Painting category: 1000 books

From fill-in art journals to self-help books on creativity, more than ever the public is striving to bring artistic enlightenment into their everyday lives. In Living Color, one of the country’s most celebrated writers expounds on her own path to artistic inspiration. Tailored to a new generation...

The Renaissance began at the end of the 14th century in Italy and had extended across the whole of Europe by the second half of the 16th century. The rediscovery of the splendour of ancient Greece and Rome marked the beginning of the rebirth of the arts following the break-down of the dogmatic certitude...

Paul Cézanne forms the connection linking late 19th century Impressionism and the early 20th century's new contour of Cubism. Matisse and Picasso together recognize that "Cezanne is the father of all us," so that his contribution to modern art just can not be rejected.Cézanne, who exhibited paintings...

Pierre Bonnard was the leader of the group of post-impressionist painters who called themselves “the Nabis”, from the Hebrew word for “prophet”. Influenced by Odilon Redon, Puvis de Chavannes, popular imagery, and Japanese woodblock printing, Bonnard, Vuillard, Vallotton and Denis (to name...

Les Demoiselles d’Avignon: five young women that changed modern art forever. Faces seen simultaneously from the front and in profile, angular bodies whose once voluptuous feminine forms disappear behind asymmetric lines - with this work, Picasso revolutionised the entire history of painting. Cubism...

Romanticism was a reaction against the Neoclassicism that invaded the 19th century, and marked a veritable intellectual rupture. Found in the writings of Victor Hugo and Lord Byron, amongst others, its ideas are expressed in painting by Eugène Delacroix, Caspar David Friedrich and William Blake....

Flowers are the centerpiece in the majority of pictorial still-lifes. By painting their colours and forms, artists from Brueghel to O’Keeffe have created symbols for both life and mortality. Van Gogh’s sunflowers, Monet’s water lilies and Matisse’s bouquets are, of course, unforgotten. Most...

Mary Cassatt was an American impressionist painter who depicted the lives of women, chiefly the intimate bond between mother and child. Degas and Pissarro would later become her mentors and fellow painters. She began studying art seriously at the age of 15, at a time when only around twenty percent of...

This book aims to help you see the same way as Leonardo has seen. Leonardo's secrets are not in his words, they are in his works. Look at his paintings in details, the lines, the light, the shadows, the composition, the contrasts, the details. His paintings tell us what we cannot see but need to know...

An extraordinary collection—hawk-eyed and understanding—from the Man Booker Prize–winning, best-selling author of The Sense of an Ending and Levels of Life. As Julian Barnes notes: “Flaubert believed that it was impossible to explain one art form in terms of another, and that great...

Artemisia Gentileschi was an Italian Baroque painter, considered one of the most accomplished painters in the generation following that of Caravaggio. In an era when women painters were not easily accepted by the artistic community or patrons, she was the first woman to become a member of the Accademia...

The incarnation of the myth of a cursed artist, Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890) is a legend who became a reference for modern art. An Expressionist during the Post-Impressionist movement, his art was misunderstood during his lifetime. In Holland, he partook in the Dutch realist painting movement by studying...

Canaletto began his career as a theatrical scene painter, like his father, in the Baroque tradition. Influenced by Giovanni Panini, he is specialised in vedute (views) of Venice, his birth place. Strong contrast between light and shadow is typical of this artist. Furthermore, if some of those views...

The very first Hello Kitty nail art design book will feature 20 DIY Hello Kitty–themed projects for painting nails by well-known Hello Kitty nail design artist Masako Kojima. Each project will include simple, step-by-step instructions for creating designs and/or applying decals and will be accompanied...