Search results for ""Author Sarah Whitfield""

René Magritte (1898–1967) was a surrealist artist whose thought-provoking works used ordinary objects to challenge how viewers perceived reality. His extensive oeuvre was documented in a comprehensive five-volume project, led by distinguished art critic and writer David Sylvester. In the years that followed the publication of the final volume in 1997, numerous works purporting to be by Magritte appeared on the art market. Under the auspices of the Fondation Magritte, a committee was established to verify the authenticity of newly discovered works as well as those previously recorded as "whereabouts unknown" or listed as appendix items in the original volumes of the René Magritte Catalogue Raisonné.René Magritte: Newly Discovered Works includes color illustrations of 130 previously unpublished or unknown works authenticated by the committee between September 2000 and March 2010. Like its predecessors, this volume is the culmination of years of research, which synthesizes new discoveries about the artworks and details of the life of Magritte himself. Accompanying text and comparative documentation provide a wealth of complementary information, including the circumstances of a work's discovery, references to letters, quotations in their original languages, and citations from previous volumes.Distributed for Mercatorfonds

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Les Fauves (the wild beasts) was the nickname given in 1905 to a group of painters led by Henri Matisse. Today, their paintings are among the most popular of all twentieth-century art. Yet when Matisse and his friends - Derain, Vlaminck, Marquet, Dufy and Braque among them - first exhibited their work, the reaction of public and critics was astonishment and often hostility. Using strong, even strident, colours, applied in a manner deriving from Cézanne, Gauguin and Van Gogh, the Fauves took painting back to its basic principles, inspired by primitive art, popular prints and children's paintings, and paved the way to Cubism. The artists, their work, their relationship, their achievements and the critical and commercial response to their work are all discussed in this absorbing book.

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As one of the leading critical voices on art of the postwar years, polymath Lawrence Gowing (1918–1991) combined a passion for close visual involvement with formidable literary skills. Edited by art historian Sarah Whitfield, four decades of Gowing’s writing are brought together for the first time in this volume, covering subjects from the Old Masters to Francis Bacon and Howard Hodgkin. Having first gained success as a painter, Gowing's 1952 monograph on Vermeer brought him early recognition as a writer with the ability to combine aesthetic experience with a meticulous historical perspective. Gowing’s foremost commitment was to the pioneering painters of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, notably Paul Cézanne and Henri Matisse. The exhibitions he curated at the Tate and Museum of Modern Art famously helped to mould and reshape public perceptions. Characterised by a desire to instruct and encourage, his writing reflects a highly successful career as a curator and teacher.

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Over the course of his career, William Scott painted more than 1,000 works in oil, all of which are catalogued in this four-volume publication, which covers the artist’s output from 1928 to 1986. Each work is accompanied by a catalogue note giving reasons for the dating together with any documentary material relevant to its history, much of it published here for the first time. An enormous amount of new information has been unearthed during the six years of research that has gone into this important project, research that not only reveals a great deal more than was previously known about the artist’s life and work but also about how both these aspects of his career had a bearing on the wider context of contemporary British art. The artist’s own papers and many previously unpublished letters and lecture notes have been made available by his family especially for this project. This landmark work will provide scholars and collectors with a vital tool for further research, and all lovers of Scott’s art with a source of inspiration and insight.

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