Henri Matisse’s experiments with form and color revolutionized the twentieth-century art world. In this concise critical biography, Kathryn Brown explores Matisse’s long career, …
With their complex textures, rich harmonies and elaborate use of leitmotifs, the operas of Richard Wagner (1813 - 83) remain some of the most influential - and contentious - in …
'Most directors have one film for which they are known or possibly two', Francis Ford Coppola has said, 'Akira Kurosawa has eight or nine.' Through his many masterpieces such as …
Dmitry Shostakovich was one of the most successful composers of the twentieth century – a musician who adapted as no other to the unique pressures of his age. By turns vilified and …
Yukio Mishima was the most internationally acclaimed Japanese author of the twentieth century: prodigiously talented, dazzlingly prolific and a prime candidate for the Nobel Prize. …
H.D. (Hilda Doolittle, 1886–1961) was one of the first writers of free verse in English, best known for her sparse Imagist poems. For over forty years she wrote poetry that …
Joseph Beuys is arguably the most important and most controversial German artist of the late twentieth century, not least because his persona is interwoven with Germany's fascist …
Among his many captivating exploits, the French artist Yves Klein (1928 - 1962) invented his own brand of colour: the inimitable International Klein Blue. Denounced as a charlatan …
John Ruskin (1819-1900) was the most prominent art and architecture critic of his day. His books, pamphlets and letters to the press had an influence on all classes of society, …
Frida Kahlo stepped into the limelight in 1929 when she married the Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. She was 22; he was 43. Hailed as Rivera's exotic young wife who 'dabbles in art', …
