This text presents an in-depth examination of Picasso as a politically and socially engaged artist, from the 1940s, when he defiantly remained in Paris during the Nazi occupation, throughout the subsequent Cold War period.

No other painter has had a more lasting influence on twentieth-century art than Pablo Picasso. Among the many phases and styles encompassed by his oeuvre, Picasso's late period--which he spent in Mougins, in the South of France, until his death in 1973--has a very special position. For the highly charged paintings that Picasso made during the last decade of his life, often featuring close-ups of the kiss or copulation, seem to cling with all their might to the artist's intense sensuality, his desire for embrace. They are marked by a great restlessness whose aim must be to exorcise death itself. "Wild" paintings rapidly executed by Picasso's masterly hand, the late canvases stand in marked contrast to the artist's detailed, carefully executed drawings of the same period, which are dominated by a unique joy in narrative. This substantial new volume, edited by Werner Spies, former director of the Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris and the most important Picasso expert of our day, examines almost 200 works, including paintings, drawings, prints and sculptures, shedding light on the specific methods and dialectics in Picasso's later work. In particular, the sense of the artist's race against time is made clear through the exciting dialogue that emerges here between painting and drawing. As Picasso himself said, "The works that one paints are a way of keeping a diary."

In 2007, the Albertina in Vienna, Austria announced the acquisition of the Batliner collection, one of the most important collections of modern art in the world. Comprising more than 500 pieces, the Batliner collection includes a wide range of pieces covering virtually aspect of modern painting, including French impressionism, German expressionism, Fauvism, the Russian avantgarde, and surrealism. This new book, which highlights the most important artists in the collection, provides an excellent overview of international classic modernism.

After first studying in Cologne, Hans von Aachen moved to Italy in 1574 to further his studies. He toured Rome and Florence, eventually settling in Venice. Combining Flemish traditions and Italian innovation he developed a style of his own. Returning to Germany, he lived in Cologne and Munich as a painter of the nobility. In 1592 he was appointed official painter of Rudolph II, Holy Roman Emperor in Prague, finally moving to Prague in 1601, where he painted commissions from Emperor Rudolph II and his successor, Matthias I. The elegance, humour, and sensuality of his mythological and allegoric paintings continue to be a fascination. His religious presentations are symbolic of the constant change in a turbulent world. The Los Angeles Museum of Art (LACMA) numbers paintings from Hans von Aachen among its collection.

Alex Katz (born 1927) is best known as a painter--specifically, as a painter of his family and his distinguished circle of friends, including poets, writers and artists. In the early 1950s, he began experimenting with printmaking, but it was not until the mid 1960s that he intensified his interest and production in the medium. Pushing at the limits of various printing techniques, Katz tested out pictorial ideas first conceived for his paintings, retaining planes of matte color but further simplifying his forms and dramatically cropping his images. These reduced compositions were wonderfully compatible with the graphic clarity of printmaking, and by effectively translating his paintings into prints, the artist achieved what he called the "final synthesis of painting." This publication provides insight into an often-neglected yet vital aspect of Katz's work, from the early 1950s to the present day.

In Between presents Eva Schlegel's works created for the eponymous exhibition at MAK (Austrian Museum of Applied Arts / Contemporary Art, Vienna) and also documents her broad spectrum of artistic creation, from pornographic varnish paintings to current works in lead.