LITMIR.BIZ

If, as the famous saying goes, you really are what you eat, then Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527-1593) was a consummate painter of the human soul. This artist was a master draftsman whose finely wrought canvases captured the imagination of his generation. In this fascinating book, Liana De Girolami Cheney takes a closer look at the critical history of Arcimboldo’s work, from his initial popularity and the tragic obscurity that followed his death, to the ventual triumphant revival of his work and vision by Surrealist admirers of the 1920s.

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August Macke (1887-1914) was a master of German Expressionism, a movement which sprang up in the early 1900s with the intent to forego physical reality in search of its emotional counterpart, with a particular emphasis on expressing dark moods of tragedy and angst. Macke was a master of color and form, producing eye-catching canvases that evoke a strong sympathetic reaction in the viewer. He was equally at home portraying the sun drenched streets of Tunisia, the cloudy sky around the Bonn cathedral, and the faceless multitude of a crowded railway station. In this compelling text, Walter Cohen examines the brief life of an artist whose seemingly limitless potential was tragically cut short by his untimely death.

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Inspired by Monet’s work at a young age, Paul Signac (1863-1935) was a friend and disciple of Georges Seurat who combined the scientific precision of pointillism with the vivid colors and emotional expressivity of Impressionism. A close personal friend of Vincent van Gogh, who was a great admirer of his techniques, Signac traveled the world in search of inspiration for his monumental canvases. This book examines the intricacies of Signac’s celebrated technique, as well as showcasing the details of some of his most celebrated works.

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Universally celebrated for the intricacy of his pointillist canvases, Georges Seurat (1859-1891) was a painter whose stunning union of art and science produced uniquely compelling results. Seurat’s intricate paintings could take years to complete, with the magnificent results impressing the viewer with both their scientific complexity and visual impact. His Un Dimanche Après-Midi à l’Île de la Grande Jatte (Sunday Afternoon on the Island of Grand Jatte) has held its place among the most treasured and distinguished pieces of 20th-century art. Klaus H. Carl offers readers an intriguing glimpse into the detailed scientific technique behind Seurat’s pointillist masterpieces.

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An emblematic figure of the early 20th century, Paul Klee participated in the expansive Avant-Garde movements in Germany and Switzerland. From the vibrant Blaue Reiter movement to Surrealism at the end of the 1930s and throughout his teaching years at the Bauhaus, he attempted to capture the organic and harmonic nature of painting by alluding to other artistic mediums such as poetry, literature, and, above all, music. While he collaborated with artists like August Macke and Alexej von Jawlensky, his most famous partnership was with the abstract expressionist, Wassily Kandinsky.

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The strict prohibition on the representation of the human form has channeled artistic creation into architecture and architectural decoration. This book is a magical tour through Central Asia – Khirgizia, Tadjikistan, Turkmenia, and Uzbekistan – a cradle of Ancient civilisations and a repository of the Oriental arts inspired by Buddhism and Islam. There are magnificent, full-colour photographs of the abandoned cities of Mervand Urgench, Khiva, the capital of the Kharezm, with its mausoleum of Sheikh Seid Allahuddin, and, the Golden Road to Samarkand, the Blue City, a center of civilisation for 2,500 years.

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Housed in the Hermitage Museum along with other institutes, libraries, and museums in Russia and the republics of the former Soviet Union are some of the most magnificent treasures of Persian Art. For the most part, many of these works have been lost, but have been catalogued and published here for the first time with an unsurpassed selection of colour plates. In a comprehensive introduction, Vladimir Lukonin, Director of the Oriental Art section of the Hermitage Museum, and his colleague Anatoli Ivanov have broadly documented the major developments of Persian Art: from the first signs of civilisation on the plains of Iran around the 10th century BCE through the early 20th century. In the second part of the book they have catalogued Persian Art giving locations, origins, descriptions, and artist biographies where available. Persian Art demonstrates a common theme which runs through the art of the region over the past three millennia. Despite many religious and political upheavals, Persian Art whether in its architecture, sculpture, frescoes, miniatures, porcelain, fabrics, or rugs; whether in the work of the humble craftsmen or the high art of court painters displays the delicate touch and subtle refinement which has had a profound influence on art throughout the world.

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This book explains and celebrates the richness of English churches and cathedrals, which have a major place in medieval architecture. The English Gothic style developed somewhat later than in France, but rapidly developed its own architectural and ornamental codes. The author, John Shannon Hendrix, classifies English Gothic architecture in four principal stages: the early English Gothic, the decorated, the curvilinear, and the perpendicular Gothic. Several photographs of these architectural testimonies allow us to understand the whole originality of Britain during the Gothic era: in Canterbury, Wells, Lincoln, York, and Salisbury. The English Gothic architecture is a poetic one, speaking both to the senses and spirit.

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William Hogarth wrote his Analysis of Beauty in 1753, during the Age of Enlightenment. Through this captivating text, he tends to define the notion of beauty in painting and states that it is linked, per se, to the use of the serpentine lines in pictorial compositions. He calls it the line of beauty . His essay is thus dedicated to the study of the composition of paintings, depending on the correct use of the pictorial lines, light, colour, and the figure's attitudes. These timeless concepts have been applied by several artists through the centuries. Paintings from every period have here been chosen to support this demonstration. They allow us to explore the various manners in which beauty can be expressed in painting.

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The English school of painting was officially recognised at the beginning of the 18th century through the work of William Hogarth. It includes works by the most famous English artists, such as Thomas Gainsborough, Joseph Mallord William Turner, John Constable, Edward Burne-Jones, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti. This subject is introduced with a very unique text, published in 1882: a French study of English pictorial art. The author, Ernest Chesneau, was highly-cultured, an art historian and inspector of Fine Arts. He explains the beginnings of this school which excels in portraiture and landscapes, and reminds us of the English brilliance regarding watercolours, not forgetting to include the work of the Pre-Raphaelites.

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