Alberto Giacometti's attenuated figures of the human form are among the most significant artistic images of the 20th century. Sartre, Breton, & Winnicott are just some of the great thinkers who have drawn upon the graceful, harrowing work of Giacometti, which has continued to resonate with artists, writers, & audiences. In this book, Timothy Mathews explores the themes of fragility, trauma, space, & relationality in Giacometti's art & the texts that respond or refer to them: the novels of W.G. Sebald, Samuel Beckett & Cees Nooteboom, & the theories of Bertolt Brecht, which recasts the iconic L' Homme qui marche as Walter Benjamin's Angel of History. During his lifelong quest to represent the human form, & to locate the humanity at the heart of conflicting conceptions of modernity, Giacometti returned to the key notions of depth & flatness, memory & attachment, through his sculptures & writings. Both a critical study of Giacometti's life & work, & an investigation of their affective power, this book asks what encounters with Giacometti's pieces can tell us about the history of our own time, & our ways of looking; about the nature of human attachment, & the humility of relating to art. ...

Fifty years after the passing of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), this major new monograph illuminates the fundamental aspects of his oeuvre & technique in sculpture. It is based on years of extensive research & restoration work on seventy-five plasters that came to the collection of Kunsthaus Zurich as a bequest from Bruno Giacometti, Alberto's youngest brother. For Giacometti, plaster was of great importance as a material, far more than just an intermediate stage between clay model & bronze cast. It allowed him to paint or rework his objects in a vast variety of ways. A significant number of his sculptures indeed exist just in a plaster version. Featuring masterpieces from every stage of his career, this book focuses on Giacometti's artistic approach to the material nature of his chosen media, offering an insight into the creative process of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. With the plasters as a core, the selection also comprises works in other materials, such as marble, wood & bronze. ...

Fifty years after the passing of Alberto Giacometti (1901-1966), this major new monograph illuminates the fundamental aspects of his oeuvre & technique in sculpture. It is based on years of extensive research & restoration work on seventy-five plasters that came to the collection of Kunsthaus Zurich as a bequest from Bruno Giacometti, Alberto's youngest brother. For Giacometti, plaster was of great importance as a material, far more than just an intermediate stage between clay model & bronze cast. It allowed him to paint or rework his objects in a vast variety of ways. A significant number of his sculptures indeed exist just in a plaster version. Featuring masterpieces from every stage of his career, this book focuses on Giacometti's artistic approach to the material nature of his chosen media, offering an insight into the creative process of one of the 20th century's greatest artists. With the plasters as a core, the selection comprises also works in other materials, such as marble, wood & bronze. ...

Alberto Giacometti, most famous for his sculptures of emaciated figures isolated in space, throughout his career also kept to drawing & watercolour. Drawing is the basis of everything, was his strong belief. This new book presents a collection of around 100 previously unpublished drawings & watercolours bequeathed to Kunsthaus Zurich by Alberto's youngest brother Bruno Giacometti (1907-2012). This well-guarded family treasure represents Alberto's entire life, from his youth in Stampa, Switzerland to his late years in Paris. The collection

Includes:: very early copies of works by old masters as well as studies of ancient Egyptian & Roman sculptures from the 1920s. It also shows how Alberto closely looked at the art of Henri Matisse, Paul Cezanne & Auguste Rodin, leading to highly individual interpretations. It also comprises important portraits of some of the artist's relatives, & self-portraits, alpine landscapes from his native Val Bregaglia & masterful figure studies from the 1950s & 60s. This slim, beautiful new book presents the entire collection alongside an essay on their history & significance.

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Spectacular specimens. This is Albertus Seba's unrivaled catalog of animals, insects & plants. Albertus Seba's Cabinet of Natural Curiosities is one of the 18th century's greatest natural history achievements & remains one of the most prized natural history books of all time. Though scientists of his era often collected natural specimens for research purposes, Amsterdam-based pharmacist Seba (1665-1736) was unrivaled in his passion. His amazing collection of animals. plants & insects from all around the world gained international fame during his lifetime. In 1731, after decades of collecting, Seba commissioned careful & often scenic illustrations of every specimen. With these meticulous drawings. he arranged the publication of a four-volume catalog. covering the entire collection from strange & exotic plants to snakes, frogs, crocodiles, shellfish, corals, birds. & butterflies, as well as now extinct creatures. This reproduction is taken from a rare, h&-colored original. The introduction supplies background information about the fascinating tradition of natural collections to which Seba's curiosities belonged. ...

Highly original & magnificent in scope, Ackroyd's latest work discovers the roots of English cultural history in the Anglo-Saxon period, & traces it through the centuries. What does it mean to be English? This dazzling book demonstrates that a quintessentially English quality can be discovered in all forms of English culture, not only in literature but also in painting, music, architecture, philosophy & science. Just as " London: The Biography" guided the reader through the capital city with a mixture of narrative & theme, so " Albion", employing the same techniques, engages the reader with stories & surprises
- from Beowulf to King Arthur & the Knights of the Round Table, via Chaucer & Shakespeare, to the Bronte sisters, ' Alice through the Looking Glass' & ' Lord of the Rings'. " Albion" moves from medieval mystery plays to music hall & pantomime; painting is here, with Hogarth & Turner; & music, with Purcell & Vaughan Williams. Even the English obsession with gardening is represented. Witty, provocative & anecdotal, this is Peter Ackroyd at his most brilliant & exuberant.
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These beautifully-produced colouring books present over four volumes, thirty county maps of England & Wales. The maps were produced in the early 17th century by the cartographic engraver William Hole to accompany the vast landscape poem Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton, one of the most famous poets of his age. Arguably the strangest maps of Britain ever designed, they depict the familiar rolling countryside as a playful fairyl&, bustling with otherworldly beings. Every topographical feature is anthropomorphised, a form of depiction known asprosopopeia: hills are represented as stout country gentlemen, rivers as water nymphs, forests as elegant huntresses. The poetry & maps of Poly-Olbion came out of the Renaissance vogue for chorography, the art of describing place, & together they provide one of the most detailed overviews of the rich landscape, history, & legends of Early Modern England & Wales. This is a colouring book to keep & treasure as a complex, endlessly rewarding work of art. ...

These beautifully-produced colouring books present over four volumes, thirty county maps of England & Wales. The maps were produced in the early 17th century by the cartographic engraver William Hole to accompany the vast landscape poem Poly-Olbion by Michael Drayton, one of the most famous poets of his age. Arguably the strangest maps of Britain ever designed, they depict the familiar rolling countryside as a playful fairyl&, bustling with otherworldly beings. Every topographical feature is anthropomorphised, a form of depiction known asprosopopeia: hills are represented as stout country gentlemen, rivers as water nymphs, forests as elegant huntresses. The poetry & maps of Poly-Olbion came out of the Renaissance vogue for chorography, the art of describing place, & together they provide one of the most detailed overviews of the rich landscape, history, & legends of Early Modern England & Wales. This is a colouring book to keep & treasure as a complex, endlessly rewarding work of art. ...

Albrecht Durer's prints & drawings have inspired hundreds of artists, both during his life & after his death. Yet his talent as a painter & colorist, & his enthusiasm for the scientific world have not been widely appreciated. Durer's influence was both international & intergenerational-indeed Picasso claimed to have been inspired by the 16th-century artist. Reproduced in stunning detail & including illustrations of Durer's most famous prints & drawings, a catalog raisonne of his paintings, & biographical research, this book presents a Durer for the 21st century. Producing more self-portraits than any other artist of his day; mass marketing his best-selling prints; even inventing his own monogram logo; Albrecht Du rer was commercially astute long before today's generation of self-promoting & financially-savvy artists. There are 55 extant Durer paintings, of which 17 are in dispute. Using scientific research, this book puts all arguments to bed resulting in the definitive catalog raisonne of the paintings. Drawing on in-depth research, this book reveals the truth behind Durer & his art. ...

The Second Spanish Republic (193136) was the only new liberal democratic regime to emerge in Europe during the 1930s. Historians, however, have focused primarily on the Civil War of 193639 that followed, devoting much less attention to the parliamentary regime that preceded it. This book deals with the history & failure of the democratic polity in Spain through a detailed examination of the initiatives of its president, Niceto Alcala Zamora. As civil servant, lawyer, politician & writer, by 1931 he had become one of the most successful men of Spain. He played the leading role in the downfall of the monarchy & the inauguration of the Republic, which he served for eight months as initial prime minister & then as the first president. Stanley Paynes study argues that the failure of the Republic was not inevitable but depended on the policy choices of its president & the key party leaders. Alcala Zamoras professed goal was to center the Republic, stabilizing the new regime while avoiding extremes, but he failed altogether in this project. The Constitution of 1931 stipulated the double responsibility of parliamentary government both to the president & to a voting majority. Though Alcala Zamora resisted strong efforts from the left to cancel the results of the first fully democratic elections in 1933, he subsequently used his powers recklessly, making & unmaking governments at will, refusing to permit normal functioning of parliament. This first critical scholarly account of the presidency of Alcala Zamora casts new light on the failure of democracy in interwar Europe & on the origins of the Spanish Civil War. ...