"Para dar sentido a una ciudad hemos de saber algo acerca de las personas que viven en ella, y de la gente que la construyó. Es necesario preguntarse cómo lo hicieron y por qué."Una ciudad está hecha por personas. Tiene una identidad distintiva, que consiste en mucho más que una aglomeración de edificios; clima, topografía y arquitectura forman parte de lo que crea esa distinción, al igual que sus orígenes. Lo apasionante es que todos estos elementos no siempre producen los mismos resultados: muchas ciudades tienen un río, pero el Sena es único, parte esencial de lo que hace París …
This book offers a vivid portrait of Henri Matisse, one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Born in 1869 in Cateau-Cambrésis, Matisse initially pursued a legal career before turning to painting, inspired by the Impressionists. Renowned as a master of colour, he is celebrated for his revolutionary paper cut-outs and his defining role in Fauvism. Tracing his artistic evolution—from early experiments to the luminous works of his later years in Nice—this richly illustrated volume features over a hundred reproductions of his most iconic pieces. It invites readers into Matisse’s expressive world while offering intimate glimpses into the personal …
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 …
Vincent van Gogh’s life and work are so intertwined that it is hardly possible to observe one without thinking of the other. Van Gogh has indeed become the incarnation of the suffering, misunderstood martyr of modern art, the emblem of the artist as an outsider. An article, published in 1890, gave details about van Gogh’s illness. The author of the article saw the painter as “a terrible and demented genius, often sublime, sometimes grotesque, always at the brink of the pathological.” Very little is known about Vincent’s childhood. At the age of eleven he had to leave “the human nest”, …
Among the “young peredvizhniki” who joined the World of Art group, the most brilliant portraitist was Valentin Serov. Like many of his contemporaries, he delighted in painting out of doors, and some of his most appealing portraits – such as Girl with Peaches, Girl in Sunlight and In Summer - owe their naturalness to their setting or to the interplay of sunlight and shadows. Indeed, Serov regarded them as “studies” rather than portraits, giving them descriptive titles that omitted the sitter's name. The subject of Girl with Peaches – painted when Serov was only twenty-two – was in fact Mamontov's …
Antoine Watteau (1684-1721) epitomises the grace, intelligence, and poetry of the eighteenth century, a period when French tastes reigned supreme throughout Europe. He is renowned as a pivotal figure in Rococo art. Watteau excels in depicting scenes of daily life and theatrical costumes. His work, while highly stylised, reveals an undercurrent of melancholy beneath its apparent frivolity. It captures profound emotions, hinting at love that transcends mere physical attraction and showcasing the enigmatic ambience present in his landscapes and the wistful gaze in lovers’ eyes. Watteau’s exceptional sense of colour imparts feelings of softness and mystery, akin to a pervasive …
Since The Turkish Bath (1863) by the French painter Ingres, the Far Eastern woman has to many been a symbol of pleasures out of reach or forbidden. Seafaring explorers, military adventurers and simple travellers from Europe over the centuries have all been enthralled by the exotic nature of the oriental woman, her foreignness accentuated by the gentle pallor of her skin. Thus arose the myth that she, of all women, was in possession of the knowledge of certain refined pleasures. Historically, in the traditions of both China and Japan, women have been required to respond at least acquiescently to men’s …
In utter contrast to the obscurity of the medieval period which preceded it, the rapid and unexpected arrival of the Renaissance conquered Europe during the 14th to the 16th centuries. Placing man at its centre, the actors of this illustrious movement radically altered their vision of the world and refocused their aesthetic pursuits towards anatomy, perspective, and the natural sciences. Creator of numerous talents, the Renaissance offered the history of art great names such as Botticelli, Raphael, and Leonardo da Vinci, whose glorious masterpieces still today hang on the walls of museums the world over.
