The arresting pictures of Frida Kahlo were in many ways expressions of trauma. Through a near-fatal road accident at the age of 18, failing health, a turbulent marriage, miscarriage and childlessness, she transformed the afflictions into revolutionary art. In literal or metaphorical self-portraiture, Kahlo looks out at the viewer with an audacious glare, rejecting her destiny as a passive victim and rather intertwining expressions of her experience into a hybrid surreal-real language of living: hair, roots, veins, vines, tendrils and fallopian tubes. Many of her works also explore the Communist political ideals which ... |
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Двуезично издание на български и английски език. ... "Беше преди двайсетина години... Стоях в галерия "Ромфея" и дълго гледах една пясъчна картина на неизвестен тогава за мене художник. В картината беше нарисувано чувство със синтетичния език на природата. Фактурата ѝ, композицията, вътрешният ритъм на цвета, втъкан в органичността на цялото, ми харесаха толкова, че не издържах, взех името на художника, скочих в колата и потеглих за Кюстендил. Исках да видя този художник, да го пипна, да вляза в ателието му и усетя атмосферата, да се докосна до предметите и картините му. Така за първи път се срещнах ... |
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Rembrandt van Rijn (1606 - 1669) never left his homeland of the Netherlands but in his massive body of painting, drawing, and etching, he changed the course of Western art. His prolific oeuvre encompasses religious, historical, and secular scenes, as well as one of the most extraordinary series of portraits and self-portraits in history. Rembrandt's work foregrounds texture, light, and acute observation. Like sudden, startling apparitions in a shadowy street, his subjects are illuminated against deep, dark backgrounds and rendered with immense physical as well as psychological scrutiny. Whether biblical or ... |
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Multilingual Edition: English, French, German. Editors: Burkhard Riemschneider, Henk Schiffmacher. ... Whether you’re thinking of getting a tattoo or just want to see to what lengths others have gone in decorating their bodies, this is the book to check out. "1000 Tattoos" explores the history of the art worldwide via designs and photos - from 19th century engravings to tribal body art, from circus ladies of the ’20s to classic biker designs. For years, Henk Schiffmacher has been recognised as one of the stars of the tattoo scene. His Amsterdam studio attracts countless tattoo pilgrims, and he also runs the ... |
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Emerging amid the brutality of World War I, the revolutionary Dada movement took disgust with the establishment as its starting point. From 1916 until the mid-1920s, artists in Zurich, Cologne, Hanover, Paris, and New York launched a radical assault on the politics, social values, and cultural conformity which they regarded as complicit in the devastating conflict. Dada artists shared no distinct style but rather a common wish to upturn societal structures as much as artistic standards and to replace logic and reason with the absurd, chaotic, and unpredictable. Their practice encompassed experimental theater, games, ... |
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Museum Ludwig Cologne. ... The history of photography began nearly 200 years ago, but only relatively recently has it been fully recognized as a medium in its own right. Cologne’s Museum Ludwig was the first museum of contemporary art to devote a substantial section to international photography. The L. Fritz Gruber collection, from which this book is drawn, is one of the most important in Germany and one of the most representative anywhere in the world, constituting the core of the museum’s holdings. This book provides a fascinating insight into the collection's rich diversity; from conceptual art to abstraction to ... |
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Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571 - 1610) was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of the Italian Baroque, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial, violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the run. Though famed for his dramatic use of color, light, and shadow, it was above all Caravaggio's boundary-breaking naturalism which scorched his name into the annals of art history. From the dirtied soles of feet to the sexualized languor of bare flesh, the artist allowed even sacred and biblical scenes to unfold with a startling, often visceral humanity. This ... |
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Though numbering just 35 known works, the œuvre of Johannes Vermeer (1632 - 1675) is hailed as one of the most important and inspiring portfolios in art history. His paintings have prompted a New York Times bestseller, a film starring Scarlett Johansson, and record visitor numbers at art institutions from Amsterdam to Washington. Vermeer's subjects focus on daily domestic activities, from letter writing to music playing to preparations in the kitchen. The scenes astound with their meticulous detail, majestic planes of light, and with Vermeer’s extraordinary ability to draw out narrative intrigues. In such ... |
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Ernst Ludwig Kirchner (1880 - 1938) is regarded as one of the key figures in 20th-century European art. A Modernist to his bones, he sent seismic waves through the art world with his hard-edged, intensely colored paintings and disseminated his ideas through Die Brücke art movement and the MUIM-Institut school of modernist painting, both of which he cofounded. Kirchner's work reconciled past and present through an Expressionist prism, reflecting the latest avant-garde ideas in art, while exploring traditional academic approaches and subjects. His works tackled social, moral, and emotional questions with a fierce ... |
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Lucian Freud (1922 - 2011) was interested in the telling of truths. Always operating outside the main currents of 20th-century art, the esteemed portrait painter observed his subjects with the regimen and precision of a laboratory scientist. He recorded not only the blotches, bruises, and swellings of the living body, but also, beneath the flaws and folds of flesh, the microscopic details of what lies within: the sensation, the emotion, the intelligence, the bloom, and the inevitable, unstoppable decay. Despite rejecting parallels between him and his renowned grandfather, the correlation between Lucian Freud's ... |
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While anchoring his practice in the traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance, Auguste Rodin (1840 - 1917) paved the way for modern sculpture. From a very early stage, he was interested in movement, the expression of the body, chance effects, and the incomplete fragment. It was these elements that gave shape, and the impression of life, to such famous works as The Kiss and The Thinker. Produced in collaboration with the Musée Rodin, this "Taschen" Basic Art introduction examines the formative years of Rodin's training as well as the key stages of his subsequent career. It retraces the genesis of his ... |
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Most commonly associated with the birth of the Impressionist movement in mid-19th-century Paris, Edgar Degas (1834 - 1917) in fact defied easy categorization and instead developed a unique style, strongly influenced by Old Masters, the body in motion, and everyday urban life. The elder scion of a wealthy family, Degas cofounded a series of exhibitions of "Impressionist" art, but soon disassociated himself from the group in pursuit of a more realist approach. His subjects centered on the teeming, noisy streets of Paris, as well as its leisure entertainments, such as horse racing, cabarets, and, most particularly, ... |
