Angela Lampe

“...perhaps the definitive tome on her life and career." – Nena Hawke, BlackBook "...an important new monograph about Alice Neel, one of the greatest portrait painters of the 20th Century, whose work continually pushes the boundaries of social justice" – The Art Newspaper "This is the defining treatise on Alice Neel." —Booklaunch “I have always believed that women should resent and refuse to accept all the gratuitous insults that men impose upon them.” – Alice Neel, 1971 One of the greatest portrait artists of the 20th century, Alice Neel’s vibrant, expressionistic paintings revealed a breath-taking depth of emotion within her subjects. From works exploring loss and grief, to communist political art, Neel’s work pushed boundaries of social justice throughout the 1900s. Her dedication to capturing the truth of humanity is evident: she painted those rejected by society, the victims of social or gendered oppression. Latin American and Puerto Rican immigrants, African-American writers excluded from the intellectual elite, single mothers struggling to raise their children, homosexual couples – all were presented with equal candidness by Neel’s brush. Her unflinching approach to the female body took a ground-breaking step towards reclaiming the nude from the male gaze, and the activism inherent to her art resonates with viewers to this day. This book highlights Neel’s political and social commitment to her art, as a figurative painter at odds with the artistic styles of the avant-gardes of her time. Structured in two thematic parts – social injustice and gender inequality – this retrospective includes some 60 paintings and drawings as well as numerous documents. Following the artist from her first works in the 1920s to her final evocative self-portrait, made shortly before her death, this is the defining treatise on Alice Neel. '"Neel places us directly in front of her models to engage our look. She literally pushes her subjects into our personal space to make us confront individuals who are normally invisible..." Angela Lampe finishes up with the following: "With great pictorial power, Neel forces them upon us: look at them!"

This groundbreaking book explores the Russian avant-garde during the early post-revolutionary years of 1918-1922 and brings together the works of three of its most influential artists. When Marc Chagall took over the People's School of Art in his hometown of Vitebsk in 1919, he had already established himself as an avant-garde artist. For the next few years, Chagall established the once-sleepy Belarusian town as a hub of revolutionary art making. Along with Kazimir Malevitch and El Lissitzky, Chagall presided over a flowering of creativity and artistic energy that became a focal point of Russian modernism. This volume features 250 works and documentary items from Vitebsk, bringing to life a little-known chapter in the history of art. Every aspect of this brief but decisive period is examined here, from Chagall's notion of proletariat art to the birth of the UNOVIS group and its trailblazing expositions. Correspondence among Chagall, Malevitch, and Lissitzky are featured alongside important works from all three artists as well as art from their colleagues and students. The result is a multifaceted portrait of a unique collaboration that forged a new path for artistic expression which extended far beyond the boundaries of Vitebsk.

Norwegian painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) is best known for his painting "The Scream", painted in 1893, which has become one of the most iconic images in the modern world. Munch was clear about his own mission in exploring the portrayal of extreme human emotion. "Just as Leonardo da Vinci studied anatomy and dissected corpses", he wrote, "so I try to dissect souls". Perhaps because of the subsequent notoriety of "The Scream" and other works from his intensely productive early period, Munch is often presented as a 19th century figure, an inspiration for and precursor of the modern artists who succeeded him. In contrast, this important new survey, accompanying a major, touring exhibition, shows him to have been fully engaged with modernity, particularly by tracing his involvement with its key methods of representation: photography, cinematography and the theatrical mise-en-scene. In addition to a large number of instantly recognisable masterpieces, this lavishly illustrated book reproduces many lesser-known works, as well as a wide selection of Munch's photographs and sketches. Munch's photographs in particular will be a revelation to many; his moody and atmospheric self-portraits and the studio shots of models that are placed alongside finished paintings reveal the way one medium fed into another. With essays by an international selection of authorities, extracts of previously untranslated writings by the artist, a chronology and bibliography, this is the most comprehensive and revealing survey of Munch's work yet published.