Books published by Skira

Alphonse Mucha was an extraordinarily prolific and versatile artist who made his mark in the diverse fields of design - including posters, jewellery, interior decoration, theatre, packaging and product designs - as well as in painting, book illustration, sculpture and photography. He is one of the best-known Czech artists to wide international audiences today and rose to international fame in fin-de- siècle Paris with his elegant designs for theatre posters for Sarah Bernhardt, the most famous French actress of the time, and decorative panels ( panneaux décoratifs ) featuring gracefully posed women. For those posters Mucha created a distinctive style - "le style Mucha" - characterised by harmonious compositions, sinuous forms, organic lines and a muted palette, which became synonymous with the newly emerging decorative style of the time - Art Nouveau. By the time of the Paris Exposition Universelle of 1900, Mucha had become a leading figure in this decorative art movement, who defined the look of the era. The catalogue explores the development of Mucha's career and overall achievements as a multifaceted and visionary artist. It is divided into six sections, highlighting Mucha's personality as Bohemian; picture maker for people; cosmopolitan; mystic; patriot and philosopher.

Matteo Civaschi , art-director and graphic designer, created Shortology with 16 books published across the world.

Danilo Eccher has been Director of GAM Galleria civica d'arte moderna e contemporanea of Turin since 2009.

Seen as a great artist in Colombia, elsewhere Bursztyn has remained relatively unknown. The publication is a comprehensive survey on pioneering art practice of Bursztyn and seeks to reflect on and animate new tendencies in research on Feliza Bursztyn and her vibrant body of work. It features texts by prominent writers, researchers and curators - Julia Buenaventura, Cecilia Fajardo-Hill, Camilo Leyva, Daniel Muzyczuk, Lucas Ospina, Sylvia Suárez, Gina McDaniel Tarver, Lynn Zelevansky - and rarely published archive materials. The publication inaugurates the Muzeum Susch and Skira Editore's series dedicated to re-discovering women artists overlooked by the main canons of art history. A pioneer in kinetic sculpture, Feliza Bursztyn (1933, Bogota-1982, Paris) created wrecked metal sculptures with ghostlike yet comical humanoid traits that addressed the social effects caused by the aggressive modernization of Colombian society. Composed of industrial junk, often motor-animated, these works perform a theater of dystopian industrial hybrids. Bursztyn's immersive installations are characterized by their disconcerting mechanical sound produced by the frenetic vibration of the sculptures, as well as by occasional music scores accompanying the pieces. The artist's works and sculptural mise-en-scènes enact sites of aesthetic resistance and antithetical political investment, creating a unique experience that raises awareness on the situation and the perception of women in a male-dominated society and reveal the troublesome face of modernity.

In this new collection, the internationally exhibited and award-winning documentary and fine art photographer, David Lurie returns to the terrain of the city, but this time with a specific visual agenda in mind which he shapes with the eye for a carefully composed frame of both a documentarist and a fine artist. Lurie¿s new collection strikes at the very heart of the dilemma of unequal access to the technological means of production ¿ the digital sphere, usually reached via the ubiquitous smartphone. With his aesthetic eye, skilful sense of composition, lighting and colour and, most importantly, a keen sense of the topicality and socio-political importance of what is contained within his frames, in his new project Lurie visually dramatizes the explosion of cheap and available camera technology built into smartphones, which has coincided with a corresponding explosion of the platforms on which their images can be seen ¿ social media. This seemingly extreme democratisation of image making in fact also disempowers, by turning the data inherent in all images ¿ locations, faces, frequency of images, likes and dislikes ¿ into monetisable information to be harvested and deployed by social media corporations. Street photography started out as a means to document and thereby understand new ways of living that rapid urbanisation and industrial work and leisure practices had brought about. As a medium, street photography focused on popular culture and the working classes as a result. The novelty of having one¿s lifestyle and values disseminated photographically is a mainstay of the street photography idiom ¿ one that is now overshadowed by the ubiquity of its post-capitalist, self-initiated forms. This very ubiquity conceals the ideology behind a variable and radically unequal access to digital culture, still very much organised along class and racial lines.

The extraordinary jewelry creations by the famous Maison from its beginnings to the present day. This book presents the legendary jewelry and precious objects of Van Cleef & Arpels, and how they relate to time, nature and love. Time is a fundamental element for both creativity and craftsmanship. Time gives objects their shape; defines their style; determines their function, social utility, and the choice of materials and techniques; indicates origin; hones taste; and reveals context. Time is interpreted through eight values inspired by Italo Calvino's Lezioni Americane, or Six Memos for the Next Millennium, to honor the iconic pieces created by Van Cleef & Arpels over the years, from Art Deco masterpieces to the illustrious Zip necklace, gravity-defying Mystery Set, or celebrated Minaudières-some of the most important innovations in the history of 20th century jewelry-making. Nature plays an equally important role for Van Cleef & Arpels as an ever-present source of inspiration and tribute, embodied in unique gems and timeless masterpieces drawing on flora and fauna. Van Cleef & Arpels is founded on love, the most powerful energy in the world. Each object is handcrafted with love, and Van Cleef & Arpels jewelry has sealed some of the century's most legendary love stories.In a brilliant historical and critical essay, illuminated by a stunning iconographic selection of jewelry, precious objects and archive materials, this work describes the Maison's eternal values of time, nature and love.

A vase is never merely a container. As Georges Braque once said, "the vase gives form to emptiness": ever since the earliest human civilizations, this object has had a purpose that is greater than its function and it perennially seeks experimentation in shape and expression. The 1,000 vases presented in this book are an eloquent demonstration of this. They come from 35 different countries and more than 80% have been made by women or independent designers and artists born between 1988 and 1993, each of whom was invited to create a free interpretation of the same archetype, resulting in a spectrum of the infinite creativity inspired by the many possible versions of a single item. Made from an enormous range of materials (ceramic, terracotta, porcelain, metal, wood, glass, as well as natural fibers, industrial waste and recycled plastic), using techniques both ancient and ultra-modern (3D printing) and belonging to different categories (from amphora to jar, jug to carafe), almost all sit on the borderline that simultaneously unites and separates art, design and craftsmanship.