Play Life Illusion – the retrospective in book form refers to the title of a performance which Xanti Schawinsky developed in 1936 with students at Black Mountain College. The Swiss artist who worked at the Bauhaus in Weimar and Dessau emigrated in the 1930s via Italy to the United States. The volume assembles autobiographical texts and letters regarding the life’s work of the multimedial artist and designer.

"Gothic Modern" illuminates the pivotal discovery of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz and their artist contemporaries. It explores their deep attraction to the Gothic art of Europe’s north and German lands via paintings, prints and in other artistic media to imagine a new ‘Gothic modernity’, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories.

"Gothic Modern" illuminates the pivotal discovery of medieval Gothic art for Edvard Munch, Käthe Kollwitz and their artist contemporaries. It explores their deep attraction to the Gothic art of Europe’s north and German lands via paintings, prints and in other artistic media to imagine a new ‘Gothic modernity’, unlocking a different energy of modern art and creative experiment beyond nation-centric stories.

Art collector, patron and arbiter – Hanna Bekker vom Rath (1893–1983) was a trailblazer for the artistic avant-garde and one of the most important female personalities in Germany during the pre-war and post-war modern periods. She was a friend of Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Alexej von Jawlensky, Ida Kerkorius and Paul Klee. This lavishly illustrated volume provides a lively picture of a remarkable woman.

Max Beckmann (1884–1950), the outstanding Expressionist painter, is regarded as one of the most important artists of the twentieth century. His works, jostling with figures and full of colour, are packed with highly symbolic messages. They are critical of the times in which he lived and bear witness to Beckmann’s struggle with existential questions and his constant search for truth.

As the charismatic artist friend of Egon Schiele, Erwin Osen also left his mark on the key early years of Expressionism in Vienna. His multi-faceted relationship with Schiele reached an intensity that inspired Egon Schiele’s radical creative work, resulting in masterpieces of Austrian art. Erwin Osen was forgotten, but is now waiting to be rediscovered.

At the end of the 19th century the term “Secession” stood for the artistic beginnings of modernism. Art was surging forward towards freedom. Avant-garde artists showed their new creative works in the exhibitions of the Secession. In doing so they introduced innovative art movements to the public and helped Impressionism and Symbolism, for example, to achieve a breakthrough in the German-speaking region.

His paintbrush set everything in motion: the landscape of Provence, the colourful still lifes, his portraits and the picturesque coast of southern France. More than any other artist, Paul Cézanne, the “Father of Modernism”, captured the light and the play of colours of the South in his pictures and lent them through his new pictorial language a liveliness and dynamism which continue to fascinate viewers to this day.

Important artists of Hungarian Classical Modernism lived and worked temporarily on the banks of the Spree and were present in the Berlin avant-garde. The publication presents a brilliant overview of the close links between the culture of the Weimar Republic and the creative forces of Hungary, which ended with the seizure of power by the National Socialists.

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) is regarded as the poet amongst modernist artists. His works from the 1930s and 1940s are less well known. In them, his bright  colour palette became darker. Even in the early 1930s, Chagall addressed the increasingly aggressive anti-Semitism and touched in his artistic works on central themes such as identity, homeland and exile.