Taschen

A revolutionary spirit in modern art

Diego Rivera (1886–1957) is a loud presence on the art historical stage. With devout political principles and a turbulent romantic history, he was at once husband and paladin of Frida Kahlo, advocate and adversary of Stalin’s Soviet Union, and liberator and traitor of Leon Trotsky.

Vibrant, graphic, and often monumental, Rivera’s paintings carry the same live political and passionate charge as his personal biography. Fusing European influences such as Cubism with a socialist ideology and an exaltation of Mexico’s indigenous and popular heritage, he created a new iconography for art history and for his country. He became one of the most important figures in the Mexican mural movement and won international acclaim for his public wall paintings, in which he presented a utopian yet accessible vision of a post-revolutionary Mexico. In 1931, Rivera was the subject of MoMA’s second ever monographic exhibition.

This book explores the unique blend of influence and ideology which secure Rivera’s place as both a unique and a universal painter, bound to the particular turbulent experience of early 20th century Mexico, and yet preoccupied with subjects such as revolution and class inequity which continue to speak to us today.

Michelangelo, in pursuit of the beautiful and sublime

Italian-born Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (1475–1564) was a tormented, prodigiously talented, and God-fearing Renaissance man. His manifold achievements in painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry, and engineering combined body, spirit, and God into visionary masterpieces that changed art history forever. Famed biographer Giorgio Vasari considered him the pinnacle of Renaissance achievement. His peers called him simply “Il Divino” (“the divine one”).

This book provides the essential introduction to Michelangelo with all the awe-inspiring masterpieces and none of the queues and crowds. With vivid illustration and accessible texts, we explore the artist’s extraordinary figuration and celebrated style of terribilità (momentous grandeur), which allowed human and biblical drama to exist in compelling scale and fervor. Through the power hubs of Renaissance Italy, we take in his major commissions and phenomenal capacity for compositional schemes, whether the famous Medici library in Florence, or the extraordinary 500-square-meter ceiling (1508–1512) in the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel.

From the towering David to the aching grief and faith of The Pietà and the vivid drama of the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment, this is a succinct, dependable reference to a true giant of art history and to some of the most famous artworks in the world.

At first glance, Walton Ford’s large-scale, highly detailed watercolors of animals recall the prints of 19th-century illustrators John James Audubon and Edward Lear. A closer look reveals a complex and disturbingly anthropomorphic universe, full of symbols, sly jokes, and allusions to the ‘operatic’ quality of traditional natural history.

In this stunning but sinister visual universe, beasts and birds are not mere aesthetic objects but dynamic actors in allegorical struggles: a wild turkey crushes a small parrot in its claw; a troupe of monkeys wreaks havoc on a formal dinner table; an American buffalo is surrounded by bloodied white wolves. In dazzling watercolor, the images impress as much for their impeccable realism as they do for their complex narratives.

First available as a signed and limited volume, this updated edition of Pancha Tantra is the most comprehensive survey of Ford’s oeuvre to date, with more than 20 new works. It features dazzling details, an in-depth exploration of his visual universe, a complete biography, and excerpts from his textual inspirations: from Indian folktales and the letters of Benjamin Franklin to the Autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini and Audubon’s Ornithological Biography.