Artist Architect

A distilled, crystal-like companion to H is for Hawk, Birds Art Life celebrates the particular madness of chasing after birds in the urban environment and explores what happens when the core lessons of birding are applied to other aspects of art and life. Moving with ease between the granular and the grand, peering into the inner landscape as much as the outer one, this is a deeply personal year-long inquiry into big themes: love, waiting, regrets, endings.

Harry Truman and Pablo Picasso were contemporaries and were both shaped by and shapers of the great events of the twentieth century—the man who painted Guernica and the man who authorized the use of atomic bombs against civilians. But in most ways, they couldn’t have been more different. Picasso was a communist, and probably the only thing Truman hated more than communists was modern art. Picasso was an indifferent father, a womanizer, and a millionaire. Truman was utterly devoted to his family. How did they come to be shaking hands in front of Picasso’s studio in the south of France?

The son of one of the greatest writers of our time - Nobel Prize winner and internationally best-selling icon Gabriel García Márquez - remembers his beloved father and mother in this tender memoir about love and loss.

Bestselling author Leonard Shlain explores the life, art, and mind of Leonardo da Vinci, seeking to explain his singularity by looking at his achievements in art, science, psychology, and military strategy (yes), and then employing state of the art left-right brain scientific research to explain his universal genius. Shlain shows that no other person in human history has excelled in so many different areas as Da Vinci and he peels back the layers to explore the how and the why.

The name Giotto di Bondone may not be as well-known as Leonardo da Vinci, but it was Giotto who made da Vinci and his contemporaries of the Renaissance possible. Giotto, born in the late 13th century, was the first painter to escape the artistic chains of the Dark Ages and revive the natural art of Ancient Greece. Instead of creating flat, expressionless figures, as was the custom of the Middle Ages, Giotto painted characters with personalities and emotions.

Fue una de las principales figuras de la arquitectura española de finales del siglo XIX y principios del siglo XX. Autor de obras de inigualable belleza como la Casa Milá o el Park Güell, Gaudí siempre será recordado por la obra cumbre de su carrera: el Templo Expiatorio de la Sagrada Familia, una construcción colosal e inacabada en la que están condensados todos los principios que guiaron su interesante proceso creativo.

In less than a decade, the prodigious painter Jean-Michel Basquiat went from a teenage graffiti artist to an international art star at the peak of the heady, excessive 1980s art boom. A legend in his own lifetime, Basquiat was a fixture of the downtown scene, full of rock music, couture fashion, outrageous art, and heady drugs. Along the way, Basquiat was involved with several of the time's most infamous personalities, from Keith Haring and Andy Warhol to his brief romantic fling with Madonna.

Many recognize Stan Lee as the face of Marvel. Yet Jack Kirby is the one who did a lot of the hard work in creating such heroes as Captain America, Iron Man, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and Ant-Man. While Lee was the public face for what became the multimedia brand, Kirby’s legacy is relegated to the shadows. Much like Bill Finger of Batman and Gene L. Coon of Star Trek, this man doesn’t get enough credit. A man who gave everything to the comic book industry. This book hopes to shed some light on his life and career.

Van Gogh is a vivid portrait of the great Impressionist painter that traces his life from the Netherlands, where he was born into a family of art dealers, through his years in England, the Hague, and Paris, to his final home in Arles, where he discovered the luminous style of his late paintings before his suicide at the age of thirty-seven.

With lips slightly parted and eyes fixed on a point in the distance, a breathtaking marble portrait of Costanza Piccolomini appears alive. Carved by Gianlorenzo Bernini in 1636 - 37 for his own pleasure, the portrait of Costanza is one of his most captivating works, but until now little has been known about its subject. For centuries Costanza was identified only as Bernini's mistress, who later incited his rage by betraying him for his brother. Author Sarah McPhee corrects and expands this story in her remarkable biography of a sculpture and its subject.

Summer in Paris, 1783. The Louvre steps, too hot and no breeze, the air electric with the heady anticipation of a coming storm: the year's Royal Salon. Men and women of every estate are united under art: to love it, to despise it, to gossip endlessly about it. Exhibiting at the Royal Salon was not for the faint of heart, and it was never intended for women. Enter Adélaïde Labille-Guiard . . . Born in Paris in 1749, Adélaïde Labille-Guiard rose from shopkeeper's daughter to an official portraitist of the royal court—only to have her achievements reduced to ash by the French Revolution

Mary fought for a place as a professional artist without having to live as a tragic heroine. She married George Reid, Canadian muralist, and while their relationship was more equal than most, this was still the Edwardian age. How do you find time to paint when you need to get to the market to buy a chicken for dinner?

His father conceived of the Brooklyn Bridge, but after John Roebling's sudden death, Washington Roebling built what has become one of American's most iconic structures - as much a part of New York as the Statue of Liberty or the Empire State Building. Yet, as recognizable as the bridge is, its builder is too often forgotten - and his life is of interest far beyond his chosen field. It is the story of immigrants, of the frontier, of the greatest crisis in American history, and of the making of the modern world.

The lives of many famous artists have been shrouded in mystery and conjecture, but none have been more controversial than the life of Vincent van Gogh. Remembered for his swirling brushstrokes and burning colors, Vincent van Gogh is today one of the best-known painters. Though his career as a painter spanned less than ten years, he produced a body of work that remains one of the most enduring in all of modern art. In his lifetime, however, he received little recognition. Today his paintings sell for countless millions, yet during his lifetime, van Gogh managed to sell just one painting.

Anne Neilson believes that each of us begins our life as a blank canvas: clean and fresh and ready to find texture in our experiences. Each trial, each joy, each heartache, and each hope leaves an explosion of color and sweeping brushstrokes that shape us. When we allow God to take over as the Master artist, we will find that He carefully adds dimension and highlights to create a beautiful masterpiece in us. Often, though, it's hard to find the beauty when we are wading through mess. Anne shares personal stories about why her faith is so important to her and resonates in all her work.

Le età della vita di Leonardo furono marcate da ricerche e spostamenti, sia attraverso luoghi fisici sia - soprattutto - attraverso le discipline che egli studiò e intrecciò in un continuo avanzamento. La sua fu una vita affascinante, tanto che da secoli viene studiata, catturando la curiosità di tutti, dagli storici dell'arte ai critici, dai filosofi agli psicologi, fino a ciascuno di noi.

El pintor mexicano más importante de la primera mitad del siglo XX. Sus trabajos y murales representan hoy, el punto más alto del arte contemporáneo no sólo de su país, sino a nivel mundial. Dueño de un espíritu incansable, organizador, pletórico de gracia y elegancia, su obra destaca nítidamente por su idealismo e intolerancia hacia lo que le parece el mal principal de este mundo: la explotación del hombre por el hombre.

For nearly a decade, Palley has been on the frontline of fire. He has witnessed homeowners on the worst day of their lives. He’s seen puddles of aluminum where cars were once parked. He’s watched as 150-foot walls of flame cascaded down mountainsides and crashed into the Pacific Ocean. And he’s captured, time and again, the tireless commitment of firefighters as they work to save lives and homes, in terrain where fire always seems to have the upper hand.

He looked down at her and issued his challenge: Tell me you don't want me to make love to you. Tell me you're afraid to find out what I'll do next. Tell me, and I'll stop. She wanted to tell him to leave her alone. She didn't care if he found out the truth--that she was a woman who was afraid of her own sexuality. But things had gone too far. And now she wanted it all.

A fascinating look into the life of a tortured genius. Using Van Gogh's letters as a primary source, the author discusses the artist's life, his approach to his work, and his mental illness. The letters vividly show the artist's life was no bed of roses. Whereas Van Gogh perfectly knew what was sellable, he continued to produce what he considered as honest, truthful art, regardless of current taste.