True Colours / Farbe bekennen
Old Paintings in a New Era
The art of showing one’s colours: a new look at old paintings in gripping texts
Profound factual discussions of current political topics such as war, dictatorship, and populism as well as female autonomy, urban visions and social cohesion
Famous paintings of European art history – for novices and experts
Great art poses great political and personal questions. And thus, it has moved people throughout history and continues to do so. Kia Vahland seeks out current themes in famous historical paintings. Pablo Picasso, Peter Paul Rubens and Artemisia Gentileschi were concerned with how humanity could be saved from war, violence, and the abuse of power. Exceptional artists like them not only show suffering, dictatorship and oppression, they also search for glimmers of hope and perspectives for action....
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Great art poses great political and personal questions. And thus, it has moved people throughout history and continues to do so. Kia Vahland seeks out current themes in famous historical paintings. Pablo Picasso, Peter Paul Rubens and Artemisia Gentileschi were concerned with how humanity could be saved from war, violence, and the abuse of power. Exceptional artists like them not only show suffering, dictatorship and oppression, they also search for glimmers of hope and perspectives for action. Wassily Kandinsky celebrates cultural intoxication, Lotte Laserstein friendship in dark times, Titian the pride of a republic. The history of art helps to see the present more clearly and shape it.
2023, 101 pages
Persons
Kia Vahland
Author
Art historian and art critic Dr. Kia Vahland is an expert on the Renaissance and editor for culture and humanities at Süddeutsche Zeitung. She has authored books on Sebastiano del Piombo, Michelangelo, Raphael as well as numerous essays on art history and is an expert on Leonardo da Vinci. Kia Vahland teaches at the Institute for Art History at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich and at the German School of Journalism. Her works have received numerous accolades including the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung’s Michael Althen Prize (2016). The Da Vinci Women. The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo’s Art was nominated for the Leipzig Book Fair Prize 2019.
Kia Vahland
Author
Art historian and art critic Dr. Kia Vahland is an expert on the Renaissance and editor for culture and humanities at Süddeutsche...
© Alessandra Schellnegger
OTHER PUBLICATIONS
Latest first
Year of Publication: 2025
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2025
Art (Hi)stories
The stories of art history are more relevant than ever. The creators of the great works in the history of art tackled existential personal and political questions in turbulent times. In her essays, Kia Vahland tells the stories of famous historical paintings and explores their significance for contemporary debates. Such as Gustave Courbet’s respect for the ocean or Jacob Isaackszoon van...
Year of Publication: 2024
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2024
Caspar David Friedrich and the Vast Horizon
Caspar David Friedrich didn’t make things easy for the viewers of his paintings. He was always putting something in the way: a figure with their back to the viewer, a stone, the root of a tree. With his art of contradictions, the Romantic from Greifswald became the painter of longing, particularly for Germans, a prime example being his Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (ca. 1818). But the...
Year of Publication: 2022
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2022
The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm
»It is incredibly beautiful here,« Johann Wolfgang von Goethe raved about the park that Leopold III Frederick Franz, Duke of Anhalt-Dessau created near Dessau in the late 18th century. »It is (...) like a fairy tale being recited for you.« The Dessau-Wörlitz Garden Realm provides refuge from the perils of life, an experience that visitors have been making since its...
Year of Publication: 2021
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2021
Shadow Painters
No age has mastered the art of staging like the Baroque – and none has produced such influential opponents: the Italian Caravaggio and the Spaniard Diego Velázquez rebelled against beautiful appearances. They defy colourful extravagance with a look at the darker side of life. Kia Vahland vividly talks about the lives and works of these two epochal painters and places their unruly...
Year of Publication: 2019
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2019
Points of View
The world is constantly changing – but the big questions that preoccupy human beings remain the same. Kia Vahland takes a new look at the works of the Old Masters and finds that the themes they address are the same ones that concern us today. With her insightful and concise discussions of key works from the canon of Western art history, Vahland illustrates that Titian, Rembrandt, Caspar...
Year of Publication: 2019
Kia VahlandYear of Publication: 2019
The Da Vinci Women
Leonardo da Vinci is considered modern for examining nature and being the inventor of a number of visionary technical instruments. But that’s not all. The artist also revolutionised European...
Rights sold to:
English world rights (Black Dog & Leventhal/Hachette Books), Brazilian Portuguese rights (Editora Novo Seculo), Portuguese rights (Temas e Debates), Turkey (Marti), Greece (Nissos)