Cultural History

Inspired by a private archive and featuring contemporary work by artists who acknowledge the continued relevance of Angela Davis’s experience and politics, the essays, interviews and images in this book provide a compelling and layered narrative of her journey through the junctures of race, gender, economics and politics.

The publication focuses on 150 portrait miniatures from the age of Napoleon I. They provide us with an astonishingly direct view of people who lived in this turbulent, war-torn period. The works are presented in detail in image and text. Essays by a number of experts on miniature painting round out the subject.

Hin Bredendieck (1904–1995) graduated from the Bauhaus and was a versatile designer and pioneering teacher of design. His outstanding œuvre and his worldwide network testify to the international significance of his work and ideas. This lavishly illustrated, high quality monograph introduces in detail the life and work of Hin Bredendieck.

ReVisión: A New Look at Art in the Americas considers what makes the Americas the Americas. With essays by leading scholars of Latin American art history, the lavishly illustrated publication explores the ways in which the past continues to exert an influence on communities throughout the region.

Breaking out of Tradition traces the pioneering developments in lacquer art at the beginning of the 20th century in Japan. The lacquer artists of that time adopted a critical and creative approach to the centuries-old traditions, experimenting with innovative techniques and new materials, thereby also providing new stimuli for Western art.

The political collages of John Heartfield (1891–1968) have earned him a reputation as one of the most innovative graphic artists of the Weimar Republic. His photomontages and book covers based on collages which had their origins in Berlin’s Dada scene were directed against Fascism and made him internationally famous. Their explosive power has lost none of its impact.

This book marks the triumphant return of Frida Kahlo to San Francisco, the city where her artistic life began to unfold. Kahlo’s sojourns to the United States were brief, but formative. It was in the California city – the first she visited in the US – that she ventured into a new world beyond the scope of Coyoacán, Mexico City, and Cuernavaca.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, when Alfons Mucha went to the United States for four years as a lecturer, the world-famous poster designer, Art-Nouveau book illustrator, designer, photographer and painter was greeted with enthusiasm. Mucha is regarded as one of the most important representatives of Jugendstil; he knew how to move between the various genres more skilfully than virtually any other artist of his day.

EXODUS tells the true story of a Jewish girl from Hungary. After her parents were abducted by the Nazis, she and other orphaned children were forced to shift for themselves amid the total destruction throughout the country. In 1947 she found a place on board the refugee ship Exodus, which was to carry her and over 4,000 Holocaust survivors to Palestine. What followed was a dramatic odyssey lasting for several weeks.

Hopetoun House, on the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh, is the seat of the Marquess of Linlithgow. The lavishly illustrated book presents the architecture (initially designed by Sir William Bruce in the 1690s and greatly extended by William Adam and his sons from the 1720s), sumptuously decorated rooms and art collection, as well as the landscape and gardens.