Edward Hopper (1882-1967) is something of an American success story, if only his success had come swifter. At the age of 40, he was a failing artist who struggled to sell a single painting. As he approached 80, Time magazine featured him on its cover. Today, Hopper is considered a giant of modern expression, with an uncanny, unforgettable, and utterly distinct sense for mood and place. Much of Hopper's work excavates modern city experience. In canvas after canvas, he depicts diners, cafes, shopfronts, street lights, gas stations, rail stations, and hotel rooms. Compartment Car sees a lone woman reading, lonely guest houses and barns, House by the Railroad, a circus clown dining, and the famous Night Windows with a stooping semi naked women in the lit interior of a room begging the question of what she has been up to. Naked A Woman in the Sun smokes and stares out of a window and the famous Nighthawks is given a huge double colour page spread. The scenes are marked by vivid colour juxtapositions and stark, theatrical lighting, as well as by harshly contoured figures, who appear at once part of, and alien to, their surroundings. The ambiance throughout his repertoire is of an eerie disquiet, alienation, loneliness and psychological tension, although his rural or coastal scenes can offer a counterpoint of tranquillity or optimism. This book presents major works from Hopper's oeuvre to introduce a key player in American art history and the American psyche. 21 x 26cm, 96 pages new from Taschen.

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 decade of Coco Chanel and Josephine Baker, Art Deco and Surrealism, café culture and cabaret. The most famous artists of the epoch, later called Classic Modernism, are in close contact and have lively exchanges with one another - including Marcel Duchamp, Francis Picabia, Pablo Picasso, René Clair, Sonia Delaunay, Henri Matisse, Man Ray, Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, André Breton, Paul Éluard, Max Ernst and Salvador Dalí. The creative life and all its excesses flourish - bohème is the word for this way of living. Composers like Igor Stravinsky, writers like James Joyce or Ernest Hemingway and exiles from Eastern Europe like Constantin Brancusi or Marc Chagall enrich the illustrious scene on Montparnasse. The pulsing bars and dance halls of Montmartre are captured by photographers André Kertesz and Brassaï. The French economy is booming and luxury department stores like La Samaritaine open their doors. Coco Chanel creates her own perfume and designs the little black dress. More than 30 outstanding works of architecture, painting, sculpture, film, photography, design and fashion are presented, including Giacometti's Surrealist Suspended Ball and the film Un chien andalou by Dalí and Buñuel. Colour images like Tamara de Lempicka's Self Portrait in the Green Bugatti and Paul Colin's Josephine Baker in a Banana Skirt and many mono photos too. 21 x 26cm, 96 pages. New from Taschen.

'Fizzingly written and sumptuously illustrated... What makes this biographical dictionary of British painters and sculptors so readable is that Morris is writing about people he once knew very well indeed... this beautifully illustrated book - each artist's bio is accompanied by two or three paintings - is a reminder of the extraordinary work of such Britons as Carrington and Agar.' - Sunday Times. One of the last surviving members, Surrealist artist and bestselling author Desmond Morris reveals the lives, loves and works of the British Surrealists art movement. He presents the intriguing life stories and complex love lives of this wild and curious set of artists, from the unpredictability of Francis Bacon and the rebelliousness of Leonora Carrington, from the beguiling Eileen Agar to the 'brilliant' Ceri Richards. He features 34 surrealists who followed the dictates of André Breton, founder of the movement who, in 1924, had published a manifesto in Paris in which he gave a precise definition of Surrealism. Roland Penrose who had spent more than a decade in Paris with the original Surrealist group mounted a major exhibition in London, bought a house in Hampstead, formed a committee and elevated the status of the British contingent who had been producing strange, rebellious, imaginative works and some artists had not even been aware of the movement. Other names include Tristram Hillyer, Conroy Maddox, Oscar Mellor, Paul Nash, Gordon Onslow Ford, Grace Pailthorpe, Edith Rimmington, Graham Sutherland, Julian Trevelyan among the famous and forgotten who carved their own independent paths in art. 248 large pages, many colour photos.

The Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923) captured the light of southern Spain in colour and captured fleeting moments in his own special way with light-dark contrasts, modern colour compositions, depicting the full beauty of nature in all its light conditions, joy and sorrow and the closeness with his family, close observation of young boys catching fish and other bathing activities on glorious Spanish beach settings. The shadow of the boat in Valencia, the wind in sails, the beasts pulling the boats out of the water, and of course that famous image of Boys on the Beach, where three very young boys lie face down slippery when wet on the sand as the tide goes out, or the beautiful naked boy bringing his white horse out of the water on a rope after bathing with it. While boys were allowed to frolic naked in the water in these Victorian times, it was more modest for girls to wear a bathing garment, and he captures the folds of the light linen exquisitely. There are portraits and Maria the Pretty One with her carnation in her hair and a Spanish shawl, the elegant society ladies like Mrs Winthrop or King Alphonso XIII in Hussar's Uniform, his wife Maria in the gardens of La Granja, the old man with a cigarette, a boy eating grapes, self portraits and famous calas of Mallorca or the Sierra Nevada in Granada. Page after page of exquisite paintings reproduced in glamorous colour in small compact hardback of 240pp. Colour.

Works such as Bauhaus Stairway of 1932 and the figurines of the Triadic Ballet of 1922 integrate the viewer into the upward movement of the figures depicted in space which lends the work its timeless effect. Rarely painting a face if only in profile, there are groups of women, as seen on a balustrade, five figures between columns, Dreamer, Boy in Blue and White and Women's School, often fragmented profiles and distorted bodies, always bold in colour and shape. The name Oskar Schlemmer (1888-1943) is closely connected with the State Bauhaus which was founded in 1919. As a painter, sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as a wall designer, stage designer and choreographer, Schlemmer is one of the most versatile artists of the 20th century. From his father he undoubtedly inherited the theatrical carnivalistic manner, and from his mother the contemplation and heaviness which flow into his art. His name is primarily associated with the Weimar and his paintings have become icons of classical modernism and prove the Bauhaus's claim to rethink design from scratch. It was hoped that modern, rational man could shape a better future against future militaristic developments. Schlemmer added new values and called for the unity of art, craftsmanship and architecture. Beautifully designed and produced 216 page Könemann 19cm square hardback packed with hundreds of colour reproductions.

13 beautiful and famous paintings from this outstanding group of artists. 16 months - starting September 2024 and ending December 2025 (the last four months of 2024 are mini-sized). With a monthly view where the week starts on Sundays. Ready to hang wall calendar with plenty of space for notes, To Do and forward planner for an additional four months. Holidays noted, grid design, hanging hole. Large softback, colour. Stock has arrived nice and early! 30 x 30cm. Features artwork from Victorian Era Pre-Raphaelite painters. New full price.