LIVES OF THE GREAT MODERN ARTISTS

In the era of celebrity culture, we are more fascinated than ever by the lives of our leading artists. Creative personalities are always intriguing, and to learn something new about the greatest artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries – whether they be eccentric or sober, outspoken or reclusive – is compelling.

Presented here are some of the most engaging life stories of our time, eventful, intimate and poignant. Lively short biographies, clearly grouped according to style and era, are illustrated with important works, self-portraits and photographs.

Lucie-Smith vividly evokes the lives of these great personalities, from Picasso and Duchamp to Joseph Beuys and Louise Bourgeois, guiding the reader through the maze of different styles and movements with authority and verve. New entries on rising stars such as Marlene Dumas, Shirin Neshat and Zhang Xiaogang bring the coverage up to the present day.

Originally published in hardback as 'Lives of the Great 20th-Century Artists'.

Edward Lucie-Smith is a well-known poet, biographer and writer on the visual arts. He has written more than sixty books about art, including Latin American Art of the 20th Century, American Realism and Sexuality in Western Art

Introduction

1 Towards the Modern

• Edvard Munch
• Käthe Kollwitz

2 The Fauves

• Henri Matisse
• Maurice de Vlaminck
• André Derain

3 The Nabis

• Pierre Bonnard
• Edouard Vuillard

4 Cubism

• Fernand Léger
• Pablo Picasso
• Georges Braque
• Robert and Sonia Delaunay
• Juan Gris

5 Futurism

• Giacomo Balla
• Umberto Boccioni

6 German Expressionism

• Emil Nolde
• Paula Modersohn-Becker
• Gabriele Münter
• Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
• Max Beckmann
• Franz Marc

7 The Vienna Sezession

• Gustav Klimt
• Oskar Kokoschka
• Egon Schiele

8 The Ecole de Paris

• Georges Rouault
• Piet Mondrian
• Constantin Brancusi
• Amedeo Modigliani
• Chaïm Soutine

9 The Russians

• Kasimir Malevich
• Mikhail Larionov and Natalia Goncharova
• Vladimir Tatlin
• Marc Chagall
• Liubov Popova
• El Lissitzky
• Alexander Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova
• Naum Gabo

10 Dada

• Francis Picabia
• Marcel Duchamp
• Kurt Schwitters
• Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber-Arp
• John Heartfield

11 Metaphysical Painting

• Giorgio de Chirico
• Giorgio Morandi

12 Surrealism

• Max Ernst
• Joan Miró
• René Magritte
• Salvador Dalí

13 The Bauhaus

• Vasily Kandinsky
• Lyonel Feininger
• Paul Klee
• László Moholy-Nagy
• Josef Albers

14 The New Objectivity

• Otto Dix
• George Grosz

15 The Mexicans

• Jos