Sweet yet sinister, Nara's paintings of children and animals are beloved the world over for their punchy iconography and punk-rock spirit

This definitive monograph spans 40 years, from 1984 to the present day, in the career of the iconic artist, shedding light on Nara's conceptual process through paintings, drawings, sculptures, ceramics and installations that reflect his empathetic vision of the world around him. Published in conjunction with the epochal exhibition at Museo Guggenheim Bilbao in Spain, this eponymous monograph divides Nara's oeuvre into three chronological periods, beginning with his first artworks created in Japan in the 1980s, in which recurring elements of his personal history appear, such as his family's house and childlike figures, developed under the influence of artists such as Takeshi Motai. The volume then highlights the artist's fruitful stay in Germany, where Nara reacted to the isolation imposed by the language barrier while he studied and discovered German Expressionism with A.R. Penck at the Kunstakademie Düsseldorf and introduced in his production the central characters that would soon be recognized as part of his signature language. Finally, the monograph closes by exploring the work Nara produced after his return to Japan in 2000, presenting an essential selection of his late paintings, drawings, installations and sculptures.
Yoshitomo Nara (born 1959) is one of the best-known Japanese artists of his generation; his characteristic portraits of adorable, enigmatic or threatening childlike figures have become revered icons with potent social implications. Nara creates traditionally crafted art rooted in his childhood and personal history; underground punk, folk and rock music; literature and nature, as well as European and Japanese art history.

A photographic travelog of Meyerowitz's yearlong journey across postwar Europe

In 1966, at the age of 28, photographer Joel Meyerowitz embarked on a journey that would take him to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, France, Germany, Eastern Europe, Turkey and Greece. In total, he drove 20,000 miles through 10 countries and ended up taking 25,000 photographs. This trip was a transcendental experience and formative in shaping Meyerowitz's instinctive and brilliant identity that he is known for today. Europa 1966-1967 compiles a selection of photographs taken by Meyerowitz on his yearlong trip through Europe, offering an exciting glimpse of the New Old World that, having lately overcome the trauma of World War II, opened itself to modernity and progress. Meyerowitz witnessed societies in transition, stuck between dictatorship and economic blossoming. Yet he also documented unshakable cultural traditions, such as when he lived with a flamenco-performing family in Francoist Spain for six months. The strength and freshness of Meyerowitz's gaze and the new codes that were captured in these pictures inspired the next generation of photographers.
Joel Meyerowitz (born 1938) is a street, portrait and landscape photographer. The New York native began photographing in color in 1962 and was an early advocate for its use at a time when there was significant resistance to the idea of color photography as serious art. Many of his photographs are icons of modern photography, and he is considered one of the most influential representatives of the New Color Photography of the 1960s and '70s. His work has appeared in over 350 exhibitions around the world and is in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and many other museums worldwide.

A photographic celebration of the great Spanish city, from Alfonso to Thomas Struth

This volume includes more than 150 photographs by some of the greatest names in photography, both Spanish and international, together with an exhaustive essay by the writer Antonio Muñoz Molina on Madrid's illustrious history as a subject for photography.
It includes the brilliant photographs of Alfonso, perhaps the greatest graphic chronicler of Madrid at the beginning of the 20th century; the prewar and wartime images of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa and Gerda Taro; the postwar portraits of William Klein, Francesc Català-Roca and Ramón Masats, among others; the post-Franco developing society immortalized by photographers from Spain and elsewhere such as Gianni Ferrari; the mythical images of the Movida in Madrid by Alberto García-Alix; and the cultural and economic environment of the 21st century through the eyes of Cristina García Rodero and Thomas Struth.
Photographers include: Alfonso, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Francesc Català-Roca, Raymond Depardon, Alberto García-Alix, Cristina García Rodero, William Klein, Ouka Leele, Ramón Masats, Inge Morath, Francisco Ontañón, Carlos Saura, Thomas Struth, Gerda Taro and Miguel Trillo.

From voices trapped in bottles to broadcasting speakers, Gupta explores the sounds, shapes and significances of words

The multimedia installations of Indian artist Shilpa Gupta (born 1976) explore the concept of language in all its forms. In this monograph's central work, Listening Air, microphones suspended from the ceiling broadcast a soundscape of noises from cities, parks and universities.

The British-Ghanaian artist creates compelling character studies of people who don't exist, reflecting her twin talents as a writer and a painter -Zadie Smith, the New Yorker

This volume gathers around 60 works by British artist and writer Lynette Yiadom-Boakye, internationally celebrated for her paintings of timeless subjects in everyday moments of happiness, comradery and solitude. The publication includes texts by Yiadom-Boakye herself, writer and filmmaker Kodwo Eshun, and curator Lekha Hileman Waitoller.
Yiadom-Boakye's lush oils on canvas or coarse linen portray fictitious characters rendered in loose brushwork and set against dramatic backgrounds. The figures are composites drawn from different sources including scrapbooks and drawings. Animals such as birds, foxes, owls and dogs make regular appearances. To look at a Yiadom-Boakye painting is an invitation to slow down and observe, to enter the imaginary visual tales she spins.
Born and raised in London by Ghanian parents, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye (born 1977) studied at Central Saint Martin's College of Art and Design and Falmouth College of Arts, and received her MA from the Royal Academy Schools in 2003. Her first solo exhibition was held at Jack Shainman Gallery in 2010. Since then, her work has been exhibited at the Serpentine Gallery in London (2015), the Venice Biennale (2013), the New Museum in New York (2012), the Biennale de Lyon in France (2011), the Studio Museum in Harlem (2008) and many others. Her work has been collected by the Tate, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Victoria and Albert Museum, and the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, among others.

A fruitful visual dialogue between Chillida, his contemporaries and the art dealer who uplifted their idiosyncratic visions

On the occasion of the centennial of Basque sculptor Eduardo Chillida (1924-2004), Maeght Universe forges a dialogue between Chillida and some of the other artists with whom the historic art dealer Aimé Maeght (1901-81) and his wife, Marguerite, supported: Alexander Calder, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Palazuelo, Georges Braque, Julio González, Jean Arp, Barbara Hepworth, Antoni Tàpies, Joan Miró and Marc Chagall.
The 17 works presented belong to the Fondation Maeght, whose collection of sculptures is one of the most significant in the world. Maeght encouraged the form's evolution throughout the 20th century, championing modernist artists with distinct, and often contentious, visions. Texts by Isabelle Maeght (the daughter of Aimé and Marguerite), Ingnacio Chillida (the son of Eduardo) and Juan Kruz Igerabide, a Basque arts writer, elaborate on the dual legacy of the sculptor and his dealer.

Five Spanish photographer's visions of the political heart of North America

In the project DC.ES, five Spanish photographers--Juan Baraja, Jesús Madriñán, Paula Anta, Rosell Meseguer and Nicolás Combarro--examine Washington, DC, in a project that provides evocative gazes of a city known more for what it symbolizes than what it is.

The writings of Eduardo Chillida (1924-2002), the entirety of which are collected in this volume, represent a revealing series of reflections on art and culture by the deeply influential Spanish sculptor, originally intended either for his private use or as public lectures.

Edited in collaboration with Chillida's family, the texts include tributes to such figures as Bach, Joan Mir , Gabriel Aresti, P o Baroja, Joan Brossa, Mar a Zambrano and Mark Rothko, alongside discussions of the most difficult artistic questions that Chillida faced throughout his career, covered here in his acceptance speech for his induction to the Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando.

Also discussed are metaphysical themes of perception, knowledge and religion, all of which informed his sculpture's approach to materiality as a kind of realism, and made his body of work one of the most significant in abstract sculpture.

An affordable primer on the brief but influential career of an early 20th-century avant-garde photographer and revolutionary

Italian-born photographer, model, actor and political activist Tina Modotti is the subject of the first installment of La Fabrica's Essentials, a new series of monographs dedicated to the most fundamental names in photography. Modotti's highly influential career in photography took place entirely during her years living in Mexico, from 1923 to 1930, during which time she was deeply entrenched in Mexico City's avant-garde scene and produced a total of just over 400 black-and-white photographs. Before developing her own practice, Modotti was Edward Weston's favorite model, then lover, darkroom assistant and ultimately, creative partner. She was also close with iconic artists such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, for whom she photographed many public murals. Her oeuvre, spanning portraiture to photojournalism, fuses the aesthetics of Mexican revolutionary culture and avant-garde photography aesthetics, to which she added the ideals of equality proposed by socialism and her keen political commitment.
Tina Modotti (1896-1942) was born in Udine, Italy and immigrated with her family at the age of 16 to California, where she worked as an artists' model and an actress. In 1922 she moved to Mexico City where she became heavily involved with the communist party, working for the newspaper El Machete, and later founding the Liga Antifascista de México. In 1930 she was exiled and lived as a political refugee throughout Europe and in Moscow before returning to Mexico under a pseudonym in 1939, where she remained until her early death in 1942.

A recent selection from an acclaimed American artist whose wide-ranging work defies classification

This artist's book compiles a selection of work by Roni Horn (born 1955), whose diverse practice spans photography, sculpture, drawing and conceptually oriented book projects. The book includes a text by American writer Carmen Maria Machado and an interview with the artist.

A Spanish collector's selection of photography's most iconic moments

This homage to Cartier-Bresson's famous dictum collects some of the most important images by some of the best photographers of the 20th century. Featured here are Man Ray's Surrealist portraits of women; Berenice Abbot's images of a modernizing New York; and Alberto Korda's iconic portrait of Che Guevara. Presenting the work of 58 photographers from the collection of Julián Castilla, this essential volume of 20th-century photography is accompanied by essays from Spain's leading authors on photography, exploring the evolution of the medium.
Photographers include: Berenice Abbott, José Manuel Ballester, Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Francesc Català-Roca, Christo and Jeanne-Claude, Robert Doisneau, Elliott Erwitt, Philippe Halsman, Horst P. Horst, André Kertész, William Klein, Alberto Korda, Chema Madoz, Vivian Maier, Ramón Masats, Nicolás Muller, Man Ray, Carlos Saura, Alfred Stieglitz, Juan Ugalde and more.

A new, affordable survey of Picasso's sculptural oeuvre with a focus on his endlessly inventive explorations of the body

Representations of the body form the cornerstone of this major publication focusing on Picasso's sculpture, published for the first Spanish exhibition on this theme, at the Museo Picasso in Málaga and the Guggenheim Bilbao. Assembled by Carmen Giménez, the Museo Picasso Málaga's first director, it includes a careful selection of sculptures that illustrates the tremendous plurality of styles in which Picasso explored and expanded forms of three-dimensional representation of the human body.
Picasso used all the materials at his disposal in his sculptures--wood, bronze, iron, cement, steel and plaster--a fact that expresses the primacy of the medium for him. The human body likewise proved an enduring source of fascination and creative reinvention for the artist, and his sculptural work ingeniously balances deformation and sensuality across the span of his prodigious career.

Selected from photographs taken during the Webbs' nearly 30-year relationship, this group of 80 paired photographs creates an affectionate play of visual rhymes

Slant Rhymes is a photographic conversation between two renowned authors and artists, Magnum photographer Alex Webb and poet and photographer Rebecca Norris Webb. Selected from photographs taken during the Webbs' nearly 30-year relationship (a friendship evolving into a marriage and creative partnership), this group of 80 photographs is laid out in pairs--one by Alex, one by Rebecca--to create a series of visual rhymes that talk to one another, often at a slant and in intriguing and revealing ways.

Sometimes we find our photographic slant rhymes share a similar palette or tone or geometry, writes Alex Webb in the introduction to the book. Other times, our paired photographs strike a similar note--often a penchant for surreal or surprising or enigmatic moments--although often in two different keys.

In this volume, the artists' photographs--many of which are published here for the first time--are interwoven with short text pieces by the Webbs. A deeply personal book, beautifully produced as an intimate clothbound edition with a tipped-on cover, Alex Webb and Rebecca Norris Webb: Slant Rhymes is an unfinished love poem, told at a slant.

A comprehensive look at the multifarious activities of a pivotal avant-garde artist

Danish artist Asger Jorn (1914-73) was a founding member of the avant-garde movements CoBrA and the Situationist International. This comprehensive monograph chronicles his singular trajectory, featuring canonical and hitherto unpublished texts by Jorn, and charting his exits from, and returns to, painting.

A photographic ode to Spanish street life in the 1950s and '60s

Between 1955 and 1965, photographer Ramón Masats (born 1931) toured his native Spain on assignment for the Illustrated Gazette, creating patriotic images of Spanish culture that are lauded for their sharp graphics and documentary acuity. Masats' work helped bring Spanish photography into the modern age.

The first thorough examination of Brazilian pioneer Lygia Clark's early neoconcrete work

One of the key Brazilian participants in Latin America's revolutionary midcentury concrete and neoconcrete movements, Lygia Clark (1920-88) is known throughout the world for her innovative approach to modular sculpture and forms of participatory art, as well as her paintings and engagement with art as a therapeutic practice.

This volume focuses on the first decade of Clark's career, during which the artist experimented with new forms of representation based on concrete art's emphasis on the material character of shapes and colors. Clark's paintings oscillate between figuration and abstraction, with splinters of jewel-toned triangles and bold black-and-white parallelograms that interlock with one another on square canvases. Readers can follow the precision with which she created her geometrical paintings and identify the visual language of Clark's practice, which would continue to inform the kinetic sculptures later in her career.

A beautifully produced introduction to the Hungarian photographer's classic images of bohemian Paris between the wars

In the 1930s Paris was brimming with life, and Brassaï and Picasso were there to make the most of it--Brassaï portraying the city's boulevards and gardens, shops and markets, intellectuals and street life, and Picasso galvanizing its art culture with his innovations. The two of them quickly became fast friends. For Brassaï (1899-1984), the many contrasts and contradictions of Paris were a source of endless fascination, from its various underworlds to the liveliness of its bohemia. He prolifically documented his numerous artist and writer friends, such as Salvador Dalí, Henri Matisse, Alberto Giacometti, Jean Genet--and Picasso, whom he first met in 1932 and whose sculptural work he was the first to photograph.
This volume compiles Brassaï's richly resonant and much-loved black-and-white portraits of this golden era, with a focus throughout on his many images of Picasso at work and at play. It includes a text by Henry Miller that provides a flavor of this astounding era.

Klein by Klein: the photographer's homage to the medium

Here, looking back from the perspective of his 90 years, William Klein selects his favorite works, those that he considers to be the very best he has made over the course of his long career, in order to pay homage to the medium of photography itself. This book, appropriately titled Celebration, provides a tour of his most emblematic works, traversing New York, Rome, Moscow, Madrid and Paris, in powerful black and white or striking color.

The book also includes a text by the author in which he reflects upon the photographic art and explains what prompted him to make this director's cut, this exceptionally personal selection. A small-format but high-voltage volume, in page after page Celebration makes it clear why Klein's achievement is one of the summits of contemporary photography.

Born in New York in 1928, William Klein studied painting and worked briefly as Fernand L ger's assistant in Paris, but never received formal training in photography. His fashion work has been featured prominently in Vogue magazine, and has also been the subject of several iconic photo books, including Life Is Good and Good for You in New York (1957) and Tokyo (1964). In the 1980s, he turned to film projects and has produced many memorable documentary and feature films, such as Muhammed Ali, the Greatest (1969). Klein currently lives and works in Paris, France. His works are held in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and the Art Institute of Chicago, among others.

A generous introduction to the kinetic and op art pioneer's finest works

Over a career spanning more than five decades, Venezuelan artist Soto (1923-2005) played a fundamental role in the evolution of op and kinetic art, and postwar Latin American abstraction.

Breaking away in the 1950s from the conventional separation of painting and sculpture, his practice moved progressively beyond the visual field to become emblematic of the radical shift undergone by the art object in subsequent years. Transcending the optical research of his early work, he formed part of the first group of kinetic artists in Paris together with Jean Tinguely, Iacov Agam and Victor Vasarely.

Soto: The Fourth Dimension offers a comprehensive overview of the artist's influential work, from his early abstractions to his Penetrables, as well as his striking murals for the UNESCO headquarters in Paris.