Frida Kahlo's (1907-1954) arresting pictures were in many ways expressions of trauma. This richly illustrated Basic Art book offers a both accessible and informed introduction to Kahlo's life and work, looking at the artist's dramatic, colourful canvases which combined religious Mexican tradition with Surrealist elements.

With his instantly recognizable decorative style, Czech artist and Art Nouveau master Alphonse Mucha (1860-1939) defined the look of the fin-de-siecle. In evocative shades of peach, gold, ochre and olive, his seductive compositions of patterns, flowers and beautiful women became a mainstay of illustration, posters, postcards, and advertising designs of the day. In particular, his posters of star actress Sarah Bernhardt have become paradigms of the...

The beauty of nature and man's loneliness are dominant themes in the work of Caspar David Friedrich. The artist often places a small human figure in a broad landscape, as in his famous paintings Monk by the Sea and The Wanderer above the Sea of Fog. For a long time the importance and influence of this great Romantic painter were underestimated. When he died, Friedrich had already been forgotten by his contemporaries and was only rediscovered in the...

"Filling notebook after notebook with sketches, inventions, and theories, Leonardo Da Vinci (1452-1519) not only stands as one of the most exceptional draftsmen of art history, but also as a mastermind and innovator who anticipated some of the greatest discoveries of human progress, sometimes centuries before their material realization. From the smallest arteries in the human heart to the far-flung constellations of the universe, Leonardo saw nature...

With careful theories and many thousands of paintings, drawings, and watercolors, Paul Klee (1879-1940)is considered one of the most cerebral and prolific leaders of 20th century European art. Though typically small in scale, his works are remarkable for their sophisticated thought and meticulous nuances of line, colour, and tonality. Klee s stylistic formation was shaped by early affiliation with the German expressionist group Der Blaue Reiter and,...

"Peaking in the 1960s, Pop Art began as a revolt against mainstream approaches to art and culture and evolved into a wholesale interrogation of modern society, consumer culture, and the role of the artist and artwork. Focusing on issues of materialism, celebrity, and media, Pop Art drew on mass-market sources, from advertising imagery to comic books, from Hollywood's most famous faces to the packaging of consumer products, the latter epitomized by...

The Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944), who later lived in Germany and France, is one of the pioneers of 20th-century art. Nowadays he is regarded as the founder of abstract art and is, moreover, the chief theoretician of this type of painting. Together with Franz Marc and others he founded the group of artists known as the "Blane Reiter" in Munich. His art then freed itself more and more from the object, eventually culminating in the First...