Most popular Art & design styles: Surrealism & Dada books

A personal biography of Leonora Carrington, the debutante who ran away to Mexico and became one of the world's most significant surrealist artists.

From soft watches to burning giraffes, this book celebrates the fantastical world and flamboyant personality of Salvador Dali, one of the most visionary and prolific artists of the 20th century. In equal parts provoking, eccentric, and technically skilled, Dali's provocative work, and his controversial persona, revolutionized the concept of the...

As a member of the first Dada group in Zurich during the First World War, the author was in a unique position to tell its history. In this book, he draws together not only important historical documents but the testimonies of friends, such as Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst and Raoul Hausmann.

Ever heard of surrealist fine dining? This must-have reprint of Les diners de Gala reveals the exotic flavors and elaborate imaginings behind the legendary dinner parties of Salvador and Gala Dali. With recipes from such leading Paris restaurants as La Tour d'Argent and Maxim's, a special section on aphrodisia, and bespoke illustrations from...

Model. Muse. Lover. Artist. This sweeping debut novel is based on the true story of Lee Miller's journey to become an artist and her lover affair with Man Ray in bohemian 1930s Paris.

A concise and gripping encounter with Francis Bacon, one of the most individual, powerful, and disturbing painters of the 20th century. Emerging into notoriety in the period following World War II, Bacon developed a unique figurative form, distorted, dismembered, and writhing with intense emotional content.

Explore the lyrical seven-decade career of Catalan-born Joan Miro, a towering figure of 20th-century art, whose highly individual style reflected Surrealist, Dadaist, and abstract elements in dazzling colors and unique symbolic narratives. From automated drawing to sculptures made of gas, this modernist legend abandoned categorization and...

Small, smart, essential - an incisive overview of Surrealism, introducing the movement's key artists and capturing its essential and enduring concepts.

Life histories of the Surrealists, known and unknown, by one of the last surviving members of the movement--artist and best-selling author Desmond Morris

A comprehensive study of Dada's images of the body in various media and geographical centres. Mask or machine-part, grotesque or iconoclastic, the bodily image is confronted as both a reflection of and on the disjunctive, dehumanised society of wartime and post-war Europe, and a blueprint of the New Man. -- .

An essential overview of Salvador Dali's mind-melting ideas and seismic art historical impact, this compact publication reviews the master of Surrealism's complete paintings, supplemented with sketches and ephemera. Presented by Robert Descharnes and Gilles Neret, many of these works have rarely been seen before but epitomize Dali's depictions...

Now regarded as a feminist and LGBT icon, as well as a key artist during the twentieth century, this calendar celebrates Frida Kahlo's life with beautiful portraits alongside her famous quotes about life and art. Informative text accompanies each work and the datepad features previous and next months views.

Presents the essential ideas of the founder of French surrealism

After an initially guarded response from the critics, the work was rapidly reevaluated and won the Olivier Award for Best New Play the following year. Set in London and Venice the play has an innovative chronology that opens at the end of an affair and works its way backwards over nine years, from 1977 to 1968.

A beautifully written and elegantly constructed narrative that explores the intense, complex and far-reaching female friendships among the Surrealists during the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s.

When is a urinal no longer a urinal? When Marcel Duchamp declared it to be art. From his infamous Fountain to reworked Mona Lisa with mustache and beard, this essential introduction to Duchamp surveys his audacious practice of "readymades" and beyond and its critical place in 20th-century art.

With his frenetic compositions and spontaneous approach, Franz Marc was cofounder of Der Blaue Reiter and a pioneer of German Expressionism. He drew inspirations from masters like van Gogh and Picasso to galvanize a new vocabulary of form and color, setting an artistic standard that would flourish for decades. In this essential introduction, we...

Paul Nash, the British landscape and Surrealist painter, lived through both the First and Second World Wars. His depictions of these human catastrophes, with their damaged landscapes and broken machinery are much remembered today. This new book offers 100 powerful images, with an introduction to his life and art.

An activity book that allows young artists to explore the crazy world of Salvador Dali. It offers plenty of space to colour outside the lines, and is also designed to give children an early interest in some of the great masters. It includes sections of Dali's masterpieces to inspire children's creativity, whatever their age.

This accessible book on the Surrealist art movement features paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, film stills, and architecture, displaying the enormous breadth and variety of Surrealism.

Now available again, this fascinating look at Dali explores the forces that shaped the life and works of one of the modern art world's most inscrutable and misunderstood figures.

Belgian artist Rene Magritte's life is infused with bizarre moments: a surreal journey oscillating between fact and fiction that he always conducted as the straight-faced bowler-hatted man. He would shape his own life story to be its own surreal work of art. This book tells his story.

Salvador Dali at Home explores the profound influence of Catalan culture and tradition, Dali's home life and loves, and the places he lived on his extraordinary creative output.

The first comprehensive English-language account and critical reading of the legendary poet and boxer Arthur Cravan, a fleeting figure on the periphery of early twentieth-century European avant-gardism. -- .

Surrealism is an art movement, dedicated to expressing the imagination as revealed in dreams, free of the conscious control of reason and convention. Surrealism inherited its anti-rationalist sensibility from Dada, but was lighter in spirit than that movement. Like Dada, it was shaped by theories on our perception of reality.

The first major collection of poetry written in English by the flabbergasting and flamboyant Baroness Elsa, "the first American Dada."

This major new book on Rene Magritte offers fresh interpretations of the artist's use of symbols and imagery to articulate his particular brand of surrealism.

A personal biography of Leonora Carrington, the debutante who ran away to Mexico and became one of the world's most significant surrealist artists.

The first comprehensive examination of Leonora Carrington (1917-2011), a major twentieth-century writer and multi-media artist. It offers an interdisciplinary exploration of the intellectual, literary, and artistic currents that animate her relationships with avant-garde movements throughout the Western Hemisphere. -- .

Chasm is the only novel by Dorothea Tanning, the famed surrealist artist, and was published when she was 93 years old.

An investigation of the irrational and the unconventional currents swirling behind the Bauhaus's signature sleek surfaces and austere structures.

This groundbreaking collection of thirteen original essays analyzes connections between film and two highly influential twentieth-century movements.

Surrealist artist Max Ernst defined collage as the 'alchemy of the visual image'. This book demonstrates that the artist had a profound and abiding interest in alchemical philosophy and often used alchemical symbolism in works created throughout his career. It helps you understand a multilayered complexity of Ernst's works.

Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) has entered mainstream culture as one of the founding fathers of modern art. This book explores the artist's life and work. It features more than 200 entries on the interesting and important artworks, relationships, people and ideas in Duchamp's life.

Eminent scholar Rudolf Kuenzli presents a rich selection of the Dadas' experimental visual and literary works to give a lively, accessible and comprehensive assessment.

A lavishly illustrated volume that views Russian avant-garde art through the lens of Dada.

Presents a comprehensive work on Surrealism.

Beginning in Paris in the 1920s, women poets, essayists, painters, and artists in other media have actively collaborated in defining and refining surrealism's basic project - achieving a higher, open, and dynamic consciousness. This anthology displays the range and significance of women's contributions to surrealism.

What does it mean to write "This is not a pipe" across a bluntly literal painting of a pipe? By exploring the nuances and ambiguities of Magritte's visual critique of language, the author finds the painter less removed than previously thought from the pioneers of modern abstraction.

This expansive and informative book on surrealist drawing reveals drawing to be a fundamental medium of surrealist expression.

The paperback edition of a milestone work that has been unavailable for several years, documenting the short but influential life of Black Mountain College.

Reveals the invention of the readymade as a critical point in contemporary art. Arguing that the readymade belongs to that moment in the history of painting when both figuration and the practice of painting become "impossible," this book presents a psychoanalytically informed account of the birth of abstraction.