Bøger udgivet af Ediciones Poligrafa

An introductory monograph on the 20th century's most revolutionary artistPablo Picasso (1881-1973) was one of the most innovative, experimental, prolific, influential and controversial painters of the 20th century. Part of Polígrafa's Modern Masters series, this affordable monograph follows Picasso throughout his career, a career that spanned nearly eight decades and produced more than 100,000 works. Picasso selects more than 60 of the artist's most representative works that follow the artist from his poetic images of the impoverished and circus performers, from his beloved blue and rose periods to his revolutionary cubist period depicting the confusion of modern life, and beyond. In addition to a brief introduction, this volume contains analysis of the artist's morphing stylistic characteristics over the decades and individual commentary on each of the works reproduced.

Portuguese architect Alvaro Siza (born 1933) is one of the most influential architects of the past half-century. His most famous work is perhaps the Serralves Museum in his hometown of Porto, his second museum building, following the Galician Center for Contemporary Art, erected in 1997. Low built and horizontal in axis, its white stucco walls are perforated with occasional openings that yield unexpected views of a surrounding garden. As with most of Siza's buildings, the furniture and fittings were also designed by the architect, including lighting fixtures, handrails, doorknobs and all signage. Building materials include hardwood floors and painted walls in gesso with marble skirting in the exhibition halls and marble floors in the foyers. This volume, published in Poligrafa's innovative "Museum Building" series, reviews the Serralves Museum, a disarmingly intimate space in pronounced contradistinction to much recent museum architecture.

Irish-born English painter Francis Bacon (1909-1992) created work that remains unmatched in raw force and vitality, and he is widely considered one of the greatest artists of the twentieth century. Critic Ronald Jones has described his themes as "the howling subjects with which Bacon struggled--Existentialism, Abstract Expressionism and the primal drama of a world newly acquainted with the Bomb." Bacon was preoccupied with probing the isolation and terror of the human condition, which he chiefly conveyed through a labored distortion of the human body. As Sam Hunter--who penned one of the first major essays on Bacon in 1950--writes in his introductory essay to this volume, "what has become increasingly clear with the test of time...is the clarity, durability and powerful authority of his visual discourse." This concise monograph presents an in-depth survey of Bacon's entire oeuvre. British artist Francis Bacon is one of the greatest painters of the twentieth century. His canvases of the 1940s bore witness to the traumatized psychology of the time and bestowed upon him a prominence that did not diminish in the course of his 50-year career. Recent auction sales have confirmed his works as some of the most sought-after of the Modern era.

Spanish artist Ferran Garcia Sevilla sees himself as a collector of images. His eclectic pictorial style draws from his travels in the Middle East, comic books, urban grafitti, philosophy, and Eastern cultures, and results in great, sensuous, open spaces in which everything is mixed, both in terms of iconography and ideas.

The public works of Eduardo Chillida, present in numerous cities in the world, figure among the most intense and telling creations of contemporary monumental-scale sculpture. This book analyses, in addition to the artistic, stylistic and environmental aspects, the profound ethical implications of Chillida's work.

A beautifully designed and comprehensive monograph about a key contemporary European artist. With essays by Iwona Blazwick, Carlos Bunga, Nuno Faria, Ines Grosso and Antony Hudek.

A painter of vast pieces in his early days - works intended for salons and national exhibitions - Joaquín Sorolla (Valencia, 1863-1923) very soon developed a style of outdoor painting of his own which, though not connected stylistically with the Barbizon School, nevertheless pursued the same postulates, as a result of which he came to be known as a Spanish Impressionist painter. He began to devote himself entirely to this practice in 1900, painting landscapes, views of cities, studies of nature, seascapes and garden scenes in which he demonstrated his tremendous skill in capturing the effects of light.Joaquín Sorolla is unquestionably an essential book for anyone interested in the Spanish Impressionists, and the most complete work of reference on this artist from Valencia. It includes an insightful and in-depth essay by Blanca Pons-Sorolla and some 300 reproductions of his most important pieces.

Features a monograph on the 20th century artist, Pablo Picasso.

Architecture has always been a natural subject matter for photographers, but for most of the twentieth century the practice of architectural photography has been a professional endeavor--anonymous photographs taken for clients for specific, commercial reasons. This book concerns itself with another aspect of the phenomenon: the photography of architecture as an art practice. It considers the work of seven contemporary photographers who use buildings in their work in a new way. In these photographs, they respond to the work of prominent architects with their own singular interpretations. Here are Andreas Gursky's photos of the Stockhom Library by Gunnar Asplund, Thomas Ruff's photos of several works by Herzog & de Meuron, Hiroshi Sugimoto's photos of Le Corbusier's Villa Savoye, as well as works by Candida Hofer, Jeff Wall, Gunther Forg and Balthasar Burkhard. Architecture Without Shadow is a beautiful and valuable book on one of the prominent movements in contemporary photography.

A key tool for analysing the concept of authorship in the internet age.

This volume presents the first comprehensive survey of Paul McCarthy's large-scale inflatable sculptures.

This essential volume contains a key selection of Giacometti's own writings, and also included are important interviews with the artist by Pierre Scnider and Andre Parinaud.

Cubism and War explores the work of artists who attempted to keep the Parisian Cubist movement of 1911-1914 alive during the First World War. This little community of artists had been moved by the expanded possibilities that had opened up in painting and sculpture at the beginning of the twentieth century, and they refused to accept that recording the war or producing propaganda was their duty. By refusing to forget the excitement of 1911-14, they kept faith in their independence as individuals as this war of machines threatened to rob every front-line soldier of his humanity, drawing even foreigners in France towards a state of ''total war''.The vast majority of fit young Frenchmen were mobilised, so the artists left behind in Paris were either foreign or too old or unfit for combat. Pablo Picasso, then called the inventor of Cubism, remained a leading figure, alongside his fellow Spaniards Juan Gris and María Blanchard, the Mexican Diego Rivera, the Italian Gino Severini, and the Lithuanian sculptor Jacques Lipchitz.One feature of this book is the diversity of the work produced by these artists, each working as individuals. Another, however, especially from 1917, is the move made by most of them towards a more structured, architectural Cubism, which could be taken as reparative against the destructive forces that seemed to have taken over the whole world.

Buenos Aries is noteworthy for its eclectic architecture, with a wide range of impressive buildings. But when Anat Meidan, an art collector with a passion for La Belle Époque period moved to the city, she was astonished and delighted to discover the extent to which the legacy of the rich Art Nouveau architecture that had flourished there during the first decades of the twentieth century was still very evident.With her extensive, expert knowledge and passion for the period, the author set about researching, documenting and photographing these extraordinary buildings, their exteriors and where possible their interiors, as well as gathering information about the gifted people who designed and built them. She engaged the collaboration of Gustavo Sosa Pinilla, a leading architecture photographer, to accompany her on the expeditions around the city. In addition, through her personal charm (and a few well placed connections) she was able to gain access to the interiors of private homes and buildings usually closed to the general public, enabling her to photograph and document interiors not normally accessible.In this meticulously researched and richly illustrated book, the reader is invited to share in Anat''s voyage around the city as she narrates with warmth and enthusiasm the very personal account of her love affair with Buenos Aires.

Until the installation of his 1973 solid-light piece, Line Describing a Cone, in Chrissie Iles Whitney''s exhibition Into The Light in 2001, Anthony McCall (England, 1946) remained one of those artists whose work circulated almost entirely in the form of two or three very well-known documentary photographs: his art was immediately recognisable, canonical even, but rarely experienced firsthand. This carefully designed and produced monograph on the Angloamerican artist seeks to lay bare the imagery that underlies his work, from Landscape for Fire (1972) to the presentation of his latest piece Coming About (2016). Through its intermingling of images and the artist''s words, this book vindicates McCall''s independence of spirit and aims to make the richness and complexity of his work apparent. In addition, the book collects for first time all the public projects the artist developed over the last decade. As it takes in the range of expressive media that the artist uses, the sequence of works maintains throughout the idea that space and time pertain to the same moment, the moment of the person contemplating them at that particular instant

Francesc Torres (Barcelona, 1948) is, without doubt, one of the most important European artists of his generation. He describes his book thusly: "The title of the piece I am writing about comes from a sentence in Arthur Koestler''s Darkness At Noon. It conveys in a nutshell the overwhelming disregard that history has, in its Hegelian sense, for the individual human being. During the Spanish Civil War a contingent of 3,500 Americans known as the Abraham Lincoln Brigade joined the International Brigades. Half of them didn''t return. Harry Randall was one of them and he did return. He was a photographer and cameraman in the brigade, and he is the prime mover of the editorial project presented here as an artist''s book. The basis material was 45 minutes of 16mm film shot over a period of two years (1937-1938), that very few people have seen to date. As a matter of fact, this book reflects on the visual sedimentation of history beyond the concrete historical event; it is a comment on the material fragmentation, literal and metaphoric, that silently sleeps under the politically conditioned and socially negotiated official narrative of history."

São Paulo-born Arthur Casas (1961) is an exception, an architect equally at ease in the areas of residential architecture, commercial spaces, real estate development and design. "I experienced the best period of Brazilian architecture, when anything was possible," he explains, "including designing a whole city - reorganising the way of life in urban areas. I brought from my childhood ... this freedom, and a commitment to modernist principles." With offices in São Paulo and New York, Casas does owe some of his variety to his native Brazil, but has shown his capacity to create surprise in his designs. At almost 400 pages, this hardcover monograph is a tribute to one of the most significant living Latin American architects.

Since his reception of the Independent Film Award (1968) from the journal Film Culture, Michael Snow''s work has placed in the ranks of such major figures of avant-garde cinema as Stan Brakhage and Gregory Markopoulos, as well as in the company of two other artists-turned-filmmakers: the photographer Robert Frank and the painter Andy Warhol.The image of Michael Snow that emerges from this complete monograph is that of a contemporary Renaissance man. The artist himself captured this diversity in a profile written in the late 1960s: "I am not a professional. My paintings are done by a filmmaker, sculpture by a musician, films by a painter, music by a filmmaker, paintings by a sculptor, sculpture by a filmmaker, films by a musician, music by a sculptor - sometimes they all work together."Mixing reflexive humour with a nuanced grasp of the many faces of contemporary art, Snow''s text acknowledges the difficulties an artist faces in approaching different disciplines when there is a tendency towards purity in all these media as separate endeavours. Within a structure of seventeen chapters, Michael Snow makes a complete overview on his own work, writing the texts and laying out each sequence - an editorial task he knows very well, as is evidenced by this beautiful artist''s book. Certainly, this is an unsurpassed book about one of our most outstanding artists.

The Chilean Pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale brings together works by outstanding Chilean artists Paz Errázuriz and Lotty Rosenfeld. Both artists are recognised for their intense labour since the eighties during the dictatorship period, in which they were noted for their active political work and constant criticism through different artistic expressions.Their works contain critical thoughts about domination, subordination and genre categorisations, as well as an analysis of the historical development of Chile, from the dictatorship period to what has been termed ''post-transition''.Paz Errázuriz has addressed many social issues, mainly through photographs in black and white, while Lotty Rosenfeld develops ''interventions'' in public space as part of the Group CADA (Collective Actions of Art) whose production is associated in Chile to the movement called escena de avanzada.This book/catalogue contains an extensive essay by Nelly Richard, editor in charge, and two suggestive analyses by Diamela Eltit and Andrea Giunta, both deeply knowledgeable of the Latin American art scene.Text in English and Spanish.

One of Brazil''s leading contemporary artists, Caio Reisewitz (Sao Paulo, 1967) has produced a remarkable body of work over the past 15 years, concentrating almost exclusively on Brazilian topics. His large-scale colour photographs explore the changing relationship between the city and the countryside in a period of feverish economic development.Many of his photographs testify to his fascination with the architectural heritage of Brazil''s colonial period, as well as its innovative 20th-century modernist architecture. Other imposing works portray the pristine landscapes and dense forests around his hometown of São Paulo: areas that are now threatened by urban sprawl. Also, Caio Reisewitz''s work sets out to establish connections between the construction of what is real and the recording of what is artificial through photography. In his photomontages (in which the curator Fernando Cocchiarale detects traces of the Dadaist legacy of Hannah Höch and Joaquim Reis) human beings can be present, but they appear in transfigured form.Text in English and French.

A guide to Barcelona, one of the most visited cities in the world

Gordon Matta-Clark (1943-78) died at only 35 of pancreatic cancer and has since become a cult figure of late 20th-century art. Trained in architecture at Cornell, he went on to question the field's conventions in vivid projects--performance and recycling pieces, space and texture works and word games--some of which excised holes into existing buildings or assembled deeds to New York City alleys and curbs. The artist used a variety of media to document his work, including film, video and photography. His work and words, while sophisticated enough to make him an "artist's artist," and colossal and outgoing enough to draw public attention and affection, were always also grounded in social or political convictions. In the early 1970s, Matta-Clark developed the idea of "anarchitecture," which encompassed his interest in voids, gaps and left-over spaces. Gordon Matta-Clark: Experience Becomes the Object collects five essays and ten individual interviews with various friends and family members of Matta-Clark's. Together, they outline a biographical profile and offer an analysis of the historical period in which the artist developed his short but successful career. New, never-before-published material and photographs as well as an exclusive link to the documentary Crosswords: Matta-Clark's Friends by Matias Cardone are also included.

On the Road is a recurrent title (motto) that only few times reflects the in-depth meaning of the expression. A key figure in this tradition - Francis of Assisi - is the starting point of the research on contemporary art we collect in this amazing publication.

Juan Uslé (Santander) has been living in New York since the early ''90s, and is one of the most prominent figures of contemporary painting. The hypersensitivity described by Uslé in his work is a sort of memorable visionary state because it is painful. When we see certain paintings by Uslé, always in intense, bright and burning colours, we should be reminded of encounters with one of those states that take us out of our everyday way of perceiving, Each one of these events teaches us that everything we perceive can be captured in an entirely different way, given that even a small modification of the perceptual apparatus can cause it to vary.Some of Uslé''s paintings, the most complex, bring to mind looking through a kaleidoscope. It is useful to recall that these types of experiences, to which we are unaccustomed, are neither easy nor comfortable, and yet remain a crucial step away from being painful. In their excess they put pressure on our aesthetic expectations. This work would be the pictorial equivalent of Rimbaud''s famous quote: "dérèglement de tous les sens".