Taschen

Few artists tried as hard as Claude Monet (1840–1926) to capture light itself on canvas. The painter of whom Cézanne said “only  an eye, but my God what an eye!” he stayed true to the principle of absolute fidelity to the visual sensation, painting...

The Japanese woodblock print showcased breathtaking landscapes, blush-inducing erotica, ghosts and demons that torment the living, and made sumo wrestlers and kabuki actors into rock stars. This book reveals the most exceptional prints from 1710–1925,...

This Is Not a Book Everyday enigma from Belgium's leading Surrealist From men in bowler hats, floating in the sky, to a painting of a pipe above the caption "this is not a pipe", René Magritte (1898–1967) created an echo chamber of object and image, name...

Light up your life Luminary design of the 20th century Designed to be a companion to our classic title 1000 Chairs, this edition contains an awesome selection of over 1000 lights. Presented chronologically by decade are the 20th century’s most...

Wright on The star pieces of America’s greatest architect A building by Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) is at once unmistakably individual and evocative of an entire era. Notable for their exceptional harmony with their environment, as well as for their...

The best design from the Nordic region Scandinavia is world famous for its inimitable, democratic designs which bridge the gap between craftsmanship and industrial production, organic forms and everyday functionality. This all-you-need guide includes...

A hairless, ghostly figure on a bridge. The sky orange-red above him.  His hands raised to his ears, his mouth wide in a haunting wail. In  painting The Scream, Edvard Munch created Mona Lisa for our times. The shriek of his iconic figure...

In our imaginings of Paris, painter and graphic artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec (1864–1901) has no small role to play. In his prints, posters, paintings, and drawings, the artist immortalized the city’s Belle Époque nightlife and put the northern...

From majestic desertscapes to magnified lilies and irises, survey the unique and luminous oeuvre of Georgia O’Keeffe, a seminal figure in modern American art and radical pioneer of abstraction. This book  follows the artist through her pioneering...

Like Dreamers Do The lyrical mark-making of a modern maestro With a career spanning seven decades, Catalan-born Joan Miró (1893–1983) was a polymath giant of modern art, producing masterworks across painting, sculpture, art books, tapestry, and ceramics,...

 Back to the Années Folles A vivid cultural portrait of 1920s Paris Paris is the City of Light in all its facets. In the 1920s La Ville des lumières gleams especially bright and becomes a magnet for creative people from around the world. This is the...

This edition reprints Keisai Eisen and Utagawa Hiroshige's legendary series The Sixty-Nine Stations along the Kisokaidō, a stunning representation of the historic route between Edo and Kyoto. This vivid tapestry of 19th-century Japan is in equal parts a...

William Morris was a polymath designer, writer, artist, and social activist, associated with England's Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood as well as Arts and Crafts movement. His prolific design work included tiles, embroidery, tapestries, wallpaper, and carpets...

Henri Rousseau (1844–1910) was a clerk in the Paris customs service who dreamed of becoming a famous artist. At the age 49, he decided to give it a try. At first, Rousseau’s bright, bold paintings of jungles and exotic flora and fauna were dismissed as...

A key figure in the international avant-garde, Piet Mondrian (1872–1944) was at once an extraordinary painter and leading art theoretician whose influence resonates to this day. Coining the term “Neo-plasticism”, he pursued a style of painting composed...

Enter a world of ravishing light and color. English Romanticist J. M. W. Turner transformed the essence of landscape painting from serene contemplative scenes to pictures pulsating with life, as if the sun itself were gleaming out of his canvases...

Renowned for his distinctive, elongated female nudes, Amedeo Modigliani is a legend of early modernism. His unique figuration corresponded to his own personal idea of beauty, but drew upon a rich variety of visual influences, including contemporary...

Struggling artist turned icon of the modern, urban experience, Edward Hopper is most famed for his haunting nocturnal diner scene Nighthawks. This book introduces his mastery of place, mood, and melancholy through vivid color juxtapositions; stark,...

This gorgeous edition brings together 50 of the finest medieval bible manuscripts from the Austrian National Library. With examples from every epoch of the Middle Ages, the collection explores visualizations of the bible in various theological and...

In just two decades, Raphael Santi painted his way to legendary greatness. This essential introduction to the artist we know simply as Raphael presents the mastery of figures, forms, and space hat secured his place not only alongside Michelangelo and...

Utagawa Hiroshige (1797–1858) was one of the last great artists in the ukiyo-e tradition. Literally meaning “pictures of the floating world,” ukiyo-e was a particular woodblock print genre of art that flourished between the 17th and 19th centuries...

While anchoring his practice in the traditions of antiquity and the Renaissance, Auguste Rodin paved the way for modern sculpture. From a very early stage, he was interested in movement, the expression of the body, chance effects, and the incomplete...

Celebrating over a century of fashion’s greatest talents, from Azzedine Alaïa and Coco Chanel to Alexander McQueen and Yves Saint Laurent. From Azzedine Alaïa, Cristóbal Balenciaga, and Coco Chanel to  Alexander McQueen, Yves Saint Laurent, and...

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571–1610), was always a name to be reckoned with. Notorious bad boy of Italian painting, the artist was at once celebrated and controversial: violent in temper, precise in technique, a creative master, and a man on the...

From soft watches to burning giraffes, this book celebrates the fantastical world and flamboyant personality of Salvador Dalí, one of  the most visionary and prolific artists of the 20th century.  Painter, sculptor, writer, filmmaker, and...

Through eye-popping colors and simple forms, rejoice in the restless creativity and infectious energy of Henri Matisse, the artist who never stopped making art, and whose vivid palette gave nudes, landscapes, and interior views a whole new modernity...

For Marc Chagall (1887–1985), painting was an intricate tapestry of dreams, tales, and traditions. His instantly recognizable visual language carved out a unique early 20th-century niche, often identified as one of the earliest expressions of psychic...

Acclaimed as the “father of skyscrapers,” the quintessentially American icon Frank Lloyd Wright was an architect of aspiration. He believed in giving cultivated American life its fitting architectural equivalent and applied his idealism to structures...

Over the course of his artistic career, Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944) transformed not only his own style, but the course of art history. From early figurative and landscape painting, he went on to pioneer a  spiritual, emotive, rhythmic use of color...

Shimmering, pulsating color masses characterize the Abstract Expressionist masterpieces of Mark Rothko. Like no other artist in his generation, Rothko developed his own stylistic vocabulary, creating ceiling-high canvases that were to be experienced as...

Painter, sculptor, writer, and filmmaker, Salvador Dalí (1904–1989)  was one of the century’s greatest exhibitionists and eccentrics—and was  rewarded with fierce controversy wherever he went. He was one of the  first to apply the insights...

When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968) declared it to be art. The uproar that greeted the French artist’s Fountain  (1917), a porcelain urinal installed in a gallery, sent shock waves  through the art world...

The arresting paintings of Frida Kahlo were in many ways expressions of trauma. Through a near-fatal road accident at the age of 18, failing health, a turbulent marriage, miscarriage and childlessness, she transformed the afflictions into revolutionary...