501 Great Artists: A Comprehensive Guide to the Giants of the Art World

An illustrated compendium of biographical profiles sheds new light on the lives and careers of more than five hundred of the world's great artists, spanning in time from classical antiquity to the modern era, accompanied an analysis of each artist's work and cultural influence, as well as reproductions of some of their best-known works.

(back cover)
Includes: Josef Albers  Francis Bacon  Giacomo Balla  Joseph Beuys  Sandro Botticelli  Georges Braque  Caravaggio  Mary Stevenson Cassatt  Paul Cézanne  Marc Chagall  Chuck Close  Gustave Courbet  Salvador Dalí  Leonardo da Vinci  Edgar Degas  Robert Delaunay  Otto Dix  Jean Dubuffet  Thomas Eakins  El Greco  Max Ernst  Jan van Eyck  Lucio Fontana  Fra Angelico  Lucian Freud  Thomas Gainsborough  Paul Gauguin  Alberto Giacometti  Giotto  Vincent van Gogh  Andy Goldsworth  Francisco Goya  George Grosz  Frans Hals  Barbara Hepworth  Ando Tokitaro Hiroshige  Damien Hirst  Katsushika Hokusai  Winslow Homer  Edward Hopper  Frida Kahlo  Yves Klein  Carl Larsson  René Magritte  Kasmir Malevich  Edouard Manet  Henri Matisse  Amedeo Modigliani  Michelangelo  Piet Mondrian  Claude Monet  Berthe Morisot  Edvard Munch  Paul Nash  Georgia O Keeffe  Chris Ofili  Pablo Picasso  Piero della Francesca  Jackson Pollock  Raphael  Paula Rego  Rembrandt van Rijn  Pierre-Auguste Renoir  Diego Rivera  Auguste Rodin  Mark Rothko  Peter Paul Rubens  Cindy Sherman  Frank Stella  Giovanni Tiepolo  Titian  J. M.W. Turner  Diego Velázquez  Andy Warhol  James McNeill Whistler  Rachel Whiteread  Anders Zorn

(front flap)
This enthralling, in-depth guide to 501 outstanding painters, sculptors, mixed media artists, photomontage artists, and installation artists spans the centuries as it describes artists from all around the world. 501 Great Artists presents an informal illustrated history of art in the form of concise, fact-filled artists biographies. Each biographical entry includes an assessment of the artist s creative innovations and cultural impact.

Entertaining and thoroughly researched, this information-filled volume covers the history of art from Renaissance muralists to Impressionist painters, and from Cubist mixed media artists to postmodern video artists. An illustration accompanying each biographical entry presents a portrait of the artist, and a supplementary list directs readers to the galleries and museums that exhibit the artist s most famous works. An illuminating quotation by the artist or an art critic offers additional insights into the artist s psyche and body of work.

Compiled by the well-known English author and art teacher Professor Stephen Farthing, and written by an international team of art critics, art historians, and artists, 501 Great Artists provides readers with a truly comprehensive guide to the art world s most important men and women. Included are superb reproductions of many of the masterpieces discussed in the text, as well as illustrations of the artists at work in their studios. Art lovers and museum visitors looking for a reliable reference source, will turn to this book time and time again for information about the individuals behind the world s great art masterpieces.

(back flap)
Stephen Farthing is a painter and the Rootstein Hopkins Research Professor in Drawing at the University of the Arts, London. In 1990 he was elected Master of Ruskin School of Drawing at the University of Oxford, and a Professional Fellow at St. Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 1998 he was elected member of the Royal Academy of Arts, London. He originally studied at St. Martin s School of Art, London, gaining an M.A. in painting from the Royal College of Art, London. He has been teaching fine art since 1977. His paintings are exhibited in galleries throughout the world, in particular, in the U.K., Japan, and South America.