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 …

Hieronymus Bosch was painting frightening, yet vaguely likable monsters long before computer games were ever invented, often including a touch of humour. His works are assertive statements about the mental illness that befalls any man who abandons the teachings of Christ. With a life that spanned from 1450 to 1516, Bosch experienced the drama of the highly charged Renaissance and its wars of religion. Medieval tradition and values were crumbling, paving the way to thrust man into a new universe where faith lost some of its power and much of its magic. Bosch set out to warn doubters of the …

Pioneer and leader of the abstract art movement, Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) was known for his straight lines and pure colours. Fascinated by the mathematical laws of the universe, this Dutch artist nourished his work with his scientific discoveries and created a new abstract language alongside his allies Wassily Kandinsky and Fernand Léger. As his investigations advanced, his works purified and intensified to the rhythm of the travels and encounters that he enjoyed. Recognised during his lifetime as the founder of an avant-garde movement, he propagated his knowledge and his artistic vision to illustrious architects and stylists and still today remains …

El Renacimiento se inició a finales del siglo catorce en Italia y ya estaba extendido por toda Europa en la segunda mitad del siglo dieciséis. El redescubrimiento del esplendor de la antigua Grecia y Roma supuso el comienzo del renacimiento de las artes como consecuencia de la descomposición de la certeza dogmática de la Edad Media. Surgió una generación de artistas que comenzaron a innovar dentro del ámbito de la pintura, así como de la escultura y arquitectura. Representando lo ideal y lo actual, lo sacro y lo profano, este período supuso un marco de referencia que ejercería su influencia …

Encaustic painting is one of the world’s most venerable art forms, having been practised consistently around the world since the ancient Egyptians first used it to decorate sarcophagi, and enjoying continuing popularity in the modern era with artists such as Paul Klee and Diego Rivera. In this new text, Jennifer Margell offers readers a comprehensive introduction to the medium, featuring instructive how-tos for encaustic art beginners, revealing interviews with some of the most celebrated practitioners of the medium, and a gallery featuring one of the largest published collections of encaustic art to date.

Art Nouveau gives a name to the decorative and architectural style developed in the 1880s and 1890s in the West. Born in reaction to the Industrial Revolution and to the creative vacuum it left behind, Art Nouveau was at the heart of a “renaissance” in the decorative arts. The primary objective of the movement was the creation of a new aesthetic of nature through a return to the study of natural subjects. In order to achieve this, artists such as Gustav Klimt, Koloman Moser, Antoni Gaudí, Jan Toorop, and William Morris favoured innovation in technique and novelty of forms. After …

At fifteen, Turner was already exhibiting View of Lambeth. He soon acquired the reputation of an immensely clever watercolourist. A disciple of Girtin and Cozens, he showed in his choice and presentation of theme a picturesque imagination which seemed to mark him out for a brilliant career as an illustrator. He travelled, first in his native land and then on several occasions in France, the Rhine Valley, Switzerland and Italy. He soon began to look beyond illustration. However, even in works in which we are tempted to see only picturesque imagination, there appears his dominant and guiding ideal of lyric …

Not only was Leonardo da Vinci (1453-1519) an astonishing painter, but also a scientist, anatomist, sculptor, architect, musician, engineer, inventor, and more. The question is rather, what was he not? During the Italian Renaissance, he mastered the most beautiful works of art for the Medicis’ in Italy and for the King of France. He aroused admiration from his contemporaries, who depicted a universal genius, curious and virtuous. Even today, interest in da Vinci and his work does not fade; his works and writings are still studied by foremost experts hoping to decipher one of the numerous secrets of this visionary …

Secluded within cloister walls, a painter and a monk, and brother of the order of the Dominicans, Angelico devoted his life to religious paintings. Little is known of his early life except that he was born at Vicchio, in the broad fertile valley of the Mugello, not far from Florence, that his name was Guido de Pietro, and that he passed his youth in Florence, probably in some bottegha, for at twenty he was recognised as a painter. In 1418 he entered in a Dominican convent in Fiesole with his brother. They were welcomed by the monks and, after a …

Michelangelo, like Leonardo, was a man of many talents; sculptor, architect, painter and poet, he made the apotheosis of muscular movement, which to him was the physical manifestation of passion. He moulded his draughtsmanship, bent it, twisted it, and stretched it to the extreme limits of possibility. There are not any landscapes in Michelangelo's painting. All the emotions, all the passions, all the thoughts of humanity were personified in his eyes in the naked bodies of men and women. He rarely conceived his human forms in attitudes of immobility or repose. Michelangelo became a painter so that he could express …

Whilst Impressionism marked the first steps toward modern painting by revolutionising an artistic medium stifled by academic conventions, Post-Impressionism, even more revolutionary, completely liberated colour and opened it to new, unknown horizons. Anchored in his epoch, relying on the new chromatic studies of Michel Eugène Chevreul, Georges Seurat transcribed the chemist’s theory of colours into tiny points that created an entire image. With his heavy strokes, Van Gogh illustrated the midday sun, whilst Cézanne renounced perspective. Rich in its variety and in the singularity of its artists, Post-Impressionism was a passage taken by all the well-known figures of 20th century …