One of the foremost figurative artists working today, Lucian Freud has redefined portraiture and the nude through his unblinking scrutiny of the human form. Although he is best known as a painter, etching is integral to his practice. This volume accompanies a major Museum of Modern Art exhibition that will present the full scope of Freud's etchings, including some 75 works--from the rare early experiments of the 1940s to the increasingly complex compositions he has created since rediscovering the medium in the early 1980s. Written by exhibition curator Starr Figura, it also includes a selection of paintings and drawings that illuminate the crucial, cross-pollinating relationship between Freud's etchings and his works on canvas. Freud is not a traditional printmaker: Treating the etching plate like a canvas, he stands the copper upright on an easel. He also typically depicts the same sitters in etchings as in paintings, demarcating their forms through meticulous networks of finely etched lines. Freud's etchings may either precede or follow the execution of paintings, and they are sometimes as large as, or larger than, their related canvases. But with their figures dramatically cropped or isolated against empty backgrounds, they achieve a startling new sense of psychological tension and formal abstraction.

Lucian Freud: The Painter's Etchings

Figura, Starr

Reference

The Museum of Modern Art, New York

The artists associated with German Expressionism in the early decades of the twentieth century took up printmaking with a dedication and fervor virtually unparalleled in the history of the genre. The woodcut, with its coarse gouges and jagged lines, is the preeminent Expressionist medium, but the movement also revolutionized etching and lithography, to alternately vibrant and stark effect. This graphic impulse can be traced from the formation of the artist group Die Brücke in 1905 through the war years of the 1910s and into the early 1930s, when individual artists continued to produce compelling work even as the movement was winding down. This volume, published in conjunction with an exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art, showcases the Museum's outstanding holdings of Expressionist prints, enhanced by a selection of drawings, paintings, and sculptures from the collection. Featuring approximately 260 works by some 30 artists, the book presents a diverse array of individuals, including Max Beckmann, Erich Heckel, Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Emil Nolde, Vasily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoschka. Essays by Starr Figura, Associate Curator of Prints and Illustrated Books at MoMA, and Peter Jelavich, Professor of History, Johns Hopkins University, discuss the centrality of printmaking in German Expressionism and provide a sociocultural backdrop for the movement.

German Expressionism: The Graphic Impulse

Jelavich, Peter

Hess, Heather

Schmeisser, Iris

Winner of the 2002 American Association of Museums Publications Design Competition. Catalog for (September 22-December 9, 2001 exhibition. 105pp. 60 color plates. Artists include Barlach, Christo, Giacometti, Hepworth, Maillol, Moore, Nadelman, Pepper, Serra, and Shapiro. Provides a unique opportunity for understanding the relationship between two- and three-dimensional art. Essays by Rudolph H. Weingartner, collector and former Dean of Northwestern University's College of Arts and Sciences, and Starr Figura, Assistant Curator, Prints and Illustrated Books, The Museum of Modern Art, New York.

Prints by Sculptors: The Rudolph H. and Fannia Weingartner Collection at the Mary and Leigh Block Museum of Art

Weingartner, Rudolph H.

Arts & Photography

Mary & Leigh Block Gallery

Dix and the Present: Exhibition cat. Deichtorhallen Hamburg

Jessen, Ina

Schwarz, Birgit

Ho, Gitta

History & Criticism

Snoeck Publishing Company

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Figura, Starr. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by Figura, Starr