Balthus (Balthasar Klossowski de Rola), long considered one of the great figure painters of the twentieth century, has remained one of its most elusive creative spirits. Born into an aristocratic Polish family in 1908, Balthus grew up in the most cosmopolitan and cultivated circles of Geneva, Berlin, and finally Paris, where his artist parents settled in 1924. Attracted at an early age by the restraint and timelessness of the old masters, Balthus studied painting with Pierre Bonnard, Maurice Denis, and Andre Derain. He was also fascinated by the work of the Surrealists, and he began to paint images of young girls in enigmatic settings suffused with an understated eroticism. While his calm, almost architectonic forms are reminiscent of Italian Renaissance art, the strange atmosphere of his paintings conveys a distinctly twentieth-century sensibility. The artist has remained silent on the underlying meanings of his images, and indeed has spent much of his life avoiding attention. Balthus's work was little recognized until the late 1960s, but his remarkable achievement finally received international acclaim in 1983, when a major retrospective exhibition opened at the Musee National d'Art Moderne-Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris, and traveled to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, and the City Museum, Tokyo. Still, the full extent of his output has not been known: nearly 100 paintings and numerous drawings, sketchbooks, and even sculptures have escaped notice. This monumental, lavishly illustrated volume, the outcome of years of study, reveals a surprisingly extensive oeuvre. An introductory essay by Jean Clair, curator of the landmark 1983 exhibition, defines the sometimesunexpected poetic, literary, and philosophical sources of Balthus's early inspiration. Then follows a full catalogue raisonne of Balthus's work by Virginie Monnier, published here in its original French. The catalogue includes all of the artist's 350 known paintings, nearly 1,000 previously unpublished drawings, and 50 sketch-books -- 2,100 works in all -- which enable us to understand his working methods and document the creation of most of his paintings. Long overdue, this comprehensive publication adds new luster to the reputation of an important and intriguing artist.

"For more than thirty years now, Cindy Sherman has been visualizing a whole gamut of role models and female identities. ... Contrary to popular belief, the famous Untitled Film Stills (1978-80) are not her earliest works, but rather those photographs she took as a student in Buffalo between 1975 and 1977. During those years, Sherman made playing with disguises her artistic concept, producing numerous previously unknown photographs that unite a striking number of theatrical elements. Using a variety of wigs, make-up, mimicry, gestures, expressions, and costumes, Sherman reveals different social identities by playing different roles. Gabriele Schor, director of the SAMMLUNG VERBUND, has performed a scholarly assessment of the conceptual beginnings of her oeuvre and is now publishing a catalogue raisonné of her early work."--Publisher description.

Roberta Smith called him the "madcap bad boy of contemporary German art" and also "one of the three or four best German artists of the postwar period." Martin Kippenberger disrupted the status quo throughout his brief, excessive life, not just by making art of every variety and medium but also by conducting an extended performance in the vicinity of art that involved running galleries, organizing exhibitions, collecting the work of his contemporaries and overseeing assistants. He published books and catalogues, played in a rock-and-roll band and cut records, ran a performance-art space during his early years in Berlin, became part owner of a restaurant in Los Angeles during six months he spent there preparing for an exhibition, and collaborated extensively with other artists. This particular volume considers his output of artist's books, as well as his exhibition catalogues and all the publications whose content he either created or edited. More than just documentation, this publication makes accessible for a wider public the multiple aspects of Kippenberger's books, with all the complexity and consequence of his oeuvre intact.

This is the first volume of the catalogue raisonne of the work of Mark Rothko, the abstract artist. It documents Rothko's entire output of paintings on canvas and panel, reproducing all the works in colour. An introductory text investigates the essential features of Rothko's art.

Tipped-in: One sheet (1 unnumbered page: illustrations (chiefly color); 31 cm), contains artist and authors information.

Along with his celebrated drawings, paintings, sculptures, and photographs, Cy Twombly has left an imposing body of graphic work as well. As early as 1984, the Berlin-based art writer and Twombly expert, Heiner Bastian, compiled the first catalogue raisonné of the artist's printed graphics which has been out of print for 18 years. Now back in print for the first time, this new edition of the catalogue raisonné has been updated and includes the graphic works Twombly created since 1984 until his death in 2011. Cy Twombly's graphic oeuvre is characterized by a variety of graphic and printing techniques. Along with monotypes, etchings, lithographs, and silkscreens, the artist tested his expertise using offset lithographs and the combination of various print and reproduction techniques. The scholarly portion of the catalogue features 96 works created between 1952 and 2008, all of them illustrated in full color.