This is Goya

Modern art begins with Goya. He was the first to create works of art for their own sake, and he lived in a time of incredible cultural and social dynamism when the old concepts of social hierarchy were being shaken by the new concept of equality for all. He saw his world ripped apart by Napoleon's armies and then suffered the reactionary backlash as the old order was restored. Against this epic…

This is Matisse

In the history of twentieth century modernism, Henri Matisse is a calm and unstoppable revolution of creative genius. Trained originally in the French classical manner, he was inspired by the Impressionists and Cézanne to create in a style that brought out the beauty of colour, form and line by reducing them to their essentials. While considered a leader of the Fauves and an inspiration to …

This is Caravaggio

Mercurial, saturnine, scandalous, and unpredictable, Caravaggio—as a man, as a character, and as an artist—holds dramatic appeal. He spent a large part of his life on the run, leaving a trail of illuminated chaos wherever he passed, most of it recorded in criminal justice records. When he did settle for long enough to paint, he produced works of staggering creativity and technical innov…

This is Rembrandt

Rembrandt van Rijn is the quintessential Old Master. His intimately observed, vivid and profoundly atmospheric works are what many museum-goers consider traditional painting ought to be. But in his own lifetime Rembrandt was not always so well regarded. The expressive honesty of his paintings and prints could evoke disdain as easily as admiration. For more than a century after his death his sty…

Abstract Expressionism

Hailed as the first American-born art movement to have a worldwide influence, Abstract Expressionism denotes the non-representational use of paint as a means of personal expression. It emerged in America in the 1940s, with lead protagonists including Jackson Pollock, Philip Guston, Robert Motherwell, Mark Rothko, and Willem de Kooning. Abstract Expressionism spawned many different stylistic…

Freud

Lucian Freud (1922–2011) was interested in the telling of truth. 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 swellingings of the living body, but also, beneath the flaws and folds of flesh, the microscopic details of …

Pollock

The rebel hero of Abstract Expressionism, Jackson Pollock (1912–1956) careened through his life like a firework across the American art landscape. Channeling ideas from sources as diverse as Picasso and Mexican surrealism, he rejected convention to develop his own way of seeing, interpreting, and expressing. Pollock’s most famous works are his drip paintings, where he dripped and poured …

Klimt

The unfading popularity of Gustav Klimt (1862–1918) attests not only to the particular appeal of his luxuriant painting but also to the universal themes with which he worked: love, feminine beauty, aging, and death. The son of a goldsmith, Klimt created surfaces of ornate and jewel-like luminosity which show influence of both Egyptian and Japanese art. Through paintings, murals, and frieze…

Dada

Edition

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ISBN/ISSN

9780714869407

Collation

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Series Title

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Call Number

-709.04 KUE D

Impressionism

The Impressionism revolution Discover how scenes of daily life and delicate dabs of color shocked the art world establishment. In this TASCHEN Basic Art introduction to Impressionism, we explore the artists, subjects, and techniques that first brought the easel out of the studio and shifted artistic attention from history, religion, or portraiture to the evanescent ebb and flow of modern lif…