Drawings and Paintings

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Pub Date Jul 11 2016 | Archive Date Sep 28 2016

Description

"To draw everything is good, to draw everything is better still," declared Adolph Menzel, one of nineteenth-century Berlin's premier artists. In keeping with his motto, Menzel exhibited tremendous powers of observation, technical perfection, and an interest in a wide range of subjects. This volume contains 98 black-and-white images and 32 color plates of his works, many of which have rarely been seen outside of Germany.
The first major naturalistic artist of his era, Menzel came of age in a country still in the grip of Goethe's romanticism. In addition to founding Germany's realistic school, the artist laid the groundwork for the development of Expressionism. His skillfully rendered illustrations faithfully re-create details of anatomy, costume, and composition. This volume's drawings and paintings were selected by Dinotopia author James Gurney, who also provides an informative Introduction. Serious students of fine art as well as those with a more casual interest will rejoice in this original compilation of extraordinary images by an unjustly overlooked artist.

"To draw everything is good, to draw everything is better still," declared Adolph Menzel, one of nineteenth-century Berlin's premier artists. In keeping with his motto, Menzel exhibited tremendous...


Available Editions

EDITION Paperback
ISBN 9780486497327
PRICE $27.95 (USD)

Average rating from 8 members


Featured Reviews

Well researched. This book is full of beautiful illustrations of his work.

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It's been a real pleasure to read this book that treats a great artist so little known nowadays. Actually the text is occupying only about 20 pages of the book, tells us about the artist's social and professional life and about how this, partly unpublished material was collected. As a bonus, it is James Gurney to present us Menzel giving an unusual insight to the artist's life, Instead of a dry, boring biography this kind of introduction is very interesting and entertaining, it contains also some funny but also shocking notes. Gurney who himself is an excellent artist and teacher (I own some of his instructional books,). knows what kind of information is the most valuable to art students, so he underlines the eager will of Menzel to draw literally everything, including dead people, sleeping people but even a man on the toilet The drawings that fill the book are really beautiful, I enjoyed especially the portraits, made with a loose but very powerful technique. .

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I'm a self-taught artist, as well as a passionate student of art history, and discovering previously unknown (to me) artists always inspires me. I have not known of Adolph Menzel and was delighted to get introduced to this artist. As with all Dover books, there's a great combination of information about the artist and his works. I find is drawings and watercolors particularly interesting and something to study further. Thank you for the opportunity to review this title.

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As a huge lover of art who likes to dabble into it herself, I completely enjoyed this book. I loved all the plates and liked the variety between full color and black and white. I left an excerpt of this book on my blog at Januarygray.net and also shared on my FB page, Twitter and Amazon. Thank you.

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I'm really amazed that I had never heard of Adolph Menzel before requesting this book from Netgalley. His work has almost all of the characteristics that attract me the most in art – clear-eyed realism, compelling subject matter, and a gift for portraying that subject matter in a non-stereotypical manner. He's almost the artist I would have liked to be. I loved this collection.

The usual disclaimer: I received this book via Netgalley for review.

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