BELLAS ARTES

Carlo Colombo was born in Brianza, the land of the greatest Italian furniture companies and home to several key figures of contemporary design. Having graduated with a degree in architecture from the Politecnico di Milano, his career has grown with great intensity and success, including his iconic pieces such as the Minerva chairs or the Bali armchairs, the award-winning Albume washbasins, and the Sveva sofa. This book recounts the multifaceted universe of a designer poised between passion and rationality. It draws on a selection of his most significant design products, his methodology, creative inputs and collaborations with protagonists from the business and finance worlds, as well as enlightened clients and artists.

The Case Study House program (1945–1966) was an exceptional, innovative event in the history of American architecture and remains to this day unique. The program, which concentrated on the Los Angeles area and oversaw the design of 36 prototype homes, sought to make available plans for modern residences that could be easily and cheaply constructed during the postwar building boom. The program’s chief motivating force was Arts & Architecture editor John Entenza, a champion of modernism who had all the right connections to attract some of architecture’s greatest talents, such as Richard Neutra, Charles and Ray Eames, and Eero Saarinen. Highly experimental, the program generated houses that were designed to redefine the modern home, and had a pronounced influence on architecture―American and international―both during the program’s existence and even to this day. TASCHEN brings you a retrospective of the entire program with comprehensive documentation, brilliant photographs from the period and, for the houses still in existence, contemporary photos, as well as extensive floor plans and sketches.

Mary Cassatt's tender and profound paintings redefined portraiture and broke down barriers for women in art—both as artists and as subjects. This collection focuses on Cassatt's insightful portrayal of women and children living their everyday lives. Fifty magnificent images cover the scope of Cassatt's work, from her early interest in Japanese woodblocks all the way to her exploration of Modernist techniques. Two essays contextualize her as a pioneering female artist and as the American face of Impressionist painting.

This is the first major book on Zegers, who practices an intensely artistic and ecological form of architecture based on landscapes in which she builds. Working frequently in timber, Zegers reaches unique, sustainable, and recyclable solutions that combine and rescue the traditional work of Chilean carpenters with modern techniques. In an almost metaphysical journey, in which organic forms, curves, diagonals, and verticals are combined, Zegers affirms her rising presence as a force in ecologically minded architecture.

In the latter half of the 19th century, in the verdant countryside near Aix-en-Provence, Paul Cézanne (1839–1906), busily plied his brush to landscapes and still lifes that would become anchors of modern art. With compact, intense dabs of paint and bold new approaches to light and space, he mediated the way from Impressionism to the defining movements of the early 20th century and became, in the words of both Matisse and Picasso, “father of us all.” This fresh artist introduction selects key works from Cézanne’s oeuvre to understand his development, innovation, and crucial influence on modern art. From compositions of fruits and pears to scenes of outdoor bathers, we trace his experimentation with color, perspective, and texture to evoke “a harmony parallel to Nature,” as well as the very process of seeing and recording. Along the way, we discover Cézanne’s celebrated Card Players, his layering of warm and cool hues to build up form and surface, and the geometric rigor of his landscapes from the vicinity of Aix-en-Provence, as bright with the light of southern France as they are bold with a radical new rendering of dimensions and depth.