18 books like Van Gogh

What to read after Van Gogh — books similar to it, matched on shared themes.

Monet Claude Monet · 1963 · ★ 4.3 · 36p · ≈ 1h · Moderate A combination of chronological texts and superb reproductions offers not only a valuable sourcebook for students and lovers of Impressionist art but also a visual and verbal documentation of a great artist and his influence upon the world. Shares: Impressionism, Painters, Exhibitions, Criticism and interpretation

Joan Miró Joan Miró · 1937 · ★ 4.2 · 85p · ≈ 2h · Challenging "This book takes the reader on a journey through Joan Miro's world of images. It includes work from all phases of the artist's career, from the early paintings in the style of poetic realism, via the playfully lyrical pictures of the 1920s and 1930s, to the colourful works of his later years. Stages in the journey are marked by photographs taken at the time by Miro's fellow Catalan Joaquim Gomis,… Shares: Themes, Painters, Correspondence, Criticism and interpretation

Jenny Holzer Jenny Holzer · 1982 · 63p · ≈ 2h · Moderate Holzer has been at the forefront of American art since her work first came to prominence in the early 1980s. She is known for text based works which may appear as spectacular electronic signs, T shirts or carved marble benches. Shares: Themes, Exhibitions, Artists, Criticism and interpretation

Vincent van Gogh Vincent van Gogh · 1914 · ★ 4.1 · 17p · ≈ 34m · Challenging This book contains 658 paintings by Vincent Van Gogh. Vincent Van Gogh was born on 30 March 1853 in Zundert in the southern Netherlands, the son of a pastor. In 1869, he took his first job, working in the Hague branch of an international art dealing firm. He began to write to his younger brother Theo, a correspondence which continued for the rest of Van Gogh's life. Van Gogh's job took him to… Shares: Impressionism, Painters, Exhibitions, Correspondence

Max Beckmann Max Beckmann · 1931 · 184p · ≈ 6h · Challenging "This panoramic presentation of Max Beckmann's painted oeuvre sheds new light on central themes such as the world of cabaret, music, and the theater, dreams and reality, staged sensuality, and the role of the female muse, as well as the artist's unusual ways of employing romanticizing visual motifs in landscapes and urban contexts."--BOOK JACKET Shares: Themes, Painters, Correspondence, Criticism and interpretation

Lyonel Feininger Lyonel Feininger · 1950 · 50p · ≈ 1h · Moderate Lyonel und Julia: Von der Kunst, zu lieben. Eine schicksalshafte Liebesgeschichte, erzählt in größtenteils nie veröffentlichten Briefen. Zugleich ein Zeugnis vom Arbeiten und Leben des großen Malers, pünktlich zu seinem 150. Geburtstag.Im Juli 1905 treffen Lyonel Feininger und Julia Berg im Zug Richtung Ostsee jeweils die Liebe ihres Lebens. Beide sind verheiratet, doch schnell ist ihnen klar,… Shares: Painters, Exhibitions, Biography & Memoir

The life of Michelangelo Buonarroti John Addington Symonds · 1892 · 520p · ≈ 17h · Challenging This is a story of Buonarroti Simoni, to whom Michelangelo belonged, were a Florentine family of ancient burgher nobility. Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

Le Corbusier Le Corbusier · 1938 · ★ 3.8 · 254p · ≈ 8h · Challenging From acclaimed biographer and cultural historian, author of Balthus and Patron Saints—the first full-scale life of le Corbusier, one of the most influential, admired, and maligned architects of the twentieth century, heralded is a prophet in his lifetime, revered as a god after his death.He was a leader of the modernist movement that sought to create better living conditions and a better society… Shares: Exhibitions, Correspondence, Criticism and interpretation, History

Vite de' più eccellenti pittori, scultori et architettori Giorgio Vasari · 1759 · ★ 3.0 · 309p · ≈ 10h · Demanding In his Lives of the Artists of the Italian Renaissance, Vasari demonstrated a literary talent that outshone even his outstanding abilities as a painter and architect. Through character sketches and anecdotes he depicts Piero di Cosimo shut away in his derelict house, living only to paint; Giulio Romano's startling painting of Jove striking down the giants; and his friend Francesco Salviati, whose… Shares: Painters, Artists, Biography & Memoir, History

The moon and sixpence William Somerset Maugham · 1919 · ★ 4.1 · 273p · ≈ 9h · Challenging The Moon and Sixpence is a fictional novel heavily influenced by the life of French painter Paul Gauguin. The novel is told first-person, dipping episodically into the mind of the artist. Charles Strickland is an English stock broker, who leaves everything behind him in his middle age to live in defiant squalor in Paris as an artist. His genius is eventually recognized by a Dutch painter. Shares: Painters, Artists

Paul Klee Paul Klee · 1930 · ★ 3.8 · 111p · ≈ 3h · Challenging An emblematic figure of the early 20th century, Paul Klee participated in the expansive Avant-Garde movements in Germany and Switzerland. From the vibrant Blaue Reiter movement to Surrealism at the end of the 1930s and throughout his teaching years at the Bauhaus, he attempted to capture the organic and harmonic nature of painting by alluding to other artistic mediums such as poetry, literature,… Shares: Themes, Criticism and interpretation, Biography & Memoir

Bluebeard Kurt Vonnegut · 1987 · ★ 4.2 · 293p · ≈ 9h · Moderate Broad humor and bitter irony collide in this fictional autobiography of Rabo Karabekian, who, at age seventy-one, wants to be left alone on his Long Island estate with the secret he has locked inside his potato barn. But then a voluptuous young widow badgers Rabo into telling his life story—and Vonnegut in turn tells us the plain, heart-hammering truth about man’s careless fancy to create or… Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner Ernst Ludwig Kirchner · 1960 · 263p · ≈ 8h · Moderate 237 p. : 29 cm Shares: Exhibitions, Correspondence, Criticism and interpretation, Biography & Memoir

Matisse Henri Matisse · 1943 · ★ 4.2 · 45p · ≈ 1h · Challenging In Jazz, Matisse composes with scissors what he could no longer paint with brushes. From this limitation emerged a new kind of freedom — a whirlwind of shapes and colours, a dance that is both joyful and profound. Page after page, he cuts, paces, invents a visual language of striking intensity, somewhere between abstraction and figuration. Conceived as an artist's book, Jazz brings together the… Shares: Exhibitions, Correspondence, Criticism and interpretation

Noa Noa Paul Gauguin · 1900 · 109p · ≈ 3h · Challenging Paul Gauguin fled what he called "filthy Europe" in 1891 to what he hoped would be an unspoiled paradise, Tahiti. He painted 66 magnificent can vases during the first two years he spent there and kept notes from which he later wrote Noa Noa—a journal recording his thoughts and impressions of that time. Noa Noa—the most widely known of Gauguin's writings—is reproduced here from a rare early… Shares: Painters, Correspondence, Biography & Memoir

Max Ernst Max Ernst · 1956 · ★ 4.1 · 192p · ≈ 6h · Moderate "Max Ernst: Life and Work draws on an unprecedented collection of source material, much of it published here for the first time, to present a compelling portrait of the artist's life and an intellectual portrait of an entire period. These letters and notes by friends and contemporaries provide insight into the reception of his oeuvre, illustrate Ernst's own texts and shed light on his… Shares: Themes, Exhibitions, Biography & Memoir

The Agony and the Ecstasy Irving Stone · 1958 · ★ 4.1 · 664p · ≈ 22h · Moderate Mr. Stone gives his signature style and thought to this story of Michelangelo. He points out often in this book that Michelangelo, before beginning a work, asks what it is he is trying to capture in the moment of his painting, sculpture, or poem. So it is with Mr. Stone. He wants to portray, as close as he can find, the moments of the life of this artist. What shaped him, what he loved, what (and… Shares: Artists, Biography & Memoir, History

Time and Again Jack Finney · 1970 · ★ 3.9 · 399p · ≈ 13h · Moderate [Comment by Audrey Niffenegger, on The Guardian's website][1]: Time and Again is an original; there is nothing quite like it. It is the story of Si Morley, a commercial artist who is drawing a piece of soap one ordinary day in 1970 when a mysterious man from the US Army shows up at his Manhattan office to recruit him for a secret government project. The project turns out to involve time travel;… Shares: Artists, History

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