1. The Fantastic Gustave Doré - © Prestel Verlag - 2023
Prestel - Books review
As part of the new series of articles dedicated to books and publishing houses, I'm really happy to collaborate with the German publishing house Prestel, who I contacted in early 2023 for a collaboration. For this first review, the publisher and I agreed on a selection of books, and after careful consideration and reading, I am happy to give you my top three readings for these summer months.
The history of the house
Prestel or Prestel Verlag is a German publishing house founded on July 18, 1924 in Frankfurt am Main by Hermann Loeb. But the family's story's of publishing started out in the 18th century, when Johann Gottlieb Prestel founded an art dealership in Nuremberg in 1774.
But the business slowly evolve in the 19th century by transforming it into an auction house with the help of the antiquarian Albert Voigtländer-Tetzner.
But between the two world wars, Prestel became independent from the family business and it was transformed into Prestel-Verlags GmbH by the art historian Hermann Loeb, who bought the holding. But due to the war and the National Socialists in Germany, Load was forced to sell the house to one of his employees, but due to financial difficulties, Prestel Verlag was sold to the Aachen lawyer Paul Capellmann, who converted the company into a limited partnership based in Munich in 1940.
After the war, the house started publishing again, especially specialised in travel literature, art history and fine arts. And over the years and decades, while director changes and sales evolve, the brand expended in London and New York City and later expanded its prints with the addition of architecture guides and exhibition catalogues.
Lucas's favourites
2. The Fantastic Gustave Doré - © Prestel Verlag - 2023
THE FANTASTIC GUSTAVE DORÉ ALIX PARÉ AND VALÉRIE SUEUR-HERMEL | 480 pages with 403 illustrations, 23 in color Hardcover
8 x 101/4 in. / 20.5 x 26 cm
ISBN 978-3-7913-7963-0 | English | 2023 |
The first book I've chosen is this marvellous and quite heavy book of the French artist Gustave Doré. Doré is known for his paintings but also his engravings, some of them influenced artists over decades such as Vincent van Gogh.
Over his career, he was a painter and an illustrator for books and poems, short stories, etc. This book only focus on his drawings, and it's organised by types: poems, short stories, etc.
The first part of the book is dedicated to the technique of engraving, which was written by Valérie Sueur-Hermel (Curator at the National Library of France). This text develops the three types of engraving Doré uses: lithography, etching and wood engraving.
During his life, which started in Strasbourg on the 6 January
1832, Doré produced and published quite early on, at eleven he created his first work inspired by the "Divine comédie" of Dante.
3. Georges Braques - Inventor of Cubism 1906 - 1914 - © Prestel Verlag - 2023
GEORGES BRAQUE
INVENTOR OF CUBISM 1906-1914
Susanne Gaensheimer, Susanne Meyer-Büser | 240 pp., 150 color illus.
Hardcover
91⁄2 x 111⁄4 in. / 24 x 28.8 cm ISBN 978-3-7913-7915-9 | English | 2022/2021 |
The second book I want to discuss with you is the exhibition catalogue of the exhibition "Georges Braque - Inventor of Cubism - 1906-1914 ", which was presented at the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen in 2021-2022 and curated by Susanne Meyer-Büser.
When we think about Cubism, and this art movement, we always think about the same (and problematic) figure: Pablo Picasso. But if you know the true story of this movement George Braque was actually the inventor of Cubism, thus the exhibition of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen tries to rebalance and correct this story with the exhibition.
And while the artist evolved his style so fast, from Fauvism to Cubism, Braque was originaly born in Argenteuil and raised in Le Havre (Normandy), he was actually trained as a decorative painter before moving to Paris in 1900 and encounter Matisse and the Fauves.
Seven years later, he saw the exhibition of Paul Cézanne in 1907 and studied his works before meeting Pablo Picasso, the poet Guillaume Apollinaire and the art dealer Daniel Kahnweiler. Those groups of people will lead to numerous artist exchange and to create Braque’s first geometric landscapes at the beginning of 1908.
4. Frank Bowling - Mappa Mundi - © Prestel Verlag - 2023
FRANK BOWLING
MAPPA MUNDI
Edited by Okwui Enwezor Contributions F. Bowling, O. Enwezor, K. Mercer, A. Schneider, and others | 288 pp., 228 color illus.
Hardcover. 9 x 111⁄2 in. / 23 x 28.9 cm ISBN 978-3-7913-5658-7 | English | 2017 |
The last book is dedicated to the exhibition "Frank Bowling - Mappa Mundi", which was presented at the Haus Der Kunst in 2017-2018 and was curated by Okwui Enwezor and Anna Schneider.
While the designed of the book is mind-blowing between the cloth like printing on the front and the back cover to the printing on the side of the book which follow the motif of the artwork "Middle Passage" a large painting created in 1970.
On the inside, you can discover the sublime works of quite an unknown Guyana-born British artist, general linked to three art movements: Abstract expressionism, Color Field painting and Lyrical Abstraction.
