Born in Krasnoiarsk in 1848, Surikov died in Moscow in 1916. He is one of the great masters of history painting, and he occupies a special place in Russian culture. Like Delacroix, he believed that history was not a pretext for nice painting but an inexorable drama with neither culprits nor innocents but rather people driven by invisible forces. He was very knowledgeable about Russian history, and his paintings deal with crucial moments. He sought in historical events the answers to pressing problems of his time. Here is a book about a painter little-known in the West, analysed with understanding …

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 …

Kasimir Malevich (1878-1935) was a painter and a great art theorist, but first and foremost he was the founder of Suprematism, a style seeking pure abstraction based on geometrical forms. “Suprematism,” he wrote, “has led me to discover something that had not been understood until then… There is in human consciousness an imperious desire of space and the will to escape from Earth.” This new publication presents the brilliant and original works of Malevich, who had no professional background as a painter before the age of twenty-seven and who learned to draw out of sheer curiosity and his will to …

This is a major pictorial work about the Romanov dynasty, the supreme rulers of Russia for over 300 years, with special emphasis on the life of Nicholas II, the last Tsar. Moreover, it is an unsurpassed photographic record of the lives of the last reigning members of the Russian Royal family. The great majority of the photographs used in this book have never been published before, and have rarely been seen even by researchers from the West, having remained hidden in archives for 70 years, since the Russian revolution. The many contemporary photographs depict Russian royalty in ceremonial dress and …

September 4, 476 A. D. marked the end of the Western Roman Empire. After several centuries of prosperity, Europe sank into chaos. With Charlemagne, a new dynamic begins that of a civilising reconstruction. The Romanesque period is part of the rediscovery of this Roman Empire, lost in memories, but living on in the architectural testimonies of the cities and the countryside. In art history, Romanesque art refers to the period between the beginning of the 11th and the end of the 12th century. This era was characterised by a great diversity of regional schools, each practising their own unique style. …

The art world is filled with the presence of the Virgin Mary – a fundamental symbol of motherhood, who has been radiating youthfulness, tenderness, and compassion for two thousand years. Finding in her an inexhaustible source of inspiration, artists have consistently used the image of the Virgin Mary to reflect our own sufferings and joys. The author Kyra Belán leads us on a comprehensive tour analysing the profound meaning to be found in the images of the Virgin – from personal interpretations to spiritual reflections on a universal level. These works of art present a fascinating visual commentary on the …

In 1905 Georgia travelled to Chicago to study painting at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1907 she enrolled at the Art Students’ League in New York City, where she studied with William Merritt Chase. During her time in New York she became familiar with the 291 Gallery owned by her future husband, photographer Alfred Stieglitz. In 1912, she and her sisters studied at university with Alon Bement, who employed a somewhat revolutionary method in art instruction originally conceived by Arthur Wesley Dow. In Bement’s class, the students did not mechanically copy nature, but instead were taught the principles of …

When, almost twenty years ago, we founded the World of Art, we had a burning desire to liberate Russian artistic activity from the tutelage of literature, to instil in the society around us a love of the very essence of art, and that was the aim we had when we took the field. We considered enemies all those “who fail to respect art as such”, those who either fasten wings to an old nag or harness Pegasus to the cart of “social ideals”, or reject the idea of Pegasus altogether. For that reason, we addressed ourselves to the artistic world …

Mikhail Aleksandrovich Vrubel (1856-1910) was a painter whose art has been described as a Symbolist and Proto-Expressionist. He exerted a tremendous influence on Russian avant-garde painters. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Art in St. Petersburg, Vrubel made many trips to Italy and earned his living restoring medieval art treasures. This greatly influenced Vrubel's choice of subject matter, although he was also heavily influenced by the literature of his own country, which was then in full flower. The magnificent full-colour reproductions in this book of the Russian master, whose work deserves to be far better known in the West, …

Icon painting, the ultimate expression of Orthodox Christian art, reached its zenith in Ukraine between the 11th and 18th centuries. This book spans the entire period, showing the development of the style. The Ukrainian icon is a surprising synthesis of the traditions of Eastern Byzantine art and the stylistic characteristics of Russian icon painting. The introduction of this book explains the stages of development of icon-painting over five centuries in Ukraine’s major Centres of art - Kyiv, Chernihiv, Transcarpathia, Galicia, and Volhynia - and discusses the life and work of the masters of icon-painting. Despite the strict stylistic considerations imposed …