current art scene. To mark the gallery’s 20th anniversary and after four successful volumes of Collecting Fine Art, this portfolio also impresses with its unique diversity: from architectural photography to landscapes, from abstract painting to street photography, from nudes to portraits. We also come across well-known names from the teNeues programme, such as Christophe Jacrot and Werner Pawlok. An art picture book that brings together established artists and exciting newcomers — for connoisseurs, collectors, and beginners!

Text in English and German.

This publication commemorates the public unveiling of the Sherwin and Shirley Glass Glass Collection at the Flint Institute of Arts in its new wing, dedicated to contemporary craft. Amassed during a ten-year period by Atlanta-based collectors Sherwin and Shirley Glass, this contemporary glass collection represents the greatest achievements by a large and diverse group of important international artists. With glass masterworks by more than 85 artists representing 19 countries around the world, this collection shows an explosion of creativity in the medium of glass from the late 20th through the early 21st century.

In this catalogue, FIA Executive Director John Henry demonstrates why Flint, Michigan, is an ideal location for a contemporary craft wing; Habatat Galleries founder Ferd Hampson discusses how the Glasses’ collecting interests represented a “quest for the best”, and Patricia Grieve Watkinson contextualises the Glass Glass Collection within international and American glass movements.

Contents: Contemporary Craft in Flint – John B. Henry; A Quest for the Best – Ferdinand Hampson; Tradition, Innovation, and Meaning: The Sherwin and Shirley Glass Collection – Patricia Grieve Watkinson.

Isabelle Cornaro, based in Paris and Geneva, holds degrees in art history and visual arts. She has a strong interest in experimental cinema and devotes herself to the narrative, symbolic, and economic origins of things. In her work she assumes an anthropologist-type manner to investigate people’s seemingly fixated attachment to emotionally charged, even fetishised objects, creating large stage installations and short movies.
This book is part of the new On Words series that presents conversations with contemporary women artists. Through them, readers come to understand the sources from which they draw inspiration, the themes in their work, and their view of the world. Edited by Julie Enckell, Federica Martini, and Sarah Burkhalter and bringing together a wide range of viewpoints, the On Words series adds a new narrative to polyphonic art history as told by those who actively shape it.

Text in English and French.

“Even the book’s cover sparkles with gold, a brilliant visual cue — at least for those of us of a certain age — of what’s in store: A traipse through that time in our lives when the sparkly flash of pop-cultural figures served as guides to millions of youngsters desperate to connect to a dim constellation we knew to be out there but couldn’t see alone.” — East Hampton Star

“A collection of fabled 20th-century musicians’ style from Diana Ross & The Supremes’ sequins to The Ramones’ leather jackets.” — Wall Street Journal

What The Band Wore by Alice Harris is an unprecedented collection of photographs that illustrates four decades of pop, rock, soul, disco, funk, punk, reggae, heavy metal, and hip hop fashion. Sparkling sequins, safety pins, and even suits from outer space are spotlighted in more than 80 images by acclaimed music photographers, including Terry O’Neill, Henry Diltz, Matthew Rolston, Bob Gruen, and Lynn Goldsmith.

Featuring exclusive comments from legendary artists, What The Band Wore traces the evolution of stage wear from the 1960s through the 1990s, from the self-made counterculture style of Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, and Sly & The Family Stone to the custom designs that Bob Mackie, Bill Whitten, Larry LeGaspi, Vivienne Westwood, and Issey Miyake created for the most renowned names in music. Whether it’s Elvis Presley or Janet Jackson posing in tight leather, Freddie Mercury masquerading as a harlequin, or Run-DMC sporting their iconic footwear, these pages thread together a fabulous celebration of fashion and music.

The publication States of Uncertain Domesticities documents and reflects on the performance-centered exhibition by the same name, which was shown at Haus Kunst Mitte Berlin. The building itself—a construction originally designed as a residential building which is now used as an exhibition venue—provided the starting point for the artistic interventions. Through performances and installation-based interventions, the curatorial team reactivated the original character of the house. In reference to the seminal feminist project Woman House (1972), the domestic space was interpreted as a political arena within which social tensions are revealed. Forty-four international contemporary artists explored questions relating to housing, care work, violence, migration, and gentrification through various installations, performances, and media artworks. This publication transfers the spatial and physical experiences into the temporality of the book, inviting readers to engage more deeply with these themes. 

Artists: Adidal Abou-Chamat, Liz Bachhuber, Ina Bierstedt, Frauke Boggasch, Christian Borchert, Benhard Bormann, Bella Bram, Nakeya Brown, Libia Castro / Ólafur Ólafsson, Kathryn Cornelius, Alba D’Urbano / Tina Bara, Johanna Demetrakas, Milena Dopitová, Judith Miriam Escherlor, Maria Ezcurra, Kerstin Flake, Gluklya, Markéta Hlinovská, Fumi Kato, Daniela Krajčová, Elli KURUŞ, Via Lewandowsky, Loredana Longo, Susanne Lorenz, Tina Mamczur, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro, Isa Melsheimer, Cornelia Friederike, Müller Jill, Luise Müßig, Linda Perthen, Cesare Pietroiusti, Chloé Piot, Inken Reinert, Dana Sahánková, Corinna Schnitt, Selma Selman, Jakub Šimčik, Barbora Šimková, Molly Soda, Nanae Suzuki, Fede Taus, Petra Trenkel, Andreas Ullrich, Anna Witt Performances: Stefan Hurtig, Melina Matzanke, Ping Qiu, Nika Radic / Georg Spehr Film programme: Maya Deren, Agnès Varda, Chantal Akerman, Paola Cortellesi.

Text in English and German.

In a former shipyard of 8,000 square metres at the ultra-hip NDSM Wharf in Amsterdam, you will find Europe’s largest street art museum: STRAAT. Yearly an impressive 200,000 visitors admire their collection of over 180 works by around 170 artists, many of which were specially created for this location. As STRAAT’s collection is constantly refreshed and expanded, it’s time for a second catalogue featuring only new works by about 80 artists. Divided into chapters by genre—muralism, art and activism, native/nature, abstract graffiti, and installations—and interspersed with essays by experts like Steven P. Harrington, Carlo McCormick, Charlotte Pyatt and Christian Omodeo, this book is a wonderful anthology of the key figures in the contemporary street art scene.

The true story of a secret romance that changed the course of modern art—told in full for the first time.

“Tell me who your enemies are, so that I can help you to hate them.” This was a favourite line of the Brazilian sculptor Maria Martins (1894–1973), and likely how she greeted Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) at their first meeting, at the opening of an exhibition of her work in 1943.The clandestine love affair that burned between these two artists for the remainder of the decade was fuelled not only by romantic passion but also by a deep appreciation of each other’s work. Some of the greatest of Martins’s Surrealist sculptures were inspired by her relationship with Duchamp—including Impossible, whose title perhaps refers to their situation. (Martins was married to the Brazilian ambassador to the United States.) And it was during their affair that Duchamp—widely believed to have “retired” from art—secretly began his astonishing final work, which would be revealed only after his death. This work, the sculptural tableau Étant donnés, was heavily influenced by Martins: it takes formal cues from her work, and it was she who modelled for the startlingly realistic nude at its centre. This surprising story—highly readable yet meticulously researched, and abundantly illustrated with artworks and archival images—will affirm the importance of Maria Martins’s tropically inflected Surrealism and challenge the perception of Duchamp as a purely cool and cerebral artist.

Stucco decorations have traditionally been studied considering their formal and artistic qualities. Although much research and numerous publications have explored the works of stucco artists and their cultural context, little attention has been paid to their professional role in relation to the other actors involved in the decorative process (architects, painters, sculptors, patrons), the technical skills of these artists, and how their know-how contributed to the great professional success they enjoyed. From the 16th to the 18th century, many of the stucco decorations in churches and palaces throughout Europe were made by masters from the border area between what is now Canton Ticino and Lombardy. This collection of essays aims to examine how these artists worked from Spain to Poland, from Denmark to Italy, via the Netherlands, France, Germany, the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Austria, adapting to the realities of the different contexts. The authors examine these issues with an interdisciplinary approach, considering art history and social history, the history of artistic techniques, and the science of materials. 

Text in English and Italian.