Böcker av Alicia Foster

The first critical illustrated biography of this much-loved artist, locating her firmly in the art worlds of late 19th- and early 20th-century London and Paris. One of the most significant British artists of the twentieth century, Gwen John (1867-1939) made her life and work within the heady art worlds of London and Paris. This critical biography demolishes the myth of Gwen John as a recluse and situates her, brilliant, singular and assured, amid a rich cultural milieu that included James McNeill Whistler, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Paula Modersohn-Becker and Maude Gonne. Art historian, curator and novelist Alicia Foster draws on previously unpublished archival sources to explore John¿s many relationships with artists and writers, including her affair with Auguste Rodin, passionate friendships with Jeanne Robert Foster and Véra Oumançoff, and correspondence with, among others, the poet Rainer Maria Rilke and her Slade compatriot and fellow painter Ursula Tyrwhitt. John¿s library, ranging from writing by her friends Rilke and Arthur Symonds to French philosophy and religious thought, is considered, as is her part in the increasing presence and visibility of women artists in the early-twentieth-century art world. From the life rooms of the Slade to the Paris salons, this is the story of an artist both devoted to her craft and deeply involved in the life and creativity of her era. With over 120 illustrations, Gwen John: Art and Life in London and Paris offers a lively, meticulously researched portrait of Gwen John as a vital and utterly compelling figure in twentieth-century art history.

Radical Women tells a fresh, new story of British modernism, as the first to cover the entirety of Jessica Dismorr's (1876-1939) life and art alongside those of women artists she worked and exhibited with. The book brings to life a fascinating and turbulent period in art history and a web of fascinating connections that have, so far, been obscured.

Warpaint by Alicia Foster is a compelling tale of truth and lies, tragedy and black comedy, loosely based on the lives of four painters of the time.England, 1942: a dark world of conflict, hardship and subterfuge where information is a matter of life and death and art has become a weapon.In a gothic villa deep in the woods near Bletchley Park, the 'Black' propaganda team use intelligence to make propaganda designed to demoralise the enemy. For Vivienne Thayer, employed as an artist at the villa, the war has worked out well so far, she has an indulgent husband and a new lover. And while the government quibbles over what cannot be shown officially, at the villa there are no such restrictions - but where does the subterfuge end?Meanwhile, on the Home Front, three women painters - Laura Knight, Faith Farr and Cecily Browne - have been tasked by the War Artist's Advisory Committee with recording wartime life, brightening the existence of a public starved of culture, and summoning up the bulldog spirit in their art. Together they must battle with the men in power, including Churchill himself, to control the stories that can be told.As the course of the war turns and the lives of both groups collide, each woman must ask herself what can be revealed and what must be concealed, even from those closest to them.Alicia Foster grew up in Yorkshire and lives in Kent. She has a PhD in Art History and when she's not writing herself, she teaches art students. Warpaint is her first novel.