Stephan Koja Libri

Focusing on Gustav Klimt's famous mural, this book reveals the story behind the Beethoven Frieze and the role it played in Vienna's cultural heyday. Created by Klimt for the XIV Exhibition of the Secession in 1902--also known as the Beethoven Exhibition--the Beethoven Frieze remains one of the most important examples of Vienna Art Nouveau, and one of the highlights of Klimt's career. Based on Richard Wagner's interpretation of Beethoven's ninth symphony, it displays Klimt's artistic opinions, passions and impressions. As a vehicle through which Klimt struggled to express the spiritual in terms of the visual, its elaborate decoration and frank eroticism reflect the debate between tradition and modernism that was raging in fin de siècle Vienna. In this book, more than 200 images in color and duotone offer close-up details of the frieze's panels and give an overall perspective of the grandiose work. Stephan Koja discusses the Beethoven exhibition as a collective work of art, while other essays describe the techniques Klimt used to create the frieze and those employed to preserve it, its place in Klimt's oeuvre, and its importance as a symbol of Vienna's artistic community.

The Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window by Johannes Vermeer is one of the most famous works of seventeenth-century Dutch art. Preserved at the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden, the painting has been restored, in an elaborate process lasting from 2017 to 2021. The removal of a large section of overpainting dating from a later period has profoundly altered the work's appearance and revealed the original composition. To showcase the discovery, the Dresden Gemaldegalerie is now presenting the Girl Reading a Letter along with other masterpieces by Vermeer and a selection of exceptional Dutch genre paintings that reveal parallels and reciprocities between the art of Vermeer and that of his peers. This catalog brings together texts by renowned scholars as they explore not only the restoration of this pivotal work but also fundamental questions on the visual vernacular and essence of Vermeer's painting, his optical realism, his iconography of love, and the lived realities of women in the Dutch Golden Age.

Nearly eighty masterpieces of Finnish painting offer an opportunity to explore the range of the country’s art at the dawn of the twentieth century. Finnish art holds an important place in the development of Modernism. At the turn of the century, the country blossomed –its native culture, breathtaking landscapes, and vitality helped fuel a movement that celebrated youth, energy, color, and nontraditional representation. This survey, presented in brilliant color, also includes the substantial contributions made by Finnish women artists. It features more than two hundred reproductions, a bibliography, maps, and fascinating essays which explore the fundamental role that art played in shaping a sense of national identity in fin-de-siècle Finland.

Accompanied by essays from scholars, the images reproduced in this book comprise all extant landscapes by Gustav Klimt. These paintings demonstrate a little-known aspect of the painter's oeuvre and reveal themes that appeared throughout his life's work.

Bernardo Bellotto (1722-1780) is one of the most famous vedute painters of the 18th century. His views and prospects of town and country are so rich in detail, so precisely and meticulously painted that historic places come to life again before the viewer's eyes. But far from being simply faithful reproductions of sights, his vedute are rather carefully planned compositions, the result of the artist availing himself of all the technical know-how of his age. During his time in Dresden, Bellotto created some of his most important works, which now form part of the collection at the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister. These vedute still influence the way Dresden is perceived today, at home and abroad. They present a wonderful panorama of the old Augustan city, on which two of the greatest art collectors in German history - Augustus the Strong and his son Augustus III - left their mark. Thanks to these two electors, who simultaneously held the crown of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Dresden art collections flourished, becoming some of the most important in the world. This volume traces the various stages of Bellotto's career, focussing in detail on the canvases of his Dresden period. It also examines the history of the world-famous picture gallery, the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister, and the era of Baroque collection-building in Dresden.

Monet ist ein wahrer Zauberer des Lichts und der Farbe. Aber nicht allein seine Malerei fasziniert, sondern auch sein aufregendes Leben mit der großen Familie. Diese Buch erzählt von einem ungewöhnlichen Künstler und seinen wunderbaren Bildern.

Now available again, this visually stunning collection of Gustav Klimt's landscape paintings brings to light a lesser-known aspect of the Viennese painter's oeuvre. While Gustav Klimt is largely revered for his opulent, symbolladen portraits of the Viennese bourgeoisie, these works were just one aspect of his artistic expression. His landscapes represent an important facet of his career and are a valuable contribution to the school of European nature painting. For many years the artist travelled to the Austrian and Italian countryside during the summer, where he took advantage of the extraordinary light and spectacular hues to paint and sketch landscapes. Among the most exquisite of Klimt's landscapes are those in which he experimented with composition and style. Accompanied by scholarly essays, the images reproduced in this book comprise all extant landscapes from this brilliant artist, proving that his mastery extends beyond portraiture and revealing themes that appeared throughout his life's work.

Designed by Gottfried Semper, the gallery building at the Dresden Zwinger houses not only the Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery), but also the Skulpturensammlung bis 1800 (Sculpture Collection from Antiquity to 1800), which is renowned for the high quality and impeccable provenance of its holdings. In addition to outstanding ancient works, around 100 Renaissance and Baroque sculptures are now on permanent display at the Semperbau. The concept for the gallery was revised following a thorough investigation of the collection, which also brought to light some hidden treasures. This catalogue presents the first results of the scholarly research; featuring selected masterpieces by Filarete, Giambologna, Adriaen de Vries, Giovanni Francesco Susini, Corneille Van Cleve, Guillaume Coustou, Paul Heermann and Balthasar Permoser, among others, it illustrates the impressive breadth and variety of the Dresden Skulpturensammlung.

As soon as Caravaggio's John the Baptist was unveiled, it became ethe subject of much discussion. The portrayal of the saint as eaaboy - undressed, embracing a ram - provoked speculation on its underlying message and the painter's motivations. The picture bears all the artistic qualities that made Caravaggio's works so powerful. His chiaroscuro, his radical naturalism, and the bold new narratives he told in his images became the ideal for other artists to Nicolas Tournier, Peter Paul Rubens, Gerard van Honthorst, Jusepe de Ribera, and Francisco de Zurbaran, to name but a few. This richly illustrated catalogue traces Caravaggio's influence and shows how his paintings spurred creative responses and renewed pictorial invention, not just inacontemporary acolytes but even followers working centuries later.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Pope Alexander VII (born Fabio Chigi) changed the face of baroque Rome forever. From the early years of their amicable relationship comes an intimate work of art, long considered lost but now rediscovered in the Skulpturensammlung in Dresden: a shockingly realistic human skull of white marble, made by Bernini for Alexander VII in 1655. This book explores this major discovery, placing it within its broader historical context and providing new insights into the Chigi family's art collection, the acquisition of part of this collection by Augustus the Strong, the influence of Bernini on the Dresden-based sculptor Balthasar Permoser, and much more. The chapter on the plague in Rome - which Alexander VII tried to combat through such tools as compulsory quarantines, masks and the closing down of much of public life - relates that historic epidemic to our battle today against Covid-19. These historical parallels help us to understand better the ever-pressing sense of mortality during the lifetime of sculptor and Pope, which led to the creation of Bernini's remarkable Death's Head