David Czupryn takes an opposite approach. He does not aim to trick us into believing that his surreal visual worlds are real. His images recall theatre stages where human hybrids appear next to carefully arranged still lifes whose different textures are meticulously depicted. In the spirit of classical trompe-l’œil painting, Czupryn is a master of aesthetic deception who translates the pictorial language and techniques of past ages into the present and skillfully integrates numerous references to the history of art and religion, iconography and allegory, politics and society into his paintings.

Text in English and German.

Painter, draftsman and engraver, Pierre Lesieur (1922-2011) was one of the most influential French artists of the second half of the 20th century. Trained at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris – where he took lessons from André Lhote – and at the Académie de Montmartre, he had his first exhibition in 1952.

Lesieur’s paintings of the 1950s are characterised by the use of brightly coloured areas, in line with the work of Henri Matisse and Pierre Bonnard. In the 1960s, this research bordered on abstraction, particularly in still lifes and representations of objects. From the 1970s onwards, through his paintings and drawings, Lesieur took a particular interest in interiors, as well as in portraits and female nudes.

Early in his career, Pierre Lesieur was recognised as an important artist. After his first personal exhibition in 1952, his work was regularly shown at the Coard Gallery in Paris. From the 1990s, Lesieur’s notoriety became international, resulting in further exhibitions in Japan and the United States. Some of his works are now housed in major museums such as the Center Pompidou, the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Hiroshima Museum.

Text in English and French.

Colour is at the core of our perception, the very essence of how we see and understand the world, but the question to ask is: how does one interpret it?

Six well-known British artists – David Batchelor, Ian Davenport, Lothar Götz, Jim Lambie, Annie Morris, Fiona Rae – have interpreted in different ways, the relationship of colour within space.

Colour is the main protagonist of their works: it can be found in Batchelor’s sculptures assembled with found objects, in the coloured trails of Davenport’s paintings, in Fiona Rae’s delicate, floating marks on white surfaces, and in Annie Morris’ sculptures that powerfully define the environment. Finally, the colour comes out of the paintings to invade the walls and the floor of the Gallery itself, with two site-specific creations: an entire wall painted by Lothar Götz, and Zobop, the floor made of vinyl by Jim Lambie.

Text in English and Italian. 

Nicole Bottet encapsulates time.

The singular expression of an artistic career that doesn’t fit into any specific school, delicately presents itself and lets us into an intimate space, a sacred place of muted dialogues. Ungrounded and yet firmly rooted, her large paintings are paralleled by a long trail of letters, photos, old adverts.

A bouquet withers on the canvas, its petals fall onto a father’s letter, a declaration of love bursts out of a tablecloth. Conversations become paintings. A red glow slips behind the mountain of letters.

The unique demonstration of the sweetness of life amid everyday torment, this painting brings us face to face with a nude haloed in light, a sun-drenched wall, it discovers the sparkle of a crystal, the spontaneity of a vivid red, a deep green. Suspended like a star, gold shines through the obscurity.

The work of Nicole Bottet can be seen in private collections and museums throughout Europe, Japan, China, the United States and Canada.

Text in English and French.

“This year, the Fondation Vuitton strikes again with an exhibition of the Morozov Collection, about 200 French and Russian works bought by two other textile magnates, the brothers Mikhail and Ivan Morozov, who also made multiple Paris shopping trips” – New York Times

The Morozov brothers, wealthy Moscow textile merchants Mikhail (1870-1903) and Ivan (1871-1921), played a key role in bringing Impressionist and Post-Impressionist art to Russia in the first decades of the 20th century. Along with Sergei Shchukin, a fellow industrialist and art collector, they created an international audience for French art and had a transformative effect on Russian cultural life.

Between the years 1903 and 1914, Ivan Morozov spent more money than any other collector of his time, amassing a stunning collection of works by Matisse, Monet, Picasso, Bonnard, Sisley, Renoir, Signac, Vuillard, Gauguin, Van Gogh, Degas, Pissarro, and, most especially, Cezanne (17 paintings, all of which will be on display). On his bi-annual trips to Paris, he bought from the most discerning dealers, including Paul Durand-Ruel, Ambroise Vollard, and Daniel-Henri Kahnweiler, as well as directly from the artists themselves. His collection comprises 278 paintings, not including 300 paintings by Russian artists (Chagall, Malevich, Serov, Vrubel, Levitan, Larionov, Goncharova) and 28 sculptures. The Morozov collection was nationalised after the October 1917 Revolution, and after World War II it was divided among the Hermitage Museum, the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts, and the Tretyakov State Museum.

This stunning catalogue has been published for a show of 100 highlights from the Morozov Collection that will run from 22 September 2021 – 22 February 2022 at the Louis Vuitton Foundation in Paris. It is the first time that works from the collection will travel abroad since they were acquired. This landmark exhibition will be the only stop for the show outside of Russia.

Vincent van Gogh’s short, passionate life was driven by an almost unimaginable creative energy that eventually overwhelmed him. The outlines of his story – the early strivings in Holland and Paris, the revelatory impact of the move to Provence, the attacks of madness that led ineluctably to his suicide – are almost as familiar as the paintings. Yet it is more than possible that neither the paintings nor Van Gogh’s story would have survived at all if it had not been for his remarkable sister-in-law, Jo van Gogh-Bonger. After Vincent’s death and that of her husband, his brother Theo, Jo devoted her life to preserving and exhibiting the paintings, and editing the letters. It is in her short and unaccountably neglected biography that we can come closest to Vincent the man.

Manhattan Masters shows the most beautiful Dutch Masters from the Golden Age in The Frick Collection, New York. The book elaborates the creation of The Frick Collection, brought together during America’s Gilded Age in the last quarter of the 19th century. This book, published to accompany the exhibition, focuses exclusively on Dutch paintings of the 17th century and features outstanding works by renowned artist of that period, including Rembrandt, Vermeer, Hals, and Ruisdael.

Giovanni Segantini’s (1858–99) three paintings La Vita—La Natura—La Morte (Becoming—Being—Passing) of 1898/99 do not reveal at first glance anything about their equally complex and interesting background. Originally planned for the 1900 Paris Exposition of 1900 as a gigantic, multimedia “Alpine symphony” panorama 722 ft long and 66 ft high, Segantini was forced to reduce his work to three purely pictorial main paintings, owing to a lack of financial means. When he died in 1899, whilst still working on it, he left behind an incomplete triptych that was intended to embody “the spirit of nature, of life, and of death.”

In this book, Swiss art historian and Segantini-expert Juerg Albrecht traces this monumental landmark piece in the artist’s oeuvre as one of the last programmatic works of fin de siècle art. Apart from its genesis, the book explains, as well the cycle of life and death that the three paintings visualise, whose origins Segantini sought both privately and creatively in the mountains of the upper Engadine valley during his lifetime.

Text in English and German.

Leonhard Rickhard is an outstanding representative of Norwegian contemporary art. Owing to his unique vision and narrative techniques, he has revitalised painting as a means of artistic expression. In his conceptual paintings he portrays a fragmented and often enigmatic reality, inviting the viewer to discover and reconstruct his pictorial narrative. Rickhard’s universe of motifs and figures can be traced back to the 1970s: birch forests, building sites and heaps of machinery are combined with finely detailed depictions of machine parts and fragments of models. His narrative picture sequences are often populated by melancholy and contemplative human figures. Rickhard has constantly questioned, challenged and recontextualised this pictorial universe. His artistic works occupy a unique position in Norwegian art, precisely because of their uncompromising reworking of recurring motifs. His paintings appear as solid and monumental constructions, which at the same time reveal a fundamental complexity, restlessness and vulnerability. The combination of conceptual strategies and formal aspects is one of the most significant strengths of his artistic oeuvre in the variegated field of contemporary art.

Text in English, German & Norwegian.

This book accompanies a major exhibition in the Ashmolean Museum on the early work of internationally acclaimed German artist Anselm Kiefer. It focuses on his paintings, drawings, photographs and artist books created between 1969 and 1982, in the private collections of the Hall Art Foundation. Anselm Kiefer: Early Works is the first institutional show and publication in the UK dedicated to Kiefer’s early practice. The book introduces themes, subjects and styles that have become signature to Kiefer’s work, while providing a more intimate and complementary context for his large-scale installations that he is best known for today. The early works are accompanied by three recent paintings from the artist’s own collections and White Cube, chosen by the artist himself.

Art historians, artists, curators and experts of Kiefer’s art from Germany, Austria, Belgium, Britain and the US have contributed 46 original texts on individual works, organised in a chronological structure. An illustrated chronology at the end of the book compiled by Stephanie Biron from the Hall Art Foundation provides an overview of the artist’s early practice and life, to contextualise the works.

The book begins with Kiefer’s iconic Occupations and Heroische Sinnbilder series, created in 1969 and 1970, which Kiefer views as his first serious works. Kiefer was among the first generation of German post-war artists to directly confront the country’s troubled past and identity. Full of complex references to German socio-political history but also to culture, literature and his personal life, Kiefer’s early works carry a unique iconography, linking classic ideas of great art with a distinctive understanding of concrete artistic materiality. The landscapes in his watercolours are historically charged; hand-written words on paintings are closely linked with poetry well known to most German viewers; motifs and symbols point at Nazi ideologies and a collective feeling of guilt.

Jean Fautrier (1989-1964) was a major 20th century artist. Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and influenced by J.M.W. Turner, he was quickly noticed by the collector Jeanne Castel in 1923. At first, his style was figurative and played on contrasts of light. He expertly harnessed the essence of reality in order to transfigure it, redefining the genres of landscape painting, still lifes and nudes (especially in his series of dark works) during the inter-war period. A few years later, his approach underwent a radical shift and became much more abstract. He launched the “Informalist” art movement, playing with pictorial materials and combining different substances to create visions of an extraordinary material quality. Close to the great intellectual figures of his time, including Jean Paulhan, Paul Éluard, Francis Ponge, René Char and André Malraux, Fautrier never ceased producing remarkably powerful and politically resonant works, as is attested by his major series Otages (1943-1945), Objets (1947-1948) and Partisans (1956). In 1960, he was awarded the first prize for painting at the Venice Biennale. Boasting an exceptionally exhaustive iconography, this first ever comprehensive annotated catalogue of Jean Fautrier’s paintings includes the technique, origin, exhibitions and bibliography for each work. It is supplemented with a detailed biography, technical analyses and authoritative scientific texts, as well as transcriptions of interviews and radio broadcasts from Fautrier’s time.

Text in English and French.

Johannes Vermeer (1632-1675) is world-famous for his scenes of daily life, such as a kitchen maid pouring milk, a woman having a music lesson, or a lady writing a letter. However, when Vermeer began painting around the age of 21, he focused primarily on traditional subjects derived from the Bible and classical mythology. Not only do these early works differ greatly from his later paintings in terms of subject matter, they also differ in style. This publication deals with the young Vermeer’s training and artistic development. It also gives an account of the rediscovery of his early work in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The exhibition unites three paintings from the beginning of Vermeer’s artistic career: the Mauritshuis’ Diana and her nymphs of c. 1653-1654, is joined by Christ in the house of Martha and Mary (c. 1655) from the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh, and The Procuress (1656) from the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen in Dresden. These three paintings afford an image of the artist seeking his own style. All three paintings have recently been restored. Within this context, the differences between Johannes Vermeer’s early and late work also emerge clearly. The Young Vermeer is organised in collaboration with the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden and the National Gallery of Scotland in Edinburgh.

“Nicholson’s Scottish paintings encapsulate her concerns with light, radiance and harmony which she expressed through flowers and the lyricism of the natural landscape.” – The Independent
Throughout her long and varied career, Winifred Nicholson (1893-1981) was concerned with light, colour and radiance. Best known for her sensitive and joyful flower paintings, she married Ben Nicholson in 1920 and their mutually influential artistic relationship lasted, despite separation, until Winifred’s death. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, she made regular working trips to Scotland, often accompanied by the poet, Kathleen Raine. Frequently staying on the islands of Eigg and Canna and in Sandaig on the mainland, Winifred felt a deep affinity with the Scottish landscape and marvelled at the quality of light and the effects created by the ever-changing weather conditions. Her last painting expedition was to Eigg in 1980. Winifred Nicholson in Scotland is based on personal correspondence and the recollections of relatives, friends and painting companions. The book examines Winifred Nicholson’s love for Scotland and illustrates her Scottish paintings.

Preah Bot are portable paintings on canvas which represent either single episodes from the life of the Buddha or from the Jataka tales, in particular the last ten stories, the birth tales of the Buddha. In the past they were presented by lay people to the monasteries during religious festivals as a means of merit-making. They may then have served as a substitute for murals in wooden temple buildings where murals were not possible. Following the acclaim for Buddhist Painting in Cambodia, Vittorio Roveda and Sotham Yem have sought to document both their aesthetics and their meaning before the use of Preah Bot in a strictly religious sense has disappeared. Instead today they are being produced purely as souvenirs for tourists or for collectors. The book is also intended as an encouragement to the Cambodian People to preserve and study their important Buddhist heritage.

Artemisia Gentileschi has been the subject of much attention in recent decades. Research dedicated to her has, however, often returned a stereotyped and reductive image of the artistic universe and personality of the painter. The professional figure of Gentileschi, who was able to move with great success in what we now call the art system, finally finds new dignity. Unpublished attributions from private collections are flanked by the painter’s masterpieces, reconstructing the framework of the international commissions that consecrated her as a protagonist of the European Baroque, in the most complete and up-to-date volume dedicated to the artist. The innovative charge of language and the exceptional nature of Artemisia’s iconographic choices reveal the documented interests and literary, scientific and musical frequentations that the painter skilfully cultivated in every city that recorded her passage.

Text in English and Italian.

The art book Lita Cabellut is the first monograph to be published on the impressive work of the highly talented artist. Among experts, Cabellut is now considered the third most valuable artist in Spain. Her importance to the art world becomes clear when one realises that she is the only living artist to have managed to be exhibited at the REAL ACADEMIA DE BELLAS ARTES DE SAN FERNANDO (RABASF) in Madrid. Here her paintings are installed next to works by the old masters Francisco de Goya and Pablo Picasso, and anyone who looks at her large-format paintings will realise that she has earned this place.

But Cabellut does not only paint; she is also a multidisciplinary artist who feels at home in many fields. She also stages operas and creates sculptures. Her fans love her fresco technique, which gives her paintings that very special authenticity and vulnerability.

Now, at last, fans of Lita can bring her paintings home to them in the high-quality coffee table book Lita Cabellut. The beautifully crafted coffee table book shows the most important works of the Spanish artist, who now lives and works in the Netherlands. There, she was voted Artist of the Year in 2021.

Text in English and German.

Ferdinand Hodler (1853-1918) is arguably the foremost Swiss artist of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Ignoring artistic conventions of his time he created a vast oeuvre comprising landscapes and portraits, monumental historic scenes and symbolic and allegorical figures, and also drawings and sketches. A number of recent international publications and exhibitions as well as rising prices for his works at auction indicate that Hodler today has secured his place as an important figure in art history. Although Hodler’s work has been widely published in recent years, a catalogue raisonné of his work has been lacking. This gap is being closed now by the Swiss Institute for Art Reasearch (SIK-ISEA) in Zürich. The result of years of scholarly work is going to be published in four parts until 2016. The new volume 2 documents Hodler’s oeuvre in portraiture and includes all known works. It presents also all works where attribution to Hodler is questioned by recent research, works where attribution has been proven wrong or that are proven forgeries. Text in German. The Swiss Institute for Art Research SIK-ISEA was founded in 1951 as a centre for art historical and art technological research and documentation. Based in Zürich and Lausanne and funded largely by the federal government of Switzerland, as well as by the governments of the canton (state) and the city of Zürich and those of other Swiss cantons and by private donors, it focuses on Swiss art and artists.

Text in German.

This catalogue accompanies the first major exhibition in the UK dedicated to Anna Ancher (1859 – 1935), considered to be one the most innovative artists in Danish art history.

Bringing together recently discovered paintings from Anna Ancher’s home, alongside an extensive body of work made throughout the artist’s long career, the exhibition will feature more than 40 of her paintings, including the artist’s most famous masterpieces on special loan from Art Museums of Skagen. A central figure of the Skagen artist colony, based at the northernmost point of Jutland, Ancher is widely considered to be the most significant female painter in Danish art history. She is widely celebrated in her homeland yet remains relatively unknown to British audiences. 

Ancher was an influential figure of the Scandinavian ‘Modern Breakthrough’ movement that sought to capture real life, demonstrated in her intimate, observational works, which documented everyday experiences in the fishing town of Skagen. Influenced by her travels to Paris, as well as French Impressionism, the artist produced vivid interiors and evocative landscape scenes in which light becomes the central figure. The exhibition will demonstrate Ancher’s bold approach to colour and radical interpretation of everyday scenes as a truly pioneering modern painter.

These extraordinary works by Cecily Brown, of wrecked ships, frantic and prone bodies, carefully illuminate the tensions between the past and the present. Taking inspiration from Delacroix’s shipwreck paintings, as well as one of the most feted paintings in the world; Géricault’s, The Raft of the Medusa, 1818–19. In her introduction to the book, Whitworth curator Dr Samantha Lackey writes, ‘These extraordinary works by Cecily Brown, of wrecked ships, frantic and prone bodies, carefully illuminate the tensions between the past and the present. Of course, these drawings also push to the forefront of our minds the images we see every day on our screens, of shipwrecked refugees attempting, and failing, to make their own sea voyages.’

The exhibition ‘Cecily Brown: Shipwreck Drawings’ was shown at The Whitworth (University of Manchester) from 12 November 2017 to 15 April 2018.

This book contains two classic series, Chi Yi and Er Gong, which document the creative process of artist Chen Duxi over the past 13 years. Chi Yi is a way to merge the observer as a subject into the object of observation by means of movement, and to observe fluid changes as a way to study ontological painting from a subject-object perspective. The artist has long had a strong interest in and sensitivity to the texture and state of movement of subtle things. The works unify line and texture by reprocessing texture details in a highly distinctive personal style. Under the artist’s brush, the water patterns take different forms, and the flowing, coiling and settling movement states form a harmonious, subtle and introverted line aesthetic, and constitute the artist’s unique visual language and its visual spectrum. The Er Gong series is an interpretation of the microscopic world of plants and animals from a de-anthropocentric perspective, exploring the relationship between individual creatures and paintings.

Text in English and Chinese.