art biography

Hardcover. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, 1st, 1938, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth boards with gilt spine lettering. 284 pages, 210 BW illustrations. A catalogue raisonne of Copley's work in America prior to his departure for England in 1774. Begins with a 12-page biography. Clean copy, no dust jacket.

Hardcover. New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in very good condition. Dust jacket with chipping to top of spine, still very good. 246 pp., 26 b&w illustrations. Biography written by close friend of the artist. Name on inside front cover otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York, E.P. Dutton & Co., Inc, 1st, 1955, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in very good condition. Dust jacket with tear to lower edge of back cover and slight edgewear to spine, still very good. 246 pp., 26 b&w illustrations. Biography written by close friend of the artist.

Hardcover. Seatle, WA, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 160 pages. Hardcover with no issued dust jacket. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to cover boards. Color pictures throughout. This is a deluxe, full-color, coffee table book biography; the first of one of America's greatest storytellers. It's filled with beautifully reproduced artwork from the comic books Little Lulu, and his creations Melvin Monster and Thirteen(Going on Eighteen); rare drawings and cartoons; and never-before-seen photographs. Bill Schelly tells Stanley's life story through interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues: his childhood in Harlem and the Bronx, life with his strict Irish Catholic mother, his education at Parsons, his first job as an animator at Max Fleischer Studios, and his years working as a commercial artist, before finding his true metier in comic books during World War II (while battling clinical depression and alcoholism).

Hardcover. Seattle, WA, Fantagraphics Books, 1st, 2017, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 182 pages. Hardcover with no dust jacket. Very clean, unmarked copy with only minor edgewear. A tight copy. Filled with reproduced artwork from the comic books Little Lulu, and his creations Melvin Monster and Thirteen (Going on Eighteen); rare drawings and cartoons; and never-before-seen photographs. Bill Schelly tells Stanley's life story through interviews with his family, friends, and colleagues.

Hardcover. Jefferson, N.C., McFarland & Company, 1st, 1990, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, blue cloth covers, 383 pages, with photographs throughout. Very clean and tight copy. No dust jacket issued.

Hardcover. NY, Thames & Hudson, 1st, 2018, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket. While Josef Albers' Bauhaus colleagues Klee and Kandinsky are household names, Albers himself has remained inscrutable. He is best known as the painter of the Homages to the Square, a series of over 2,000 seemingly tightly controlled experiments in the interaction of colour. Yet he did not begin these pictures until he was in his sixties, already several decades into his career as an artist, maker and theorist, much of it pursued in the United States following the Nazi dissolution of the Bauhaus in 1933. Misunderstanding of the Homages reflects a wider misreading of Albers' life and work. Married to the textile artist Anni Albers, his papers include letters from fellow artists John Cage, Robert Rauschenberg, Richard Serra and Eva Hesse; colleagues such as Buckminster Fuller and Philip Johnson; and fans and collectors ranging from the composer Virgil Thomson to the cartoonist Saul Steinberg. 335 pages with 185 illustrations including the 23 color plates bookending the beginning and end of the text. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. Ostfildern GR, Hatje Cantz, 1st, 2008, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 288 pages 231 illustrations 60 in color with 274 plans and drawings. Biography. Like new in publisher's shrink-wrap. Josef Paul Kleihues (1933-2004) was one of the most prolific architects of postwar Germany, famous both as the Director of the International Building Exhibition Berlin in 1987 and for his design for the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago. He was also known for his sensitive interventions into older buildings, an instance of which is the former Hamburger Bahnhof--now the Museum fur Gegenwart--in Berlin, where Kleihues intermixed glass walls and light installations by the American Minimalist Dan Flavin with the building's original nineteenth-century Neoclassical design. (His reconstruction was widely deemed to rival or even surpass Gae Aulenti's overhaul of the interior of the Musee d'Orsay in Paris.) This first volume of a three-part monograph presents projects up to 1980, including the highly acclaimed Berlin Sanitation Department and the Neukolln Hospital. Even in these early works, Kleihues' practical, problem-solving approach is already evident, indicating his readiness to reflect on the traditional approaches of Modern architecture and his capacity to expand them in interesting ways. This very generously illustrated volume was designed by Kleihues himself, just before his death in 2004.

Softcover. Woodbury, NY, Barron's, reprint, 1979, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 308 pages. Softcover with light wear to paper wrappers. B&w frontispiece and b&w images throughout. Clean, tight copy.

Hardcover. Munich/NJ, Prestel, 1st, 2021, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 256 pages. One of the most important German postwar artists, Joseph Beuys is known for his drawings, performance art, activism, and teaching, influencing a generation of younger artists and expanding the concept of what art is. He had an ambitious goal for his art: to transform western culture into a more peaceful, democratic, and creative place. He also considered everyone to be an artist and that art and life should not be viewed separately. This book pulls together all of the avant-garde artist's posters from his entire oeuvre. His earliest posters often announced exhibitions of his own performance art, while later posters expressed his philosophical and political opinions, such as those for Germany's Green Party, which he was a founding member of. This book includes full page illustrations of Beuys' most important posters, essays about Beuys' influence, an extensive biography of the artist and a complete catalogue of all posters created under his guidance. Text in English and German. Still in publisher's shrinkwrap.

Hardcover. New York, Harry N. Abrams, 1st, 2010, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 224 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 200 illustrations in color. Foreword by Jennifer B. Lee, Performing Arts Curator, Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University. Index. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to dust jacket. Joseph Urban is a lavish celebration of this prolific artist, architect, and designer, whose accomplishments include magnificent Art Deco buildings, spectacular Ziegfeld Follies productions, and dramatic sets for the Metropolitan Opera. Joseph Urban (1872-1933) began his career as an architect and artist in Vienna before moving to America in 1911. In 1914 he moved to New York, where he ultimately signed on as set designer of the Metropolitan Opera. He also became immersed in an astonishing array of outside projects, designing nightclubs, hotel lounges, skyscrapers, theaters, stage and film sets, and even children's books. Though his creative output was immense, little remains of his work except the Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, and the New School and the base of the Hearst Tower in New York.

Softcover. Baltimore MD, Maryland Historical Society, 1st, 1987, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Pictorial wraps with color illustration and white lettering; 173 pages. 45 color, 88 b&w plates. Exhibition catalogue lists 83 extensively annotated works, and a Supplemental Catalogue lists an additional 13 works. Selected bibliography and short-list of titles. Each essay includes extensive notes. The definitive work on the early Afro-American portrait painter. Published to accompany the exhibition held in Baltimore, MD: Maryland Historical Society, Sept. 26, 1987 to Jan. 3, 1988, three other locations. Scarce. Previous owner's stamp and bookplate, short inscription on inside front cover. Related clipping, brochure laid in.

Hardcover. New York, E.P. Dutton & Company, 1st, 1922, Book: Good, Dust Jacket: None, Hardcover, 141 pages. 33 B&W illustrations. No dust jacket. Pages uncut. Blue cloth. In good condition. Articles included in this tribute include: Julian Alden Weir, by Duncan Phillips; Weir The Painter, by Emil Carlsen; Weir, by Royal Cortissoz; Reminiscences of Weir, by Childe Hassam; The Tile Club, by J.B. Millet; Weir The Fisherman, by H. de Raasloff; A Letter, from Augustus Vincent Tack; A Letter from C.E.S. Wood; Lists of Paintings, which is 17 pages long, and lists paintings chronologically, and lists dimensions and owner. One of 712 copies with eight extra illustrations which were published by Phillips Publications as Publication No. 1.

Hardcover. NY, Harper, 2nd pr., 2013, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a lightly worn dust jacket, 265 pages, b&w illustrations. The first installment in the long-awaited portrait of one of the most talented and influential musicians of the twentieth century, from Stanley Crouch, one of the foremost authorities on jazz and culture in America. Throughout his life, Charlie Parker personified the tortured American artist: a revolutionary performer who used his alto saxophone to create a new music known as bebop even as he wrestled with a drug addiction that would lead to his death at the age of thirty-four. Drawing on interviews with peers, collaborators, and family members, Kansas City Lightning recreates Parker's Depression-era childhood; his early days navigating the Kansas City nightlife, inspired by lions like Lester Young and Count Basie; and on to New York, where he began to transcend the music he had mastered. Clean copy.

Hardcover. Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 1st, 2001, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, 144 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. Clean, tight copy in publisher's shrinkwrap. Karl Blossfeldt (1865-1932) achieved overnight fame in the late 1920s with the first publication of his photographs of plants. Those photographs, which revealed the inner structures of the organic forms, immediately made him a pioneer of New Objectivity-an innovative movement in art and photography of the 1920s and 1930s. Blossfeldt, however, was neither a trained photographer nor a botanist. He was a sculptor and art professor who did his photographic work to generate teaching material for his students.The publication of this book is the result of an extraordinary event-the 1997 discovery in Blossfeldt's estate of sixty-one previously unknown collages, in virtually mint condition, of photographic contact prints arranged on large cardboard sheets. Blossfeldt apparently used these to study the relation and similarity of the photographs and to compare them graphically and aesthetically. On some, Blossfeldt had made marks or handwritten notations. Others show lines for cropping. The collages, published here for the first time, unveil a hidden treasure of modern photography and cast fresh light on the systematic approach Blossfeldt used in his photographic studies. All collages are reproduced in four colors. Introducing the book is an essay by Swiss art historian Ulrike Meyer-Stump, a Lecturer at the Zurich University of the Arts. Not for sale in France, Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, and Austria

NY, Cernunnos/Abrams, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, unclipped dust jacket. In Karl Lagerfeld: A Life in Fashion, journalist Alfons Kaiser, who knew Lagerfeld personally for many years, introduces readers to the public and private life of the charismatic fashion designer. Kaiser explores the many eras of Lagerfeld's life: the youthful outsider in the north German flatlands; the urbane genius in Paris; the tireless draftsman; the enthusiastic photographer; the passionate book collector; and the disciplined Prussian workaholic. What is behind this larger-than-life figure who, despite a massively public persona, kept his own life story a secret? Drawing from many previously untapped sources, this biography investigates the man behind the persona: the precocious boy who preferred to draw in the attic than play with his peers; the son who quarreled with his parents but never got away from them; Yves Saint Laurent's competitor, whom he outshone in the end; the brother, uncle, friend--and finally the partner of Jacques de Bascher, the great love of his life. Remainder dot top edge otherwise like new.

NY, Viking Press, 1st, 1976, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover with a bright, unclipped dust jacket. Color and black & white illustrations by Kate Greenaway. Clean copy. A new era in the history of children's books began in 1878 when Kate Greenaway's first book of pictures and verse, Under the Window, was published. This was followed by her Birthday Book, A Day in a Child's Life, Mother Goose, Little Ann, Language of Flowers, and Marigold Garden. These and the many other enchanting volumes she illustrated, gained her a devoted worldwide audience of all ages. Today's great revival of interest in Kate Greenaway's work is understandable; as an illustrator of childhood she had no equal in her day, nor has she had since. The Kate Greenaway Book contains a short biography and selections from her best-known as well as little-known works: a collection of texts and pictures, some never even published before, charmingly arranged for readers of all ages to enjoy.

Hardcover. NY, Dial Books, 1st, 1995, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright, price-clipped dust jacket. Color art by Max Ginsburg. A biography of the fifteen-year-old Iowa teenager who helped avert a train disaster in 1881 and became a national heroine. Clean copy.

Softcover. NY, Guggenheim Museum, 1st, 2003, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 267 pages, illustrated throughout in color and b&w. Clean, unmarked copy with only minor wear to wrappers. In 1915, Kazimir Malevich changed the future of modern art when his experiments in painting led the Russian avant-garde into pure abstraction. He called his innovation Suprematism--an art of pure geometric form meant to be universally comprehensible regardless of cultural or ethnic origin. His Suprematist masterpiece, White Square on White (1920-27), continues to inspire artists throughout the world. Focused exclusively on this defining moment in Malevich's career, Kazimir Malevich: Suprematism features nearly 120 paintings, drawings and objects, among them several recently discovered masterworks. In addition, the book includes previously unpublished letters, essays and diaries, along with essays by international scholars, who shed new light on this popular figure and his devotion to the spiritual in art.

Softcover. Jackson MS, University Press of Mississippi , 1st, 1994, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, Softcover, 227 pages, b&w illustrations. A self-made woman with no formal art training, Rose O'Neill (1875-1944) was not only hugely financially successful through her illustration work and the production of Kewpie dolls, but also through her exhibited drawings and sculpture in solo shows in Paris and New York. Kewpie made her a famous figure commercially, but few recognize her today as a serious artist and a political subversive who expressed sympathy for minorities, suffragettes, and victims of intolerance and who struggled with her own expression in a male-dominated field. Clean, bright copy.

Hardcover. NY, W. W. Norton, 1st, 2022, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover in a bright dust jacket, 290 pages, color and b&w illustrations. Kiki was once the symbol of bohemian Paris. But if she is remembered today, it is only for posing for several now-celebrated male artists, including Amedeo Modigliani and Alexander Calder, and especially photographer Man Ray. Why has Man Ray's legacy endured while Kiki has become a footnote? Kiki and Man Ray met in 1921 during a chance encounter at a cafe. What followed was an explosive decade-long connection, both professional and romantic, during which the couple grew and experimented as artists, competed for fame, and created many of the shocking images that cemented Man Rays reputation as one of the great artists of the modern era. Remainder dot to top edge, otherwise clean.

Hardcover. New York , Abrams, 1st, 1999, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Very Good, Hardcover, 254 pages, 173 illustrations, 131 in color. Although he is now seen as a progenitor of the "naive" style, during his lifetime Edward Hicks (1780-1849) was known only as a devout, impoverished Quaker minister who liked to paint. With a few exceptions, his extant body of work is made up of 62 "Peaceable Kingdom" pictures, based on Isaiah's biblical prophecy. Although these paintings, known for their charmingly wide-eyed and sensuous beasts, use potent color and effective design, they are technically unsophisticated and repetitive in the extreme. But they contain a powerfully serene devoutness, a mood probably expressed in compensation for Hicks's guilt about an avocation viewed as frivolous by other Quakers. As the popularity of folk art boomed in the early 20th century, Hicks's homely visions were popularized and became the focus of scholarly attention, and this work is probably the best to date. Weekley, the director of museums at Colonial Williamsburg, shrewdly considers Hicks's "secular" life and art through the filter of his intense piety and copiously illustrates her large-format book with brilliant color plates.

Hardcover. NY, New York Graphic Society, 1st US, 1966, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: Good, 251 pages. Hardcover with dust jacket. 2 color, 69 black & white plates. Light edgewear, chipping to dj. Tight copy.

Hardcover. New York, Abrams ComicArts, 1st, 2011, Book: Very Good, Dust Jacket: None, 176 pages. Hardcover. Extensive color illustrations by George Herriman throughout. Illustrated end papers and paste downs. Clean, tight copy. Krazy Kat & the Art of George Herriman is a tribute to one of the most influential and innovative comic strips and creators of all time. This unique collection of rare art, essays, memorabilia, and biography highlights the career of the first genius of comics, George Herriman, and his iconic creations, Krazy Kat and Ignatz Mouse. During its 31-year run, Krazy Kat was enormously popular with the public, as well as influential writers, artists, and intellectuals of the time. This book includes original essays by Jay Cantor, Douglas Wolk, Harry Katz, Richard Thompson, Dee Cox (Herriman's granddaughter), Craig McCracken, Bill Watterson, and authorized reprints of two seminal essays on Herriman by Gilbert Seldes and E. E. Cummings, alongside newly discovered vintage essays by TAD, Summerfield Baldwin, and Toots Herriman. With Krazy Kat & the Art of George Herriman, Craig Yoe reveals this influential artist and writer for a whole