When asked who he considered an importance, Picasso only mentioned Goya (1746-1828). But, his extremely influence has arrived to a lot of modern and contemporary painters, such as Manet, the Expressionist movement on early twentieth-century and, most recently, Francis Bacon, and Sigmar Polke. As painter of the Spanish Court, he created series of tapestry cartoons, wallpaintings, and individuals and group portraits, but, after his serious illnes in late 1792, he starts an important body of uncommissioned works that introduces new elements which greatly enhance their expressive potential. This book, wrote by José Gudiol, one of the most renowed specialist in Spanish paintings, is focuses on goya s, profoundly disturbing imagery, and demonstrates that his modernity derives from his lifelong investigation of what lies behind the world of appearances and convention.

Henri Matisse (1869-1954) is without doubt, the most important twentieth-century French artist, and one of the main ones in the history working with color. Matisse's work utterly refutes the notion that the great discoveries of modernism were made by violently rejecting the past. His work was grounded in tradition and in a much less restless and ironic approach to it than Picasso's. 

Paul Gauguin (1848-1903) was one of the most important artists of the late nineteenth century, and one whose work was to have a profound influence on the development of art in the twentieth century. He began as an Impressionist ––he contributed with major works to five of the eight Impressionist exhibitions between 1879 and 1886––, but went on to develop a most richly-coloured style in his constant search for pristine originality and unadulterated nature.

Both David Sweetman and John Richardson ––his main biographers––remark that Gauguin's posthumous retrospective exhibitions at the Salon d'Automne in Paris in 1903 and an even larger one in 1906 had a stunning and powerful influence on the French avant-garde and in particular on Pablo Picasso's paintings. “He was always loath to admit Gauguin's role in setting him on the road to primitivism”, Richardson said.

This concise monograph collects the most important works by Gauguin, not only of his best known paintings of Tahiti in which the artist attempted to reconstruct the perfect life which he had failed to find in reality, but also of many powerful works that reflect the artist’s contact with other seminal early modern masters like Van Gogh or Cézanne.

Profoundly influenced by the welded sculptures of Julio González and of Picasso, David Smith devoted himself entirely to metal sculptures, constructing compositions from steel and scrap material. Almost single-handedly, Smith changed the nature of sculpture in America, giving it a passion, a seriousness and an identity it did not previously possess. With his vision, courage and his exquisite aesthetic gifts, he paved the way for Donald Judd, Richard Serra and many other American sculptors, who elaborated upon his formal and conceptual innovations and accepted his challenge to work and act in ways that would assure that sculpture and sculptors in America would be treated with respect. Before Smith, sculpture was a marginal activity; after him, it was an essential part of the American imagination. Sarah Hamill, author of the book, besides selecting the writings and the previously unpublished interview with poet Frank O’Hara, wrote the central essay about the artist, drawing particular attention to the tradition of iron sculpture and the artist’s vital relationship with photography.

The public works of Eduardo Chillida, present in numerous cities in the world, figure among the most intense and telling creations of contemporary monumental-scale sculpture.
  In most cases, these works involve architectural, urban or landscape aspects, and the problem that the artist must face is the organization of the works in the space, whether in relation to the external environment in which the work is placed –– as in Wind Combs, in struggle with the aggressive Cantabrian Sea; in the idyllic peace of the Gure Aitaren Etxea (House of our Fathers), in Guernica; or in the Eulogy to the Horizon, in Gijón ––, or to interior space, closed and sometimes hermetic, which for the artist has a value that is both stimulating and creative.
  Throughout his essay, Giovanni Carandente analyzes, in addition to the artistic, stylistic and environmental aspects, the profound ethical implications of Chillida's work; from steles dedicated to intellectuals, thinkers and friends, to tributes in recognition of poets and artists –– from Goethe and Khayyam to Hokusai and Miró.

  This volume also includes a wide selection of the Basque artist's writings that bring us closer to his desire to "define the hollow three-dimensional through the full three-dimensional, establishing at the same time a kind of dialogue between them ... The dialogue between the forms, whatever they may be, are much more important than the forms themselves.”

Photographs by David Finn
Remarks on Works by Dena Merriam

CO-PUBLISHED WITH HAUSER AND WIRTH PUBLISHERS

>> Giovanni Carandente(1920-2009) has been one of the most renowned specialists in contemporary sculpture. From his influential exhibition Sculpture in the City, in 1962, in Spoleto, he curated important exhibitions on Picasso, Moore and Calder.

>> David Finnis a photographer with a career focused on the art world, from ancient Egypt to classical Greece, through the main protagonists of the Renaissance –– Donatello, Miguel Angel –– and modern sculpture.

Despite the fact that the worlds of Art and Law have traditionally been presented to us as being distanced from one another, it is true that today, artistic creation, diffusion, conservation and commercialisation is conditioned by the legal system conditions more than ever.

The known aversion and disinterest of artists and other operators within the art market for law in our times, clashes with an overwhelming reality: Legal regulations in Western countries have grown so much, as a consequence of what the professor Yale Grant Gilmore described as: “the orgy in law creation”. Today is not possible for anybody to ignore this, not even the players in the world of art.

It is not possible, but neither is it intelligent, as due to the extent to which art has gained greater economic importance in our society, the attacks on rights and cultural and economical interests suffered by artists, museums, cultural institutions, collectors, the States and society in general are very numerous.

As a consequence of this new reality, the “Art, Market and Law” collection of the Gala-Salvador Dalí Foundation was created in 2011 with the intention of promoting knowledge on legal and economic topics that can be useful to all the bodies and institutions mentioned and that contributes to the protection, conservation, dissemination and prestige of the artistic heritage of all the citizens.

“Nobody knows more than Findlay on the Impressionist, modern and contemporary art market. His new book, “The Value of Art,” is one of the best that has been published on the world of art and explains practically everything there is to know, including how to buy, sell, look at and enjoy art.”

Milton Esterow, ARTnews

Michael Findlay, internationally renowned art dealer, is the manager of Acquavella Galleries in New York, known for its large exhibitions of the master painters of the 19th and 20th Century artists, such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, James Rosenquist and Lucian Freud. Born in Scotland, he began his career in New York in 1964, where he pioneered the legendary SoHo gallery and presented important individual exhibitions of artists unknown at the time, like John Baldessari, Stephen Mueller, Sean Scully and Hannah Wilke. In 1984, he joined Christie's, being responsible for impressionist and modern painting and was later appointed as International Art Manager and member of the Board of Directors until 2000.