Cultural History

Founded in 1948, Hirmer Publishers soon established a name for art books produced to the highest standards. Over the past decade they have become equally well-known in English-speaking countries, with a reputation as one of the most prestigious publishers in this field. This survey of English titles from 2010 to 2020 encompasses a wealth of subjects across the centuries, from antiquity to the modern age.  

This first full biography confirms Florine Stettheimer as one of the 20th century’s most significant, progressive artists whose work remains highly relevant today. Stettheimer was a feminist and a multi-media artist who painted several sexually explicit, political works examining identity issues documenting New York City’s growth as the center of cultural life, finance, and entertainment between the World Wars..

The Swiss artist Johannes Itten (1888–1967) was not only a pioneering art theorist and a prominent teacher at the Bauhaus, but he also left an extensive and wide-ranging oeuvre which is only known in part today. The lavishly illustrated catalogue raisonné covers comprehensively and presents an appropriate appreciation of the entire range of his artistic oeuvre.

"The Infinite" documents the making of the ground-breaking immersive VR experience shot entirely aboard the International Space Station. Artists and astronauts joined forces to capture life in the cosmos as never before. In this oversize publication, brand-new views of space and stunning production shots reveal the human imagination’s limitless potential.

Mary Bauermeister (*1934) is regarded as the “mother” of the Fluxus movement. During the 1960s she set out from the United States and conquered the art world with her lens boxes and stone spirals. Her works are represented in many major museums including MoMa and the  Guggenheim Museum in New York and the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. This magnificent volume presents her artistic, enchanted studio not far from Cologne.

Adeliza McHugh helped put the whimsical, funky, and irreverent aesthetic of California’s Central Valley on the art-historical map at her legendary Candy Store Gallery. Published on what would be the 60th anniversary of the gallery’s founding, this catalogue is the most significant to date on the Candy Store and celebrates, as McHugh liked to say, art with a "kick".

Lying between deserts, mountain chains and seas, Iran developed a fascinating cultural landscape. 360 objects from the time of the first advanced civilisations during the 3rd millennium BC until the end of the Safavid Empire in the early 18th century illustrate the outstanding significance of Iran as the initiator and centre of intercultural exchange.

Three essays by leading scholars in the field of Japanese art explore Sesson Shūkei’s unique life and unconventional painting style, as well as how scholarly perceptions of the artist have changed over time. Fifty-three entries highlight major works by Sesson as well as those by other artists before, during, and after his time.

Caspar David Friedrich and Alexander Andreyevich Ivanov are the most important artists of the Romantic era in their native countries of Germany and Russia. At the centre of this opulent book are night scenes and moonlit landscapes, views of Dresden and Italy that are full of yearning, and portraits and lovingly depicted interiors by both master painters and their contemporaries.

The English illustrator Anna Atkins (1799–1871) was in every respect a modern woman. For the publication of her plant collections she used the latest technology, the recently invented cyanotype. In 1843 she used the process to create the first photo book in history, with images of breathtaking beauty and originality which often look like modern art.