Richard Pousette-Dart (1916–92), working in New York in the 1940s, created beautiful, layered paintings as well as experimenting with drawing, photography and sculpture. This publication, produced to coincide with the 2018 exhibition Richard Pousette-Dart: Beginnings reflects new research into the life and work of Richard Pousette-Dart and his significant contribution to American art in the 20th Century.

Playing a key role in the genesis of Abstract Expressionism and the New York School, which transformed American art in the post-war years, Pousette-Dart’s contemporaries included Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, Barnett Newman and Willem de Kooning. Jim Ede, creator of Kettle’s Yard, first met Pousette-Dart in New York in 1940. Research exploring their transatlantic correspondence over subsequent decades was a catalyst for the first solo exhibition of the work of Pousette-Dart in the UK, held at Kettle’s Yard in 2018. The majority of works on display were borrowed from US museums and collections, and had not previously been seen in this country.

HR Giger (1940–2014) is one of the outstanding figures in Swiss art and design history, celebrated around the world for his design of the fantastic creatures and eerie environments that terrified moviegoers in Ridley Scott’s 1979 science fiction film Alien. Yet very little is known about Giger’s childhood and youth in his native town of Chur. A trove of photographs, drawings by the young boy Hansruedi, and early art works that already reveal the future HR Giger’s artistic force, recently unearthed in the Giger family’s former holiday home in the Grisons, now offer intimate insights into his early years until the early 1960s.

Richly illustrated with more than 230 images from that collection, HR Giger: The Early Years tells, for the first time, the story of those two decades before Giger decided to move to Zurich and train as an architect and designer in 1962. Supplemented by brief texts as well as by statements from his schoolmates, friends, and others, these images form a lively picture of that period: family episodes; the Mickey Mouse adaptations Giger created at the age of ten; his growing love of jazz music, photography, and weapons; the trips around Europe he took together with his friends; and the youth culture of Chur of the 1950s and 1960s that shaped him. The volume will appeal to any fan of the extraordinary art and the fascinating personality of HR Giger.

Text in English, German and French.

In recent years, Swiss artist Franz Bucher, born in 1940, has produced an extensive series of paintings which he simply titles Fields: lavender, dandelion, rapeseed, and poppy fields congruent with the canvas to form a pictorial field. Yet Bucher’s objective is not primarily the pictorial. Rather, it is more about the two-dimensional space which is given an inherent structure by the largely monochromatic primary colours he uses, as well as his dynamic brushstroke. It becomes apparent that most of the artist’s oeuvre since the early 1970s has been determined by the metrical rhythm in his use of colour. Bucher’s paintings constitute actual energy fields.

This new monograph offers a retrospective of Bucher’s entire body of work from the vantage point of his recent pictorial fields. It thus illustrates his true artistic intentions independently of the context of his chosen motifs.

Text in English and German.

Dieter van Slooten (1940-2018), a German artist, painted his pictures with almost obsessive consistency, using horizontals as a main picture element, which, like venetian blinds, conceal and reveal part of what is concealed to the viewer at the same time, thus hinting at shapes and surfaces. The change from fore- to background is fluid and the pictures, painted predominantly in acrylic on canvas, have an almost three-dimensional depth. An incredible range of colours makes the works appear intensive and poignant, colour is the soul of van Slooten’s painting. This catalogue, with his pictures from the years 2012-17, presents the quintessence of his oeuvre and is being published on the occasion of the first anniversary of his death. His life was dedicated to art; his art is dedicated to life.

Text in English and German.

The art of HR Giger (1940–2014), Swiss-born creator of the legendary monster in Ridley Scott’s movie Alien, is currently experiencing a renaissance and is featured in exhibitions as well as in magazines around the globe. This lavish large-format volume offers never-before-seen insights into Giger’s private house and garden, both of which are populated by biomechanical sculptures, airbrush paintings, Alien furniture, objects, prints, and self-portraits. French photographer Camille Vivier—best known for her work for Stella McCartney and Cartier—enjoyed exclusive access to the artist’s Zurich home and studio for this book, where she worked on her own as well as with models in a series of photo sessions.
Vivier’s around 200 photographs form an atmospheric tribute to the arguably most distinguished representative of Fantastic Realism. In addition to images of Giger’s studio and his life-size sculptures, Vivier has also documented some hundred objects and artworks, as well as his famous Alien-style garden railroad. An essay by French publicist Farbrice Paineu places HR Giger’s art in the wider context of pop culture and the genre of horror movies.

Text in English and German.

Peter Celsing (1920–74) belongs to the small group of Swedish modernist architects, including luminaries such as Gunnar Asplund (1885–1940) and Sigurd Lewerentz (1885–1975), who have rightly attracted attention even beyond the country’s borders. The way in which Celsing approached and carried out his commissions testifies to a great understanding of architecture as an applied art, where function and economy are important parameters. At the same time, Celsing instilled aesthetic values of rank in his works. In a time of a major shift in the construction industry from more small-scale and artisanal to large-scale and prefabricated, Celsing managed the feat of running his projects with a high level of artistic integrity. This is an important reason why his architecture is perhaps even more interesting today than when it was created.

John Håkansson’s black and white photographs, taken in the mid-1990s, capture the essence of Peter Celsing’s buildings. In many cases, the images are now a valuable document of that era, since some of the buildings have changed, and not always in a favourable way. In this beautiful volume, supplemented by insightful texts contributed by architect Staffan Henriksson and artist Maria Lantz, Håkansson’s skillful photography forms a loving and sensitive portrait of Celsing’s architecture.

Dress codes are timeless. This book explores how clothing at the Dutch royal court between 1870 and 1940 expressed not only style, but also status and power. From galas and masquerade balls to mourning attire and daily wear, fashion followed strict rules. With costumes from the collections of Paleis Het Loo, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, and the Royal Collections, you’ll see how members of the court set the tone and became taste-makers in wider society. 

But dress codes are far from a thing of the past. In the second part of the book, you’ll discover how clothing today still connects – and divides – us. Think of football jerseys, gender norms, or popular influencers as today’s trendsetters. The exhibition invites you to reflect on your own wardrobe choices – and what they say about you. 

Dress Codes shows that fashion is more than beautiful – it tells a powerful story about identity, culture, and influence.

During the 1890s and early 1900s Édouard Vuillard (1868–1940) produced a body of work that combines intimate subject matter with abstract form through the simplification of pictorial elements and observation of decorative fabrics and wallpapers. Through these devices he developed an art that is unashamedly decorative and yet always replete with subtle suggestions of deeper meanings. In balancing form and content, psychological drama and abstraction, his pictures are about as close to poetry as any artist’s, and all the more brilliant for their understatement and the near imperceptibility of their craft.

Illustrating many rarely seen paintings from private collections, this book offers a fresh look at the early career of this much-loved artist. Introduced by Chris Stephens, director of the Holburne Museum, and with an original essay by Belinda Thompson.

Growing up, almost every kid dreams of finding buried treasure. That dream slowly fades with age as they realise that Blackbeard never visited their backyard. For some, the search for treasure continues in their adult lives in other ways. Metal detectors and shovels may be replaced with online searches and library visits, but the thrill of the hunt is still alive, ever driving the quest forward.

Lost Danish Treasure tells the tale of two stories: 1) the history of Finn Juhl’s iconic Chieftain Chair and a long-forgotten painting that preceded it, and 2) the individual connections to this design by a small group of collector researchers. Although starting in different eras and timelines, the two accounts start to intertwine over the course of the book, with the research efforts of today helping to unravel the mysteries of the past. As each chapter unfolds, more and more clues are revealed that slowly weave the storylines closer together— until the summer of 2021, when both accounts collided after Lot 242 popped up in an auction house in Chicago. The result of the subsequent analysis sheds new light about the origins and identity of the very first Chieftain Chair.

“Legendary Bruce Springsteen photographer’s iconic travel images showcased in lavish new coffee-table book, from storms in South Dakota to penguins in Antarctica.” —  The Daily Mail

“… a dazzling collection that bursts with vibrant colours and energy. This book is more than just a visual feast; it’s a journey into the stories behind each photograph, offering readers a behind-the-scenes look.” —  Digital Photographer Magazine

“This richly designed monograph is both a masterclass in color photography and a deeply personal reflection on a life spent chasing light.” — About Photography

Multi-award-winning photographer Eric Meola is a master of using colour and light in photography, creating vivid, evocative, and graphic images. From his famous “Coca Kid” and Bruce Springsteen’s “Born to Run” album cover to his Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023, Meola has had an extraordinary five-decade career.

Bending Light: The Moods of Color is a retrospective bursting with colour. It features 100 iconic photographs from Meola’s editorial, advertising, and personal work, as well as his recent experiments with colour abstracts. Meola also takes readers behind the lens to reveal the stories and anecdotes behind the creation of each image. Through this intimate and personal account of his creative process and self-expression, the photographer examines his use of colour, its symbolism, and how it affects our moods.

For professional and aspiring photographers, and people who appreciate photography, art, and a colourful perspective of the world, this extraordinary collection of images, captured over more than fifty years, showcases why Meola is considered a true innovator in colour photography.

2024 marks the centenary of the publication of André Breton’s Surrealist Manifesto, and thus the birth of the Surrealist movement. This French language book celebrates 100 years of Surrealism, combining historical retrospection, interpretation, and the perspective of contemporary artists who explore Surrealist themes and forms in their work. It is based on the Surrealist literary magazine Le Grand Jeu, which was published between 1928 and 1930.

Games to which the Surrealists referred are a core theme of the volume: chess and the “Jeu de Marseille,” a special set of tarot cards created by the Surrealists in the south of France, where many had to flee from German occupation between 1940 and 1944. Alongside, the essays investigate topics such as identity, metamorphosis, esotericism, kabbalah, and magic, as well as speculation, abstraction, and automatism. Moreover, new light is shed on the female members and affiliates of the Surrealist movement, including Claude Cahun, Leonora Carrington, Suzanne Duchamp, Leonor Fini, Gladys Hynes, Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning, and others.

The book is also an homage to the never-published fourth issue of Le Grand Jeu, which has been preserved as a maquette and is reproduced here in facsimile images.

Text in French.

Astronomy is one of the oldest branches of science. It has fascinated humanity from the earliest times. Huge advances have been made since Clarence Augustus Chant’s acclaimed work, Our Wonderful Universe, was first published in 1928. We have sent humans into space and walked on the moon. Spacecraft have landed on Mars, and the International Space Station, a joint project among five space agencies, has been continuously occupied by humans since November 2000. We are using telescopes and satellites to observe the skies, studying planets, moons, stars, galaxies, and comets, as well as supernovae explosions, gamma ray bursts, and cosmic microwave background radiation. Is there life elsewhere in the Universe? What is the nature of dark energy? What is the ultimate fate of the Universe? Astronomy is one of the few sciences where amateurs can still play an important active role, especially in the discovery and observation of variable stars, tracking asteroids and discovering transient objects, such as comets and novae. Written in a clear and charming style, Our Wonderful Universe is developed in the form of a talk, presenting the fundamental facts of astronomy in a simple and logical progression. It is illustrated with the complete set of drawings and plates that accompanied the original edition. Its purpose and approach is just as relevant today, and we hope that readers will enjoy the way in which Chant leads us on his journey of discoveries of the Universe.

Vaclav Pozarek, born 1940 in former Czechoslovakia, is regarded as one of the most significant figures in contemporary Swiss art. After his emigration in 1968 his artistic education was at Hamburg’s University of Fine Arts and at St. Martins’s School of Art in London. He has been living and working in Bern since 1973, creating a much-recognised oeuvre, mainly in drawing and sculpture.

This new monograph, published to coincide with a solo exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Solothurn and designed by Pozarek himself, offers a survey of his drawings, sculptures and installations from the past ten years. The essays explore his work and discuss his recent exhibitions.

Fritz Block (1889-1955) was one of the most dedicated proponents of Germany’s postwar New Building movement. From 1929, he also used the medium of photography to express the impulse of modernism along the ideals of New Objectivity and New Vision, travelling as a photojournalist to Paris, Marseille, and North Africa, as well as in 1931 to the United States. Being of Jewish origin, Block was banned from working as an architect and publishing his photographs in Germany by the Nazis in 1933. He subsequently turned entirely to photography on extensive trips abroad, and eventually emigrated to America in 1938. After his arrival in Los Angeles, he focused on colour slides for educational purposes that characterised his work from 1940 to 1955. He produced a particularly innovative series depicting California’s architectural modernism, which was widely distributed throughout the United States. The first book on Block’s work in photography features a vast range of images from his entire career. Vividly illustrated with some 450 photographs, including many in full colour and published here for the first time, Photo-Eye Fritz Block demonstrates Block’s significance in modern photography.

Marcel Gautherot (1910-96) is regarded by many as one of the most significant French photographers. Yet his work is relatively little known and even less published. The most famous part of his work is the body of some 3,000 images documenting the construction of Brasilia 1958-1960. This, and other images he took of this extraordinary place until the 1970s, is widely appreciated as a high point of 20th-century architectural photography. Gautherot began an education in architecture but very soon took up photography as well. He travelled extensively in France and abroad and visited Brazil and Peru for the first time in 1939, before being drafted into the French army on the outbreak of World War II. Upon demobilisation in summer 1940 he returned to Brazil and made Rio de Janeiro his home for the rest of his life. The new book Marcel Gautherot: The Monograph is the first ever comprehensive book on Gautherot’s entire work as a photographer. It features some 200 of his striking pictures from all stages of his career, superbly reproduced in tritone printing. The images are complemented by essays on his affinity for modern architecture, his contribution to the history of photography, and on his attachment to Brazil.

Despite being one of the most influential – and indeed most eccentric – of the American modernist jewellers, Sam Kramer (1913-1964) has received little recognition. His expressive, organic work and surreal workshop, located on West 8th Street in New York’s Greenwich Village, paved the way for other mid-twentieth century metalsmiths, and for many more working today. Sam Kramer: Jeweler on the Edge investigates Kramer as both a seminal artist and a cult personality. Through lavish colour photographs of rarely seen works as well as newly discovered archival material, the story of this unique individual is told against a backdrop of post-Second World War America, from the late 1940s to the early 1960s. Mirroring both the existential angst and quirky humour of the Beat Generation, Sam Kramer embodied the iconoclastic spirit of his era.

This extensively illustrated volume focuses on William Morris (1834–1896), placing his wallpaper designs within the context of the radical changes in taste witnessed during the Victorian era. Against a backdrop of the fanciful, naturalistic patterns that typified fashionable papers in Morris’s youth, the impact of the Reform Movement of the mid-19th century is underscored, particularly the reformers’ crusade against such multi-coloured ornamental decoration. Instead, the insistence on the concepts of honesty and propriety as promoted by A. W. N. Pugin and Owen Jones, are demonstrated as influences on Morris. The role of imported Japanese wallpapers is also explored, giving insight into a seldom-discussed cultural exchange evidenced within the story of Morris & Co, which produced wallpapers from 1864 until 1940 and, after a post-war hiatus, from the 1960s to the present.

Amplifying Morris’s role in the creation of an influential and lasting style, his work is set within a selection by other designers, including Christopher Dresser and C. F. A. Voysey. Also introduced are firms of significance including Jeffrey & Co. and Arthur Sanderson & Sons, both of whom block-printed the Morris wallpapers. In a highly visual presentation, what is revealed are influences across time and within a global context, as pertinent to the creation of wallpaper art in the 19th century as it is today.

In the 1920s, German-Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) began his long-lasting engagement with polyphonic art—multi-voiced way of painting analogous to music.

A relentless experimenter, Klee began these studies while teaching at the Bauhaus in Dessau, developed them further during his tenure at the art academy in Düsseldorf, and brought them to conclusion after his return to Switzerland in 1933. In this book, distinguished art historian Oskar Bätschmann explores Klee’s seminal painting Ad Parnassum (1932). Painted shortly after the artist’s departure from the Bauhaus, it symbolises a new era, also one of Klee’s own self-discovery. Bätschmann documents how the artist strove for a connection of music and painting in his colour hues and in the rhythmic movement of coloured dots.

Richly illustrated, this book places Klee’s polyphonic understanding of art in an art-historical context by using this key work and offers insight into the synesthetic thinking that emerged in the art world during that time.

Text in English and German.

Over six decades, Mernet Larsen (*1940) has playfully manipulated perspective within her paintings to reveal unsettling and humorous narratives that underlie ordinary situations. Curator Veronica Roberts says of Larsen’s work, “the subjects and scenarios she depicts are typically banal: friends gathered in conversation, a couple reading in bed, and faculty meetings. Through unexpected compositional moves, however, she transforms these prosaic moments into psychological dramas that hint at the dislocations, disruptions, and dread that fill our lives.”

This extensive, richly illustrated monograph features works of art from all stages of Mernet Larsen’s career, as well as an interview with the artist by Hans Ulrich Obrist, and essays by the curators Susan Thompson and Veronica Roberts.

“For fifty years I’ve been practicing different kinds of writing: scripture: a theoretical one for essays, one for the production of books and catalogues, and one focused on the exhibitions. The story of (my) exhibitions aims to draw attention to this last kind of writing”. – Germano Celant

This book, which Germano Celant (Genoa, 1940 – Milan, 2020) had been working on for years, is published posthumously and represents the professional and spiritual testament of this well known and internationally respected curator.

It tells the story of the exhibitions that characterised Celant’s work presenting, in chronological order, a selection of 34 exhibitions: from Arte povera – Im-spazio, Genoa, 1967, to Post Zang Tumb Tuuum: Art Life Politics – Italia 1918-1943, Milan, 2018, passing through Identité italienne – L’art en Italie depuis 1959, Paris, 1981; Futuro Presente Passato, 47 – Venice International Art Exhibition, 1997; When Attitudes Become Form – Bern 1969/Venice, 2013; and Arts & Foods. Rituals since 1851 – Milan, 2015. The books retraces the exhibitions through over 400 pictures of the actual displays and the critical texts that were published in the respective catalogues.

Thus emerges the evolution in Celant’s curatorial practice, from personal interpretation to his focus on historical documents, with an eye always turned towards non-traditional media (book, record, photography) and towards the encroachments between different languages (art, architecture, design).

Text in English and Italian.

Peter Behrens (1868-1940) was one of the most innovative architects and designers of the early 20th century. He is widely recognised as a pioneer of modern industrial design. To this day, his buildings and designs inform our everyday lives. As head designer at AEG, Behrens created the company’s turbine hall in Berlin-Moabit. This construction ranks among the most famous buildings of industrial architecture and is known around the world. But Behrens also developed AEG’s logo and corporate design – long before this concept actually existed. He thus established a consistent and standardised visual appearance for all products and marketing materials, ranging from the company’s letterhead to its advertisements. In addition, he was an accomplished typographer and designed trademarks which are still extant, not the least of which is the iconic font for the inscription ‘Dem deutschen Volke’ (To the German People) atop the Reichstag building in Berlin. T

Themes included within the set: Romana Rebbelmund – Glassware by Peter Behrens; Nuray Amrhein – The Schiedmayer Grand Piano by Peter Behrens; Isabel Brass – Hollowware and Cutlery by Peter Behrens; Romana Rebbelmund and Hans-Martin Zimmermann – Peter Behrens’ Shift Towards “New Objectivity”; Tobias Wüstenbecker – Peter Behrens’ Design for the Deutz Suspension Bridge in Cologne; Thorsten Scheer – Peter Behrens as Author; Carsten Krohn – The AEG Turbine Factory in Berlin; Holger Klein-Wiele – Architecture of the 1920s; Magdalena Holzhey – The Correspondence Between Peter Behrens and Friedrich Deneken 1898 to 1912; Fabian Peters – Friedrich Deneken as Mentor for Peter Behrens; Sabine Röder – Peter Behrens as Designer for AEG; Thorsten Scheer – Behrens’ Design Language Between Eclecticism and Modernism.

About a decade ago, Deutsche Bank initiated the Artist of the Year program. On the occasion of its 10th anniversary it is now for the first time awarding three artists at the same time: Maxwell Alexandre, Conny Maier, and Zhang Xu Zhan. What all three have in common is that they came to contemporary art via unusual paths and bring very specific life experiences and cultural influences with them. Maxwell Alexandre was born in Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela, where he still lives today. The paintings and installations of the artist of African descent revolve around community and violence, hip-hop and spirituality. Conny Maier lives and works in Berlin and Portugal and is one of the most important discoveries in the current German painting scene. Maier’s art reflects a world shaped by representation and materialism, in which people seem to lose control. Zhang Xu Zhan was born in 1988 into a family that has been making and trading in traditional paper figurines for over a century. His stop-motion films, staged in immersive installations, take us into the realm of nature spirits and demons.

With translations of the text about the work of Maxwell Alexandre in Brazilian Portuguese, with translation of the text about the work of Conny Maier in German and with a translation of the text about the work of Zhang Xu Zhan in Chinese.

Text in English, Portuguese, Chinese and German.