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 Unpublished attributions from private collections are flanked by the painter’s masterpieces, reconstructing the framework of the international commissions that consecrated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.
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.
“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.
The first monograph on American artist Morton Kaish, whose light-filled paintings bridge the traditional and the experimental.
Morton Kaish (b. 1927) has long been known as a “painter’s painter.” His work has been collected by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and numerous other leading institutions, and he has served as a teacher and mentor to generations of American artists. His work, which bridges the abstract and the representational, the traditional and the experimental, is marked by a ceaseless exploration of light and colour that has led one critic to liken him to “a latter-day Bonnard.” Throughout his eight-decade career, Kaish has worked in series, returning to the same theme again and again and always finding something new; his series range from The Irish Chair, depicting wildflowers heaped on a wooden chair, to America, showing weathered doorways bearing a palimpsest of patriotic imagery.
This oversize monograph presents exceptional reproductions of a generous selection of Kaish’s works, arranged by series and including his formally innovative prints and drawings as well as his paintings. A text by the noted critic David Ebony, an interview with the artist, and an illustrated chronology lend new insight into Kaish’s life and work. A foreword by Annette Blaugrund, former director of the National Academy of Design, explores how the artist’s studios—including the one he shared for some fifty years with his wife, the celebrated sculptor Luise Kaish—have influenced his work.
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.
An attractive new hardcover edition of the classic biography of Tamara de Lempicka, whose paintings defined Art Deco and whose life epitomised the Jazz Age.
As F. Scott Fitzgerald portrayed the mad glories of the 1920s on the printed page, Tamara de Lempicka (1898-1980) captured them on canvas. A seductive Garbo-esque beauty with an irresistible force of personality, this refugee of the Russian Revolution successively conquered Paris, Hollywood, and New York with coruscating portraits of the world’s rich and famous. Her Art Deco paintings earned for her a life more fabulously excessive than anything Fitzgerald dreamed of.
Passion by Design, authored by Tamara de Lempicka’s own daughter, is an intimate look at a fascinating personality, and remains the best account of her life and work. This new edition is illustrated with vibrant colour reproductions of her finest paintings, as well as exclusive photographs from family albums. An additional chapter by Victoria de Lempicka, the artist’s granddaughter, explores the ever-evolving legacy of Tamara de Lempicka, from the record eight-figure price fetched by her painting La Tunique Rose in November 2019 to the new musical based on her life.
“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.
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.
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.
Paintings from the Indian subcontinent bedazzle the viewer with their minute details, colours and aesthetic qualities. Relatively modest in size, they often illustrate historical events, religious texts and poetry, or document life at court. Painted with water-solved pigments on paper, they invite closer observation and allow insight into the artistic traditions of India. “A Secret Garden” is the name of an outstanding private collection of Indian paintings. It comprises works spanning seven centuries from the time of the Sultans (1206-1526) through to the nineteenth century. This new book features a selection of 105 artworks from Danielle Porret’s collection. Each entry provides a stylistic analysis of the painting as well as a discussion of the subject matter by leading experts in the field of Indian painting.
Was there such a thing as ‘shitposting’ in the 17th century? Is Rembrandt really always a safe investment? What florid dramas lie behind the scenes in Rachel Ruysch’s still life paintings, and has Aelbert Jacobsz Cuyp finally gone to the dogs? The Tyrolean State Museums are taking a closer look at their small but nonetheless impressive collection of Dutch paintings, posing topical contemporary questions in relation to the works of Rembrandt and Co. Selected paintings dating from the 16th to the 18th century are presented and staged anew through essay-style texts that are not meant to be taken too seriously. The resulting questions relating to the role of artists, the value of art, or the significance of climate change hundreds of years ago are an invitation to see Dutch painting with fresh eyes and to view art history as an entertaining dialogue between the past and the present.
This book, published to accompany the exhibition of the same title, explores Jean-Paul Riopelle’s interest in northern Canada and his works devoted to this theme. It highlights in particular the wonderful series of paintings he made in the 1970s, including both the works themselves and archival materials that delve into this period when Riopelle was especially energetic. It was a time when he organised a number of trips to the region to fish, hunt, and immerse himself in nature, seeking the communion that was so dear to him.
But it was not just the vegetation in northern Canada that attracted Riopelle; the indigenous peoples he encountered were also a source of great inspiration for him. In combination, these two aspects of the land filled his imagination and molded his intellectual and artistic perspective.
The reader will become acquainted with his less well known and unpublished works, and follow Riopelle’s artistic development as he ranged over the frozen landscapes of the far north and the limitless forests further south, taking stock of the way the natives adapted to their environment. The book emphasises the fact that Riopelle’s oeuvre deliberately kept its distance from works that depicted nature as the defining emblem of the Canadian nation. Rather, the artist was the bearer of a unique personal sensibility that was able to visually evoke that particular territory in a dialogue between reality and imagination.
The more than 100 works included in the book (paintings, sculptures, prints, and mixed-media works) are part of a narrative consisting of four main sections (Canadian Nordicity as Viewed from Paris; The Experience of the North; Borrowing from the North; The North and Art), whose themes are examined in essays contributed by specialists in relevant fields.
Enduring Ideals illuminates both the historic context in which FDR articulated the Four Freedoms – Freedom of Speech, Freedom of Worship, Freedom from Want, and Freedom from Fear – and the role of Rockwell’s paintings in bringing them to life for millions of people, rallying the public behind the War effort and changing the tenor of the times. In telling the story of how Rockwell’s works were transformed from a series of paintings into a national movement, the exhibition also demonstrates the power of illustration to communicate ideas and inspire change. In addition to his celebrated paintings of the Four Freedoms, the exhibition brings together numerous other examples of painting, illustration, and more, by both Rockwell and a broad range of his contemporaries—from J.C. Leyendecker and Mead Schaeffer, to Ben Shahn, Dorothea Lange, and Gordon Parks, among others—as well as historical documents, photographs, videos, and artifacts; interactive digital displays; and immersive settings. While exploring the response of an earlier generation to the plea for defence of universal freedoms, the exhibition also resonates with our own time. The catalogue features essays by exhibition co-curators Stephanie Haboush Plunkett and James Kimble, by Laurie Norton Moffat, Director of the Norman Rockwell Museum, and by other contributors, including activist Ruby Bridges, artist and granddaughter of Norman Rockwell, Daisy Rockwell, and Ambassador William vanden Heuvel.
“Common (不二)” is a Buddhist term that comes from the Dictionary of Buddhist Studies. “All matters in the world are originally one and equal, without distinction.” This means that nothing is different from each other.
Born with a congenital disability, Liu Yi underwent more than 20 operations to slowly stretch his body from the “sphere.” He always smiles innocently in life, with paintings, art, and innocence to heal himself while infecting others. Since April 14, 2015, Liu Yi started drawing on his smartphone with his fingers every day. This “assignment” soon became a part of his life.
Common Innocence of Liu Yi is a simple yet satisfying read, with hundreds of little drawings created by the artist, accompanied by his thoughts, the names of paintings given by Jian Guoer during their conversations, as well as comments from professionals.
Text in English and Chinese.
Volker Hermes: Hidden Portraits gathers the essential works by one of the most beguiling artists of the present era, in a very modern reinterpretation of historical privilege.
Using only elements of the original paintings, Volker Hermes masterfully alters photos of historical portraits to mask the faces of their subjects. With each figure concealed under their own ceremonial attire, these one-time elites quickly lose their individuality in a plume of decorations and accessories.
In this official collection, Hermes delivers his wry commentary on wealth, fame and social status with taut imagery, intense focus and a suitably shrewd sense of humour. His immaculately reproduced artworks are accompanied by the thoughts of German art historian Till-Holger Borchert and Professor Francesca Raimondi of Berlin’s Institute for Philosophy, as well as the artist himself.
A must-have revision of classical portraiture from a celebrated digital creator.
“Hermes’s meticulously described collages pay homage to their sources while gently ribbing the social pretensions and ambitions of the courtly classes.” – Christopher Alessandrini, metmuseum.org
Using new techniques and new materials, Bernhard Huber creates abstract paintings in glass in large formats that shift on multiple planes between transparency, reflection and opacity. His colours are vibrant and clear. Rarely does he indulge in an opulent riot of colour but instead mainly produces stringent creations notable for their cool colour tones. The effects achieved are precisely calculated yet never overwhelmingly so. In this respect, Huber’s affinities with Concrete art, with which he also shares some of the formal qualities of his works, are revealed. Glass is for Huber a pivotal working material yet is not his sole medium. He has made the light-forming properties of glass the core of his artistic agenda, which goes beyond glass as a medium to encompass working in the fields of painting, sculpture and architecture. Colour and light have become his media of choice, with which he forms surfaces and spaces. He reacts sensitively to available architectural situations; his works are ‘site-specific’ to the utmost yet also stunningly configure the space surrounding them. He never simply makes stained-glass windows – he always forms several visual planes so that the ‘window principle’ is always extended into the interior space. Thus the glass surface becomes light sculpture and this in turn forms light space.
Text in English and German.
Megan Rooney: Echoes and Hours is the first monograph to explore the work of one of the most exciting emerging painters of her generation.
Rooney’s sensuous and compelling paintings reinvigorate the power of abstraction. They embody a sense of boundless energy and life, whilst reflecting the artist’s deep knowledge of painting and the potential of each viewer’s encounter. Vibrant colour and gesture combine in dense, apparently infinite layers. Each canvas captures the ebb and flow of Rooney’s process, from repetitive overpainting to the use of abrasives to remove pigment.
This major new book accompanies Rooney’s first solo exhibition in the UK. It explores the variations in her painting practice across a series of new works made for the exhibition. The book illustrates these works including a temporary mural at Kettle’s Yard painted directly on the gallery walls, as well as documenting earlier, formative paintings. Three newly commissioned essays and an interview with the artist in her studio explore Rooney’s practice and the resonances of her hugely captivating work.
Tanz auf der Klinge. Hold Me is the first monograph by the artist Willehad Eilers aka Wayne Horse (b. 1981). This publication features works created between 2018 and 2023, presenting the many facets that make up the artist’s universe—from blind drawing to graffiti and monumental oil paintings. Eiler’s visual world, made up of grotesquely lewd scenes, reveals a generous portion of humor while exploring the darkest depths of society. Studio images and photographs from Eiler’s everyday life shed light on his creative process. This visual journey is accompanied by interviews with the artist, brief explanatory texts, and the notes that in many cases served as the starting points for the works depicted here.
Text in English and German.
Alfred Wallis (1855-1942) is one of the most original and inspiring British artists of the 20th Century. Promoted by the artist Ben Nicholson amongst others, Wallis’s paintings influenced the development of British art between the wars. The directness of Wallis’ vision reflected a lifetime of living by and from the sea. His paintings are of what he knew, remembered and imagined. Yet they are also timeless stories about survival and the nature of our relationship with the world. As Jim Ede commented “Wallis is never local.”
With over 70 illustrations, excerpts from letters and texts by Michael Bird, Ben Nicholson and Jim Ede, this book takes a fresh look at this extraordinary artist and his relationship to Kettle’s Yard. It includes some of Wallis’s best works from the Kettle’s Yard collection including many that are not normally on display, from ambitious paintings such as Saltash to what Wallis knew and loved best: ships and boats.
Kettle’s Yard, the University of Cambridge’s modern and contemporary art gallery, holds the largest public collection of works by Alfred Wallis. Wallis was born in Devon. He was a fisherman and later a scrap-metal merchant in St. Ives. He took up painting in his later years, following the death of his wife in 1922. He was admired by Ben Nicholson and Christopher Wood, who came across his work when visiting St. Ives in 1928 and included it in the Seven & Five Society’s exhibition of 1929. He died in Madron Poorhouse.
This catalogue for an exhibition at the Bonnefanten Museum in Maastricht features paintings by Pieter Bruegel the Younger and his contemporaries that depict the popular religious subject “Christ Carrying the Cross,” and examines these works for covert critiques of power and politics in Flanders during the 16th and 17th centuries. The show explores how artists incorporated both direct and indirect social and political criticisms into paintings on this theme, and brings together a selection of works from Bruegel the Younger, his predecessors, contemporaries, and followers.
At the beginning of 2020, just as global Covid-19 restrictions were coming into force, the artist David Hockney was at his house, studio and garden in Normandy. From there, he witnessed the arrival of spring, and recorded the blossoming of the surrounding landscape on his iPad, a medium he has been using for over a decade. Working outdoors was an antidote to the anxiety of the moment for Hockney – ‘We need art, and I do think it can relieve stress,’ he says.
This uplifting publication – produced to accompany a major exhibition at the Royal Academy of Arts – includes 116 of his new iPad paintings and shows to full effect Hockney’s singular skill in capturing the exuberance of nature.