Böcker utgivna av Hirmer Verlag

We use money every day in the form of banknotes, coins or credit on our bank account. We pay online on the internet, take out loans and save money on bank accounts. But what is money really? Where does it come from? Who controls the banks? What are the tasks of central bank and how does monetary policy work?

The artist Stefan Hunstein brought magical photographs of untouched landscapes back from his journey to the Arctic in 2012. This publication shows a selection of these photographs. It also includes photos, printed on glass using a special technique, in which the artist links the beauty of nature and "the horrors of the ice and of darkness.

The past decade of both economic crises in Europe and North America as well as an extraordinary museum boom in many Asian countries has led to new questions and concepts for future museum buildings. This book investigates this paradigm change by presenting 20 recent and future museum projects on all continents.

How should you portray a collective? Roland Fischer shows us in his latest large-format photo project. 1,000 students from Tel Aviv University agreed to take part and to be photographed by him. The result is a multi-faceted collective portrait of young students in Israel and at the same time a series of fascinating individual portraits.

The art academy failed to recognise his talent; he rejected the contemporary art scene in Vienna; and his visionary work was largely neglected during his lifetime: the painter Richard Gerstl (1883-1908), whose creative period lasted for just four intensive years, is regarded today as one of the most important representatives of Austrian Expressionism for his portraits and landscapes.

Between 1847 and 1935 the Maya on the Yucatan peninsula rebelled against their oppression and were eventually defeated by Mexican troops. The Canadian photographer Serge Barbeau has visited the descendants of those Maya rebels. This volume reproduces in oversize format his expressive portraits documenting their desire for independence.

With his artistic works, the sculptor Winfried Baumann (* 1956) evokes questions of social responsibility and the perception of contemporary social forms. His subjects are highly topical both as regards content with respect to social and urban-planning visions, and also formally as they cross the borders between fine art and applied design.

This publication reflects the Cuban love of sport, from youth work in the back yards of Havana to the preparations for the Olympic Games.

Taking the female body for her muse, Janaina Tschape explores themes of the body and landscape, sex, death, renewal and transformation in paintings, drawings, photographs and video installations. This book deals with her work.

The Kunstmuseum Bern owns one of the most important art collections in Switzerland. The Kunstmuseum Bern houses prestigious works of Swiss and international art from the late thirteenth century onwards. In this title, over 170 masterpieces of the collection are assembled and includes an art-historical analyses along with colour illustrations.

Apocalypse, the city, war, religion, the portrait, exile and existential trauma - Ludwig Meidner (1884-1966) is regarded as one of the outstanding artists of German Expressionism. With the accuracy of a seismograph he recorded in his pictorial and literary works the shocks which reverberated through his time.

Andrea Bischof is one of Austria's most important contemporary artists and has made a name for herself through the subtleness of the coloration and exceptional harmony of her compositions. She achieves this through weeks of patiently juxtaposing dazzling tones that. The alluring interplay between surface and depth literally makes the pictures begin to breathe and pulsate.

With her sculptures Gabriela von Habsburg goes new ways in the politicisation of aesthetics, uniting her work as ambassador, politician and creative artist. This volume brings together her oeuvre: the sculptures, some of them made of metal or stone in different formats and some of them immovable, introduce the artist's works in the public space.

Tearing, cutting, shredding in order to reassemble the elements and create something new: strip by strip the Austrian artist Monika Fioreschy applies lengths of torn paper to her canvases, thereby creating large-format abstract works filled with a harmonious formal language and offering an unexpected wealth of detail when observed more closely.

The works of Vladimir G Shukhov have been a topic of academic discourse in the West since the 1990s. Shukhov is now regarded as a pioneer of lightweight construction and as one of the leading proponents of Russian industrial design. This book deals with this topic.

In 1970 in Munich Gerhard Richter met Brigid Berlin alias Brigid Polk, Andy Warhol's legendary muse and enfant terrible of New York's high society. This meeting gave rise to Richter's important "Brigid Polk" series, based on Polaroid self-portraits by the eccentric artist: a dialogue between America and Europe, photography and painting, artist and muse.