Ben Nicholson (1894-1982) was considered to be one of the greatest British artists of the twentieth century, first coming to international prominence with his famous ‘white reliefs’ of the 1930s. A pioneer of abstract art in Britain, he played a significant role in the European avant-garde, forming close links with Picasso, Braque, Arp, Mondrian and others. At the same time, he had a strong sense of tradition, maintaining a life-long attachment to landscape and still-life forms.
More than 150 years after his death, William Blake (1757–1827) remains a cryptic and controversial figure. Equally gifted as a poet and a painter, he produced work that is as arresting for its beauty as for its strangeness. With this fresh examination of Blake’s unfolding career, William Vaughan presents an artist with a radical and utterly individual vision, who was deeply concerned with the social, religious, and political issues of his age.
Bernard Leach was a pre-eminent artist-potter of the twentieth century. In the early part of his career he spent twelve formative years in Japan, during a period of febrile excitement in the arts. In 1920 he returned to England to set up a studio in St Ives. Leach’s influence on the growth of the studio pottery movement, both in Japan and in the West, has been profound. His making of ceramics and his teaching of some of the foremost artist-potters of the period gives him a central place in the international history of the decorative arts.
Edmund de Waal is a world-famous author and ceramicist. He is the author of The Hare with Amber Eyes, winner of the Costa Book Award for Biography and the Galaxy National Book Award (New Writer of the Year Award), and an Economist Book of the Year.
A beautifully designed introduction to the life and work of Paul Nash, one of the leading artists of the 20th century. By exploring the full course of Nash’s eventful career, David Boyd Haycock takes you through how he produced some of the greatest paintings of the First and Second World Wars, and helped to establish the Surrealist movement in Britain.
Born in London in 1953 to a family of builders and artists, Richard Wilson creates works that often come closer to engineering or even architecture than to traditional sculpture. Typically he transforms the viewer’s environment into something unsettling and strange through interventions that not only alter the physical space but also interfere with our perception of it.
More than any British artist of his generation, Julian Opie has taken his art beyond the gallery environment and out into the mainstream of cultural life, testing his ideas in a wide variety of media. Author Mary Horlock surveys his career, beginning with the early painted metal sculptures of everyday objects, encompassing the 3-D evocations of the urban landscape, and finishing with the powerful graphic style evolved in recent years that has transferred to billboard posters, road signs, LED screens and album covers.
American artist Ed Ruscha (b. 1937) is a master of creating art that is at once playful and profound. Ruscha’s inimitable work frequently involves the setting of a single word or phrase against a stained background or monumental landscape. His paintings, prints, drawings, photographs, books, and films were influential in the development of Pop Art, and his stunning artist’s books continue to inspire up-and-coming artists today.
One of the most celebrated and talked about artists of his generation, Turner Prize-winner Antony Gormley (b. 1950) generates lively debate and critical acclaim. His large-scale, iconic projects such as Angel of the North at Gateshead, the 100 cast-iron sculptures he placed on a British beach for Another Place, and the hundreds of small terracotta figurines he asked the public to create for Field have cemented his place among today’s leading contemporary artists.
Christopher White, author of a number of highly regarded books on Rembrandt, firmly bases his study on the most thorough and up-to-date scholarly research, and builds up a sensitive, accurate and fully-rounded portrait of his life and work.
When Marina Abramovic Dies examines the extraordinary life and death-defying work of one of the most pioneering artists of her generation?and one who is still at the forefront of contemporary art today. This intimate, critical biography chronicles Abramovic’s formative and until now undocumented years in Yugoslavia, and tells the story of her partnership with the German artist Ulay?one of the twentieth century’s great examples of the fusion of artistic and private life.
‘Davis is a sort of new-fangled Luminist, attuned to visuality in our current variant of the frenetic urbane. Luminism starts from an initial wonder: What is it about objects that allows us to see them?’ – Bill Berkson. Throughout his various bodies of work, Tim Davis photographs ‘grand and gorgeous failures of light to sync…
This title offers a lavishly illustrated look at the latest exhibition from innovative contemporary artist Janaina Tschape. In the summer of 2008, German-Brazilian artist Janaina Tschape held a critically acclaimed solo exhibition at the Irish Museum of Modern Art in Dublin. Structured around the genetic form of the fabled Chimera from ancient myth, the exhibition…
Bridget Riley is one of Britain’s most celebrated artists, and her career has been distinguished by a series of remarkable innovations. She first attracted critical attention with the dazzling black-and-white paintings she began to make in 1961. Her participation in the seminal exhibition The Responsive Eye at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in…
Born in Luleå in 1962, and raised amidst forests and art books, her work is imbued with beguiling narrative zest and frequent references to the stage and everyday settings as well as to works by other artists. This exhibition, which comprises works from the past five years, is the artists largest exhibition to date, and…
