Artist Monographs

Helmut Sturm’s paintings radiate powerful colours and forms, yet are simultaneously both lyrically tender and poetical. He developed his individual pictorial language in a study of Cubism and Art "Informel" as well as artists like Max Beckmann, Asger Jorn and Willem de Kooning. The publication pays tribute to one of the most important witnesses of abstract-expressive painting in Germany.

How can you paint colour? That is the question which the Munich artist Isabelle Dyckerhoff asks herself anew before every picture. The material presence of colour, its expressive power and spatial effect are characteristic for her works on canvas and paper, which are presented together in this volume for book lovers.

The Bauhaus master Johannes Itten is one of the prominent protagonists of early Modernism in twentieth-century art. Few people are aware of the close links between his beginnings as an artist and his experience of landscape and nature in the town of Thun and Lake Thun.

The elements of Astrid Lowack’s (*1969) photographic-artistic transcendence are light, movement and water. As the driving forces of life they relentlessly bring about change and reflect our innermost being – our feelings and experiences. Her snapshots remain thereby constant imaginative challenges to human perception.

László Moholy-Nagy (1895–1946), painter, photographer, Bauhaus teacher and founder of the “New Bauhaus” and the “School of Design” in Chicago, is one of the most important artist personalities of the modern age. As one of the first artists to work in multiple media, who practised painting, sculpture, photography, film and design as equally valid art genres, he set standards which are still relevant today.

When Paula Modersohn-Becker’s artist friends examined her extensive estate a few weeks after her death, they were overwhelmed. They only gradually realised that in the painter, who had died so young, they had had an outstanding artist in their midst. Modersohn-Becker was largely unrecognised during her lifetime but is regarded today as one of the pioneers of Expressionism.

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.

Angelica Kauffman (1741–1807) is regarded as the first woman artist of European standing. Well educated and very well connected, she enjoyed an international reputation. She pursued a brilliant career and was one of the outstanding artist personalities of the Classical Age in London and Rome. She was admired by Goethe and Herder and her clients included queens and emperors from across the continent.

Wilhelm Leibl (1844–1900) is regarded as one of the most significant portraitists and an important representative of Realism in Europe. With large-format illustrations of 40 paintings and 60 drawings, this volume accompanies the first comprehensive museum exhibition with a focus on portraits and representations of figures to be shown in Switzerland and Austria.

Making van Gogh focuses on the œuvre of Vincent van Gogh in the context of its reception. The publication examines the particular role which German gallerists, collectors, critics and museums played in the story of his success. At the same time it sheds light on the importance of van Gogh as a role model for the avant-garde generation of artists.