Books published by Skira

The Empress and I explores a unique alliance between two brilliant women. The book vividly describes how a treasure trove of modern art, now worth billions, was acquired for a relatively modest sum in the 1970s. Its author is a former New York Museum of Modern Art curator who served as an art advisor to the Empress of Iran. She cites numerous personal and previously confidential documents, including reports and extensive communications with artists, art dealers, auction houses and notable museum colleagues.

200 people, 200 portraits of a never seen Gastel. Faces who: «Have passed on something to me, taught me, touched my soul.

A vast catalogue dedicated to Leonardo's entire oeuvre on the occasion of the largest exhibition ever realized on the genius, symbol of Italian art and creativity, on the occasion of Milan Expo 2015.

Marta Gnyp has chosen to interview the most trailblazing names in contemporary art to reflect on the changes occurring today in the artistic canon, practices and the lives of artists, in order to map its evolution and the directions we are headed in. The book is divided in five chapters, each addressing an important process that has been shaping the art world in the recent years. Rewriting the Canon deals with rediscovery and revaluation of several outstanding post-war artists featuring Joan Semmel, Stanley Whitney and Claudette Johnson. In Extending New Media, artists Cory Arcangel and Alex da Corte speak about their artistic practices that critically embrace and reflect on the new technical possibilities. Interviews with Jordon Wolfson and Mohamed Bourouissa in New Approaches to Truth and Morality pose questions about the ethics of art making and the idea of good and bad, among other things. New Classic Art features Claire Tabouret, Adriana Varejao, Daniel Richter and Jenny Saville, four artists that on the one side continue working in the grand art historical tradition, and on the other make this tradition very contemporary. Finally, via fascinating personal interviews, Marta Gnyp speaks with curators, businesspeople and collectors to reflect on the changing art systems and markets: Koyo Kouoh, curator and director of the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary African Art, Pamela Joyner, American businesswoman and art collector, Marion Maneker, President and Editorial Director of Art Media. The list is not finalized yet and a few new names will be added to make it list complete.

A historical and critical profile of the complete creative corpus of the artist. Covers over four decades of Fontanäs creative activity, presented in chronological order. A rigorous examination of over 4000 works carried out in collaboration with the Lucio Fontana Foundation, making this a definitive and essential publication for scholars, collectors, museums and art dealers

A comprehensive survey of the art of the kakemono, classic Japanese paintings on vertical scrolls.Once displayed for the tea ceremony and in the alcove (tokonoma) of traditional houses, the kakemono or kakejiku is a `painted hanging scroll,¿ which, in the variety of its themes, describes changing beauty and the flow of time. Subjects are in fact selected to satisfy the taste of the visitors, and harmony with seasons and events. As with Japanese writing, it should be read from right to left.Verisimilitude being of subordinate importance, what really matters is to convey `the power of the brush.¿ As long as the spirit and the essence of the image can be appreciated, any painting can be enjoyed as a journey into the artist¿s mind.Edited by Matthi Forrer and realized in collaboration with the Fondazione culture e musei of Lugano and the Fondazione Torino Musei, the book presents a selection of 120 kakemono from the important private Perino collection, offering a unique opportunity to discover Japanese painting between the 16th and 19th centuries.Most of the subjects are drawn from nature (flowers, birds and fish), painted realistically in extraordinarily precise detail. They include works of rare beauty by artists such as Maruyama Okyo (1733-1795), who worked in the imperial court and founded Maruyama-Shijo, one of the most prestigious naturalist schools of the period, Kishi Ganku (1749/56-1838/39), famous for his paintings of tigers, and Kusumi Morikage (1620-1690), painter of the Edo period whose works reflect his sympathy for farmers and the poor.

The works by the Vietnamese artist who combines archaic and modern elements in an art form that can be called spiritual and naïveNguyen Thi Mai (1966) is a self-taught artist based in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam.She works mainly with acrylic painting and lacquer painting, although she is also experienced with oil on canvas, silk painting and ink painting.Lacquer painting is a traditional Vietnamese art form, with the painting done on wooden boards. However, Nguyen Thi Mai has given this traditional art form a new twist with her own unique technique.It is usual for lacquer paintings to have a glossy finishing. However, with her technique, Mai's lacquer paintings have a matte finishing. Thus the term "unpolished lacquer painting". The matte look has given her lacquer pieces a very subtle and refined look, not found elsewhere on the market. "As a self taught artist, I am very much influenced by the visions I see, the melodies I hear and my deep appreciation for tradition and beauty.Through my art, I advocate, and also seek, balance and harmony. Balance and harmony not only on the canvas, but more importantly, within me. When a pendulum reaches the extremes, it seeks the center. Through balance, we have harmony. Through harmony, we have peace. And through peace, we have happiness."

Born in 1963 in Dharamsala, India, Kesang Lamdark grew up in Switzerland, where helater apprenticed and worked as an interior architect. He went on to study at ParsonsSchool of Design in New York, and he received an MA in Visual Arts at Columbia University. The artist now lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland.Lamdark's plastic sculptures and mirrored lightboxes are evidence of his displaced and multicultural upbringing. His search for an appropriate cultural space ultimately turned inwards, as he came to understand and reconnect with his Tibetan heritagewhile living in the West. Through his Tibetan-Western identity, he is able tounderstand and strike a balance between both cultures. Combining unusualmaterials, from hair to plastic, beer cans to nail polish, Lamdark brings together the unfamiliar and revels in recycling everyday objects into works of art.In 2008, Lamdark presented in the Third Guangzhou Triennial, installing a work titledPink Himalayan Boulder - a 10,000-kilogram rock that he smuggled out of Tibet and encased in melted plastic - at SH Contemporary in Shanghai. He also participated in the annual Dharamshala International Artists' Workshop in 2012 and completed aresidency at the Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art in 2013.

The dominant role of female beauty in sixteenth-century Venice is unique both in the history of the Republic and other parts of the world. One reason for this is the Serenissimäs distinctive political-social structure, which granted women special rights in connection with their dowry and their ability to inherit; another was Venice¿s pivotal role as an international cultural centre. The rise of influential publishing houses attracted renowned poets and humanists such as Pietro Bembo, Sperone Speroni and Lodovico Dolce, who in their writings increasingly focused on women and their vital role for the family and the continuation of humanity as such. The crucial impetus for the visual realisation of this idea came from the Serenissimäs greatest artist: Titian. For him, artistic beauty was identical with female beauty. He was less interested in the canon of exterior beauty than in a women¿s character, in femininity as such. Titian elevates every depiction of a woman into a celebration of womanhood. Published for the exhibition in Vienna and Milan, the book aims to present the female image through the spectrum of possible themes and to compare individual artistic approaches between Titian and other painters of the time. The reader will experience the various aspects of female idealisation.

As a young artist, Manzur experimented with Expressionism and abstraction, but he eventually found his true passion for figurative painting. He was inspired by multiple sources including Spanish Baroque artists such as Velázquez, Zurbarán and Sánchez Cotán; 19th-century American Realists like William Harnett and John F. Peto; and Italian Renaissance artists, with whom he shares the love for the human figure. Early in his career, he developed a personal style characterized by a masterful draftsmanship, a dramatic almost theatrical use of light and color, and the juxtaposition of volumes and transparencies. His subject matter has varied over the years. From still-lives to religious characters, from portraiture to equine representations, his paintings depict staged scenes that combine reality and fantasy in an oneiric atmosphere. Most recently, his series Obra Negra focuses on three main themes: the ghostly horse, the bull and the woman in red. These monumental canvases, in which he uses a sort of assemblage to attain volume, result in compelling images that are, by far, his most magnificent to date.

The first publication devoted to the important series by the American artist.Published in collaboration with the Kavi Gupta and Paul Kasmin galleries, this volume offers the first in-depth look at American artist Roxy Paine's Dioramas. Initially conceived in the 1990s, it was not until 2012 that Paine began to produce the first of his technically ambitious Dioramas, eventually producing seven museum-scale works that broaden and deepen his engagement with altered realities and the psychogeography of American life and modern culture. The Dioramas represent an important reinvention of the diorama, the nineteenth-century ur-form of modern spectacle, for the twenty-first century.Edited by Saul Anton, the volume includes an extended conversation between Paine and Wexner Center of the Arts curator Michael Goodson, who organized Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor, a 2016 exhibition of the Dioramas at the Beeler Gallery of the Columbus College of Art & Design. The volume also includes essays by Blaffer Museum director Steven Matijcio and critics Saul Anton and Mia Kang that explore their rich historical and social resonance, and reflect on their place in the landscape of contemporary art and art history.Since the 1990s, Roxy Paine has positioned his work at the intersection between the monumental and the microscopic, the natural and the artificial, the material and the ideal. Featuring documentation and images from all seven dioramas produced between 2012 and 2017, this volume shows how he has continued to track these themes into new social and historical areas.