Malarstwo

Paul Gauguin created some of the most advanced art in a brilliant generation of artists - all of whom struggled against the stifling conformity of the late 19th century's artistic mainstream. He created paintings whose radically simplified lines and colours echoed the unschooled art of the rustic and native cultures he loved. After his famously disastrous stay with Vincent van Gogh in southern France, Gauguin escaped European civilization for the Polynesian islands.
Immersing himself in the culture, he produced a series of radiant canvases and powerful sculptures - his last great works. From his childhood in Peru to his experiences in Tahiti, the story of Gauguin's life is recounted in authoritative text by an expert on the Post-Impressionists and compelling imagery by an award-winning illustrator.

This Is Frank Lloyd Wright brings his projects and persona into vivid focus. Wit and visual punch have been the hallmarks of the This Is series to date; the first architectural title in the series will give readers an up-close look at Wright's progress from difficult childhood, to struggling apprenticeship, to early success, through mid-life setbacks and on to late-life comeback. Beautiful specially commissioned illustrations documenting the important events in his life sit alongside photographs of Wright's most iconic buildings (including Fallingwater and New York's Guggenheim Museum).

Rembrandt is probably the most famous Dutch painter of the seventeenth century. His works are greatly loved today, but he was not always so well regarded. His life was one of a dramatic rise and fall, unfolding during the Golden Age of the newly formed Dutch Republic. Rembrandt's public acclaim and wealth as a painter came to him as a very young man. His images were vigorous, psychologically compelling but also often less than flattering. By his middle age taste had shifted to more idealized visions, and by the time of his death in 1669 Rembrandt was destitute. But whether the public was with or against him, Rembrandt continued to paint with the same passion, and arguably the art he produced in his final, destitute years is his most intimate, sensitive and open.

Paul Cezanne challenged convention and pioneered new possibilities in painting. He was remarkable for his ability to perceive and paint aspects of everyday life in ways that revealed dynamic yet deeply harmonious visions of the world. But the intellectual and emotional difficulties of his achievements were considerable.

Leonardo da Vinci lived an itinerant life. Throughout his career - from its beginnings in the creative maelstrom of fifteenth-century Florence to his role as genius in residence at the court of the king of France - Leonardo created a kind of private universe for himself and his work. Leonardo also spent a great deal of time away from his easel, pursuing his interest in engineering, natural science, sculpture, poetry, fables, music and anatomy. In the time that another artist would finish a series of paintings, he would work on one. Sometimes a painting would take decades, accompanying him on his travels as he worked on other commissions. Leonardo`s private world was both vibrant and active. It sometimes did and at other times did not interact with the wider world. But what emerged from it has established Leonardo as the definition of the Renaissance Man.

Francis Bacon was one of the giants dominating the artistic landscape of the mid-twentieth century, AND served as the inspiration AND launching point for much of the figural AND abstract art that came after him. This highly illustrated book features not only 20 of the artist's major works, but in stunning original color illustrations portrays the events of his life AND the circle of friends AND associates with whom he formed a louche, brazen gang that cut open the belly of the old propriety. The major periods of Bacon's life ON the edge, such as his time spent in Berlin, Paris, AND the seedy milieu of post-war London, are portrayed, along with the influential figures, such as Peter Lacey AND George Dyer, who shaped both his personal life AND his art. An original AND highly visual book, This is Bacon forms a fascinating, readable, AND provocatively entertaining introduction to one of the most influential masters of twentieth-century art.

Claude Monet is best known as a leader of the Impressionists, his paintings defining the style that triggered a revolution in art.
During the eighty-six years of his life, Monet never rested, and was always driven by the urge to paint. And more than two thousand paintings survive from six highly creative decades. Despite being a celebrity among France`s political and cultural elite, Monet never became complacent. Even in his seventies and eighties he was still producing paintings that astounded the art world.
Monet`s work remains highly influential - his abstraction, gestural strokes and expressive colour capturing the imagination of generation after generation of artists.

Intellectual, emotional, restless, dogged, loyal, selfish; Kandinsky was an artist - and a man - of contradictions.
This genre-defying painter didn`t pick up a brush until he was thirty years old. He was an academic with a promising career that he threw away to explore the arts. He was a Russian, yet he spent more than half of his life on the road, and died in self-imposed exile in France. As an artist he is credited with history`s first abstract painting, but it was his theories that had a profound and lasting impact on the way that people understand and value what art can achieve.

Mercurial, saturnine, scandalous, and unpredictable, Caravaggio—as a man, as a character, and as an artist—holds dramatic appeal.

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 canvas, Goya painted his own observations of humanity, transforming his youthful images of gaily dancing peasants into his mature penetrating studies of human suffering, despair, perseverance and redemption. Goya's art rises above the chaos of his times, and signals the real revolution of personal expression and independent spirit that would be the generative force behind the modernist movement in art.

Belgian artist René Magritte's biography is a key element of his art. His life is infused with bizarre moments: a surreal journey oscillating between fact and fiction that he always conducted as the straight-faced bowler-hatted man.