Böcker utgivna av Editions Skira Paris

The work of the young artist with an international career who employes collaging and traditional painting techniquesBorn in 1989 in Lagos, Nigeria, Marcellina Akpojotor engaged in drawing, design, stencil work, and calligraphy at an early age under her father's guidance. Later, she pursued formal education in Art and Industrial Design at the Lagos State Polytechnic, further honing her skills and broadening her artistic horizons. Akpojotor's art fascinates audiences worldwide through its thought-provoking narra tives and unique media, creating an aesthetic that mixes politics and intimacy around culture, identity, and feminism. Employing a captivating blend of collaging and traditional painting techniques, Akpojotor's creations are marked by rich textures, layered compositions, and com pelling, colourful visual imagery, delving into themes such as femininity, personal and societal identity, and women's empowerment. She transforms primarily discarded piec es of Ankara fabric, sourced from local fashion houses, into powerful canvases akin to "intriguing tapestries of twitchy and alluring tactile surfaces", as Professor Frank Ugiomoh writes in his essay.

A complete monograph on a major artist and representative of Moroccan modernityAbdelkébir Rabi' was born in 1944 amidst the heights of Boulemane, Morocco's high est town. After training at the École Normale in Fez, he taught art and aesthetics in high school and then at the university until 2003. Born into a line of imams, Abdelkébir Rabi' challenges the anti-iconic principles he has inherited, seeking to reconcile artistic fervour and spiritual fulfilment. Rabi' began to paint in a figurative style and was gradually moving towards an abstract painting in the 1970s. Inspired as much by the grandeur of the Middle Atlas mountains as by artists such as Marc Couturier and Antoni Tàpies, Abdelkébir Rabi's work is a universal, meditative and contemplative quest. It unfolds in an infinite array of blacks of varying degrees of opacity, symbolising the interplay between light and shadow, figuration and abstrac tion, fullness and emptiness, the seen and the unseen. Each black line, often executed in a single gesture, contributes to create a pure and profound work, imbued with spirit uality. Rabi' sees art as "a personal matter", and his solitary approach underlines his dedication to art. This detailed monograph enriches the "Archives des Arts" collection directed by Brahim Alaoui and dedicated to contemporary and modern North African artists such as Mohamed Hamidi, Farid Belkahia, Ghada Amer and Mohamed Melehi.

The first monograph on the major contemporary artistBorn in Los Angeles in 1965, Jeff Kowatch has developed a demanding and subtle technique, inspired as much by Mark Rothko and Brice Marden as by the Flemish painters, from whom he borrows his mastery of glazing. On the canvas, he can overlay up to a hundred layers of paint, endlessly scraped, sanded and covered, which acquire an almost mystical depth and transparency. His works are inhabited by patches of colour that press and agglomerate on the support. Organised into series, his work also includes numerous drawings on paper in oil pastel and, since 2017, oilbar on dibond. His works forge numerous connections with literary and spiritual sources of inspiration.

A Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation AwardCreated in 2021, the Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation Environmental Photography Award serves a dual purpose: to celebrate the extraordinary beauty of our planet and to raise awareness of the major challenges we face in protecting it. These photographers take us on a pictorial journey from the polar ice caps to the secret canopies, showing both the devasteting effects of human activity and the courage of communities working for a sustainable world. Founded in 2006 by HSH Prince Albert II of Monaco, the Foundation is a global non-profit organisation committed to progressing planetary health for current and future generations by co-creating initiatives and supporting hundreds of projects across our precious planet.

Jewellery and Islamic art, the interweaving of masterpieces The book explores the influence of Islamic art on the production of jewelry and precious objects by Cartier, from the early 20th century to the present day. Jewellery and objects from the Cartier collection, masterpieces of Islamic art, drawings, books, photographs and archival documents trace the diversity of sources that inspired the forms and motifs used in Cartier creations. Sometimes easily identifiable, at other times decomposed and recomposed to the point of rendering their source untraceable, motifs and forms from Islamic art and architecture have integrated the stylistic language of designers to the point of constituting part of Cartier's repertoire to this day, illustrated by contemporary jewelry pieces that complete this journey. The mandorlas, palmettes, fleurons, rinceaux, sequins of Cartier jewelry are inspired in turn by motifs found in book bindings, oriental architecture and antique and contemporary jewelry purchased by Jacques Cartier during his expeditions to India. A true immersion in Cartier's creative process, this book documents the renewal of the iconic jewelry house's forms and manufacturing techniques.

Jewellery and Islamic art, the interweaving of masterpieces The book explores the influence of Islamic art on the production of jewelry and precious objects by Cartier, from the early 20th century to the present day. Jewellery and objects from the Cartier collection, masterpieces of Islamic art, drawings, books, photographs and archival documents trace the diversity of sources that inspired the forms and motifs used in Cartier creations. Sometimes easily identifiable, at other times decomposed and recomposed to the point of rendering their source untraceable, motifs and forms from Islamic art and architecture have integrated the stylistic language of designers to the point of constituting part of Cartier¿s repertoire to this day, illustrated by contemporary jewelry pieces that complete this journey. The mandorlas, palmettes, fleurons, rinceaux, sequins of Cartier jewelry are inspired in turn by motifs found in book bindings, oriental architecture and antique and contemporary jewelry purchased by Jacques Cartier during his expeditions to India. A true immersion in Cartier¿s creative process, this book documents the renewal of the iconic jewelry house¿s forms and manufacturing techniques.

"It has become increasingly clear to me that the pleasure of painting lies in the subtle interplay between what the picture shows and what is says" ¿Yves Cler Yves Clerc began his career in drawing and photography, before turning to painting and abstraction, followed by figuration. He offers us a poetic vision of the world, where shimmering colors rub shoulders with flat blacks. Yves Clerc¿s aim is not to tell, but to show. Transparency and its staging are his favorite themes. His works often depict portraits of women, their eyes masked and their expression neutral, to let the whole composition express itself. Yves Clerc loves texture and plays with boundaries: he paints long, crumpled draperies that he creates with a juxtaposition of layers of paint, but also of techniques ¿ oil on canvas, acrylic, drawing, painting on photo. The artist also attaches great importance to resonances between works. He has thus reworked some great paintings in his own way, such as Vermeer¿s Girl With a Pearl Earring, and collaborates with personalities from other artistic backgrounds, such as Irina Vitjaz (a renowned Moscow stylist) and Leïla Menchar (set designer for Hermès). Yves Clerc mainly exhibits at the Bailly Gallery in Geneva, but his work is also regularly shown worldwide: Paris, Mexico City, Moscow, Geneva, London, Brussels, Lisbon, New York and Miami.

A crossroads of civilisations. Located at the crossroads of continents, AlUla has been a fantastic meeting point for civilizations who left behind an abundant heritage. For centuries, its oasis has been a crossing point for caravans on the Incense trade route, which connected Asia, Africa and Europe, transiting spices, myrrh, cotton, ebony, and silk. The oasis city, once named Dedan, has successively been ruled by Ancient North Arabian Kingdoms, then by the Nabataeans, an ancient civilization of Arabian mer chants, founded the ancient city of Hegra ¿ sibling of Petra ¿ whose flagship site Madain Saleh, listed as Unesco world heritage since 2008, houses 138 rocky tombs, sanctuaries, wells, decorated frontages, etc. Then the Roman Empire annexed the Kingdom and marked AlUla Valley with Greek and Latin influence, before Muhammad¿s arrival in 630 A.D. during his campaign against the Byzantine army. Carrying the memory of their predecessors, in the 13th century Muslims reused the stones of the Dedanite and Lihyanite ruins to build what we call today the Old Town of AlUla. All these civilizations stamped the region with their unique culture, leaving exceptional archaeological sites for posterity.

A crossroads of civilisations. Located at the crossroads of continents, AlUla has been a fantastic meeting point for civilizations who left behind an abundant heritage. For centuries, its oasis has been a crossing point for caravans on the Incense trade route, which connected Asia, Africa and Europe, transiting spices, myrrh, cotton, ebony, and silk. The oasis city, once named Dedan, has successively been ruled by Ancient North Arabian Kingdoms, then by the Nabataeans, an ancient civilization of Arabian mer chants, founded the ancient city of Hegra ¿ sibling of Petra ¿ whose flagship site Madain Saleh, listed as Unesco world heritage since 2008, houses 138 rocky tombs, sanctuaries, wells, decorated frontages, etc. Then the Roman Empire annexed the Kingdom and marked AlUla Valley with Greek and Latin influence, before Muhammad¿s arrival in 630 A.D. during his campaign against the Byzantine army. Carrying the memory of their predecessors, in the 13th century Muslims reused the stones of the Dedanite and Lihyanite ruins to build what we call today the Old Town of AlUla. All these civilizations stamped the region with their unique culture, leaving exceptional archaeological sites for posterity.

"The portrait is a process of distillation of the essence of the being whose only purpose is to preserve the aura of the individual." Born in 1968 in Jiangsu, China, LiFang lives and works in Paris. Her figurative work, on the border of abstraction, deals with all the subjects of our daily universe: antonymous crowds in megalopolises, portraits of her entourage, scenes of idleness at the water¿s edge, current events (Chinese censorship, migrants)... Her singular technique proceeds in large strokes: the bodies appear as sculpted blocks, right in the colored material. LiFang works in the same way on facial features, bodies and clothes. This unity of treatment and this refusal to individualize the characters transform the subjects into beings who, having no other consistency than that of the paint, send us back the image of our shared solitudes. Behind their apparent banality, his paintings express universal feelings: loneliness in crowds, the joy of bodies at rest connected to nature... By revisiting the subjects of classical painting, LiFang invents new codes to propose a contemporary vision of the beauty of the world. Timeless, light and deep, joyful and dramatic, LiFang¿s work is an open work. It offers the viewer the freedom to realize his or her own imagination while feeling part of the community of the living. This first monograph invites the reader to explore all aspects of her work. LiFang is represented by several galleries, including Galerie Boulakia, Red Zone Arts, SpArts Paris. The Cernushi Museum acquired three of her works in 2013.

The book presents the work of French designer Jean-Michel Wilmotte through crafts. Celebrating the unique skills of glassblowers and glass artisans, Wilmotte¿s collection ¿Vessels¿ is a mix of nostalgia and modernity. Works, mainly inspired by his childhood's memories and objects in his father¿s pharmaceutical laboratory, are made in historical workshops of Murano (an island in the Venetian Lagoon known alla around the world for the glass creations of its artisans). Chandeliers, table lamps, vases and other objects presented in this book are made for public and private spaces and are displayed in hotels, theaters, train stations and offices in many countries. Glass is a material both simple to make and difficult to work with. It offers infinite creative possibilites for those who know how to master it. The collaboration between Wilmotte and Muranös craftsmen results in unique works playing with forms and supports. The designer¿s vision spreads through all the glass creations. Transparency and malleability of glass allow delicate art works with sharp lines and this material is perfect to emphasize symmetry and equilibrium ¿ which are key themes in Wilmotte¿s work. The photographs of this book, exclusively taken at Venice, suggest travelling through the city and its artisans¿ workshops. Alessandra Chemollös work confront Venice of postcards and Wilmotte¿s creations in pictures playing with light and reflections. Architecture and craftsmanship are mixed, in a quest for continuity and complementarity.

"The future of architecture is nature." Founded in 2009 by Manal Rachdi, OXO Architectes creates particularly innovative projects that are distinguished by a programmatic symbiosis bringing together within a single building several typologies such as offices, shops and housing. All projects designed by OXO Architectes integrate natural elements ¿ terraces, interior forests or green walls ¿ with the aim of creating architectural systems that can renew the experience of urbanity and the city. For OXO, the future of the city is nature. With experience working with some of the most renowned contemporary architects such as Duncan Lewis and Jean Nouvel, Manal Rachdi has worked on the projects for the Seoul Opera House, the Philharmonie de Paris and the mixed-use tower of the MoMa in New York. With his firm, Rachdi has created particularly bold projects that always show great attention to the surrounding urban context. Among his most notable projects are: ¿ ¿Le Cristal¿ housing complex in Nanterre. ¿ The Polytechnique building in Saclay in collaboration with Sou Fujimoto and NLA Paris. ¿ Mille Arbres - the winning project of the ¿Réinventer Paris¿ competition, also in collaboration with Sou Fujimoto. ¿ Balcon sur Paris ¿ the winning project of the ¿Inventons la Métropole¿ competition in collaboration with the agencies Kengo Kuma & Associates + XTU Architects + Stefano Boeri Architetti + Michael Green Architecture + Koz Architectes At nearly 43 years old and after 15 years at the head of his agency, Manal Rachdi has forged a solid international reputation and is one of the pillars of a new generation of architects

First monograph of a major contemporary artist. This monograph on French artist Toma-L gathers a large selection of his works, which can be found all over the world. France, Belgium, Canada, Austria, the United States and the United Arab Emirates are just some of the countries where galleries exhibit his work. Toma-L is constantly seeking to reinvent and discover new media. He masters lithography, mixes techniques on canvas or wood, and creates frescoes. A polymorphous artist, he also works with other artists ¿ video artists, producers, dancers, choreographers, photographers, editors, graphic designers, etc. ¿ on a wide range of projects. His paintings show how instinctive is his gesture. Toma-L lets himself be carried away in a ¿free and instinctive expression¿, as he likes to say himself. The artist often meets with lyrical abstraction in his vibrant works. The constraint of bodies, movement or space give birth to hybrid works that belong to various artistic fields.

Leonardo da Vinci and Anatomy: all the power and relevance of this great Renaissance mind. This exhibition catalogue on Leonardo da Vinci the anatomist highlights the mystery of a thought that was both anchored in its time and, combined with a totally new practice (dissection), leading to a new understanding of the nature of life. Da Vinci was not content with a passive description of the human body; he sought to penetrate the secrets of its functioning by first studying the mechanics of humans (bones, muscles, tendons), then the logic of the senses, and finally all the bodily functions (digestion, respiration, blood circulation, reproduction), which made him to use qualitative reasoning. Contrary to popular belief, Leonardo did not carry out his dissections in secret, but in complete agreement with the political and religious authorities, until his materialistic ideas came into conflict with the pontifical authorities, particularly with regard to embryology. The originality of the book is to show how Leonardös work as an anatomist and his work as a painter are inseparable. The book thus links a work such as the Last Supper in Milan with the knowledge gathered in the medical field. The book brings together originals or copies of Leonardös sheets with objects (anatomical waxes, facsimiles of dissecting instruments), books studied by the artist, interviews with specialists and animated 3D reconstructions.

The first monograph in English on a major Polish painter. Józef Halas (1927-2015) is one of the major Polish painters of his generation. Active in Wroclaw from 1949 until his death, first as a student and then as an artist and teacher, he left a unique body of work that, like many of those built largely during the Cold War, remained long unrecognized in Western Europe and North America. The Mountain series, which occupied most of his activity during the 1960s, marks both a strong connection with nature and a distance from the landscape painting tradition. The following series, Oppositions, Partitions, Verticals, Obliques, Levels and Interiors, constitute the pinnacle of his production and testify to a poetics of contradiction which is embodied in multiple and successful ways. The Pocket Gouaches, begun in the late 1970s, reveal an artist who has always remained open to experimentation. For a decade, the history of art has fortunately opened its field of investigation, modernity has become plural and its actors have become more numerous. There is no doubt that Józef Halas must now be counted as one of the important players in this global history. This monograph, with texts by Michel Gauthier, curator at the Centre Pompidou, Magdalena Howorus-Czajka, professor at the University of Gdansk, and Marjolaine Lévy, art critic, aims to contribute to the knowledge of Halas¿s work beyond Poland and by placing it in an international context.

After more than three decades devoted to intercultural mediation, Brahim Alaoui, former director of the museum of the Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris, looks back on his encounters with Arab artists in their home countries or in exile. He brings knowledge and a sensitive look at the work of a generation of modern artists, who were often trained in post-war Europe and then went back to their country to reflect on their identity and develop a post-colonial modernity. Alaoui then presents a selection of contemporary artists who have emancipated themselves from the classical ways of representation at the turn of the 21st century, exploring new mediums and bringing an original contribution to the global dynamics of international artistic networks. Through fifty portraits, we come across the history of art and the debates of different ideas in the Arab world, since the beginning of the twentieth century until today. The book displays numerous portraits of artists in their homes or their studios. An important interview with the art critic Pascale Le Thorel allows us to contextualize Alaoui's encounters with the various artists. A publication that also contributes to the reflection on ¿modernity¿, rethought in its plurality, in the light of new values brought by cultural globalization.

Pascal Haudressy was a French visual artist of Tartar origin. After ten years at UNESCO as a cultural project manager, Haudressy decided to devote himself to artistic production in 2005. He develops his aesthetic style by combining different media: videos, sculptures, and paintings to reconcile the past and the future, materiality and immateriality or even science and myth. After a first monograph published by Skira in 2011, this book offers a rediscovery of Pascal Haudressy¿s artistic practice, especially through an essay by Françoise Paviot on the piece Heart. This major work was exhibited at the Centre Pompidou in 2019 and at the Sainte Eustache church for three years (2017-2020). According to the artist, "[...] it is truly a sculpture, animated by a random process," based on the sabotage of the machine and creating a work between figuration and abstraction. The artist has participated in several solo and group exhibitions in France and internationally, including a notable participation in the exhibition Artists & Robots at the Grand Palais in 2018 with the piece Brain. An essay by Jérôme Neutres, curator and independent art producer, will provide insight into this piece. His artworks have joined the collections of FRAC Nord Pas-de-Calais and agnès b.

Born in Senegal in 1977, Omar Ba lives and works between Dakar and New York. His paintings - made with various techniques and materials - include political and social themes with multiple interpretations. His plastic vocabulary reactivates historical and a temporal questions while elaborating an artistic statement of absolute contemporaneity. Omar Ba was trained at the Beaux Arts in Dakar and Geneva. In recent years, he has participated in numerous solo and group exhibitions, including Voyage au-delà de l'illusion at the Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium (2022) and Global(e) Résistance at the Centre Pompidou (2020). His works have entered several public collections, including those of the Centre Pompidou and the Centre National des Arts Plastiques (CNAP) in France, the Swiss National Collection (Basel) and the Louvre Abu Dhabi. This book is an opportunity to explore Omar Ba's paintings, some of which will be displayed for the opening exhibition of Galerie Templon in New York.

Coinciding with the new display of Basbous Museum's permanent collections, this book presents a selection of the works exhibited there. These works, kept in the personal collection of Alfred Basbous (1924-2006) until his death, are infused with a unique personal dimension, enhanced by the fact that they are displayed in his former house and studio. The garden, which was envisioned and implemented by the artist himself, hosts several milestone sculptures. When Alfred Basbous studied Sculpture in Paris, he discovered and admired the sculptures of Auguste Rodin. The interest and respect between Rodin and Basbous seem to have been mutual as the collections of the Rodin Museum include works created by Alfred Basbous. After his studies in Paris, Basbous went back to Lebanon and found in Rachana the perfect setting to create his remarkable sculptures. He experimented with a wide range of materials - bronze, stone, metal, wood and marble - and, while he never gave up on figurative art, the artist deepened his interest in abstraction. He thus created innovating sculptures that reveal his constant search to develop his art both on formal and technical levels.

For the 59th edition of the Venice Biennale, the Lebanese Pavilion exhibits two Lebanese contemporary artists, Danielle Arbid and Ayman Baalbaki, in the exhibition The World in the Image of Man. The dialogue between these two artists is characterized by different geographical and aesthetic points of view: the video Allô Chérie by Danielle Arbid, a filmmaker and video artist who emigrated to Paris, interacts with Janus Gate by Ayman Baalbaki, a painter who lives and works in Beirut. Within his monumental installation, Ayman Baalbaki creates a work embodying the process of fragmentation suffered by the city of Beirut due to the return of barriers and barricades in its streets. The movement of the door of Janus, which is alternately wide open, shuttered or closed, responds to the mother of the artist's frantic race car through Beirut. The video is organized in a split screen, enhancing the impression of a divided city. The soundtrack is composed of snatches of negotiations on the phone accounting for a fractured city in the midst of uncertainty. The catalogue gathers several articles facilitating the apprehension of these two artists and marks the return of the Lebanese Pavilion to the Venice Biennale after 5 years of absence.

Originally from Chengdu in China, Kiki Xue first studied mathematics before deciding to become a professional photographer. Since 2010, he has specialized in fashion photography and has naturally settled in Paris. By collaborating with the biggest fashion magazines, he has created an indefinable and yet unique style where each photograph reveals the photographer's work on precise composition, staging and attention to detail. Far from considering fashion photography as a minor practice, the artist draws inspiration and stimulation from it to create fabulous art photographs. His series focus on the nude, portraits and traditional costume, with a growing interest in flowers. Xue observes the effect of natural light and works with it to illuminate his works. Working with both digital and film cameras, Kiki Xue explores many different realms; the human body, still life, portraiture and fashion; creating profound detailed images, full of textures, emotion and vibrant colours. This book offers an opportunity to explore the practice of this artist whose knowledge of art and its history infuses his work.

Having exhibited the most iconic works made by famous designers ¿ from Charlotte Perriand, Serge Mouille, Jean Prouvé, Le Corbusier and Ettore Sottsass to Ron Arad, Isamu Noguchi and Choï Byung ¿ the gallery has imposed itself locally and internationally as a major reference in design. Focusing on showing a selection of the best objects and pieces of furniture ever designed, this book also testifies to the high-level quality of curation at Laffanour Galerie Downtown Paris. With exhibitions recreating entire spaces of living, smart staging allows a wonderful immersive experience through the most refined interiors. The gallery participates to the most renowned art fairs: pictures of the gallery¿s booths will also be displayed in the book.

Today, the word "pullman" has come to mean "a railroad passenger car with especially comfortable furnishings for day or especially for night travel". But before the word entered the mainstream, it was a name, that of George Mortimer Pullman, a serial entrepreneur, an extraordinary innovator and one of the cleverest businessmen of America's Gilded Age. Pullman gave his name first to a coach, then to a train and finally to a notion, that of luxury travel. This book will retrace the history of Pullman, from the genius innovation of overnight travel, dining wagons and sleeper beds, to a globally recognized brand synonymous with pioneer engineering, premium mobility and lavish "hotels on wheels". Pullman's history is closely tied with the history of 20th century USA, yet it extended its influence across the world. George Mortimer Pullman (1831-1897) was an American engineer and industrialist. He designed and manufactured the Pullman sleeping car, a luxurious railroad coach designed for overnight travel, and founded a company town, Pullman, for the workers who manufactured it. In 1894 workers at his Pullman's Palace Car Company initiated the Pullman Strike, which severely disrupted rail travel in the midwestern United States and established the use of the injunction as a means of strikebreaking. In 1898, the Supreme Court of Illinois ordered the Pullman Company to divest itself of the town, which became a neighborhood of the city of Chicago.

L'Atlas is a Parisian artist born in 1978. Fascinated by handwriting from an early age, he moves to different Arabic countries in the 1990s to study calligraphy. In France, he starts by graffiti art, which he combines with his great passion for writing. A balance between form and letter is since then at the heart of his practice. He uses spray paint, scotch tape or gaffer on various supports: canvas, pavement, buildings' facades, etc. and is also well-known for his performances. L'Atlas creates his own labirynthical alphabet which, inked in the city, invites us to question the universality of the language and the limits of illegibility. This monograph presents many variations of artist's codified language. Between Optical Art, abstraction, street art, Pop Art and Minimalism, L'Atlas' art is multifaceted.

Originally from Brittany, Renk-whose real name is Walig Nicolet-grew up in Rennes in a family of artists. He left school at a very young age and began painting in the street. A few years later, working in studios in Paris and Los Angeles, he started painting on large canvases. His practice at the time was based on the accumulation and repetition of his tag-RENK-and soon evolved into the creation of vast colored areas whose variations evoke Color Field painting. Perched on the roofs of Parisian buildings or canoeing along the coast of his native Brittany, Renk travels in search of "climatic moments" that allow him to express his passion for limitless space and pure color. This book, the artist's first monograph, traces Renk's journey from the 2010s to today.

Born in 1982 in Tunis, Thameur Mejri graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Tunis. In his initial abstract paintings, Thameur Mejri inserts figurative elements. The human figure finds a predominant place by its recurrence. As a standing figure or reduced into a simple skull or other bones, it is revealed by the application of fine lines made in charcoal or pastel emerging delicately from the large flat areas of colour. Colours collide into one another as if to better exacerbate the vicissitudes endured by the body. These violent oppositions of colours also testify to the speed of execution of the artist, made possible using acrylic paint. By establishing an atmosphere of confrontation, the artist manages within a single work to transcribe the impetuosity of his gesture while creating a suspended chaos where the complexities of human existence appear to everyone. This book is the artist's first monograph and provides a better understanding of the discovery of these particularly immersive large formats.

André Marfaing (1925-87) was a French non-figurative painter and printmaker associated with abstract art and informalism. This catalogue raisonné of is a complete repertory of his painted work, from his initial "youth" paintings (1948-52) until his last works completed in 1986. 1952, the year he took up non-figuration, was a fundamental step that led him very quickly to abstraction. His first forays into painting, his earlier figurative canvases, still lifes, landscapes and even his few portraits, live on as witnesses to his apprenticeship and as pointers to an artistic adventure that remained latent. The use of acrylic, which gained ground in 1970, led to formal inflections that reached into the heart of his painting.Marfaing probes what is deepest in others as well as his own private space, the confines of a nature within, a cosmos without landscape, a terrain whose contours and features he ceased depicting long ago. The present catalogue raisonné retraces such a path step by step, following up the clues and noting the silences, without ever dissipating the mystery that Marfaing knew how to fathom and to sustain. One must follow these traces as he himself proceeded - with humility, to come to him in the same way his painting calls us. His works, his writings, his friendships, his struggles form an inter woven and inextricable whole.

Two-dimensional Plensa Jaume Plensa is one of the major figures of contemporary sculpture, best known for his large-scale human figures in stainless steel. This monography presents the artist from another angle, showing his graphic works. The book offers an intimate insight into Plensäs universe. Characterised by a greater freedom, as they are not made to order and do not require assistants¿ help, the drawings are a form of reflexion and experimentation for Plensa. He works with various materials, such as plastic sheets, or thick glue on paper or Plexiglas, which allows him to play with light and transparency and gives his works an impression of volume. As in the case of the sculptures, the artist focuses on the human, representing a variety of figures, which he assembles with elements such as photos, letters from different alphabets or numbers. This monography brings to light the diversity of Plensäs creation and the richness of his artistic language. Far from being reduced to preparatory works, Plensa's drawings, often of very large dimensions, function as artworks in their own right, showing the diversity of Plensäs ideas.

Graffiti is like art: everyone thinks they know what it is, but things get complicated if you try to give a precise explanation. This book will trace a history of the art of graffiti through the evolution of Tilt's work. Graffiti writing, which is based on drawn and painted letters, is a movement many of today's graffiti artists - Tilt included - claim to be part of when they want to highlight their own singularity and resist the "street-art turn" of the visual artworks currently produced in public space. The artist painted his first tag as "Tilt" in 1990. He knew from then on that graffiti would be a lifelong passion. Graffiti conveys a libertarian, if not anarchistic and invasive, relationship with the city, against architectural and urban authoritarianism, the pervasiveness of advertising, and disfigured blocks. As far as Tilt is concerned, the content does not necessarily have to bear any explicit political message: the gesture itself embodies an activist form of intervention on the territory. From 2016 on, Tilt has been recreating a series of abstractions in his studio. His recent artwork tell its own story, just as strikingly surprising as a piece of graffiti you would happen to see in the city, they are both inscribed in the subversive origins of graffiti and in the history of painting. Whether it be vandalistic-in the streets, where it belongs to everybody - or a decorative object - as the first writers to enter New York City's art galleries as early as the 1970s had decided - graffiti is an ongoing story to tell - or rather, to write...