Edgar Degas Books

Among the best known and most immediately recognizable images in art history are the superb studies and portraits of ballet dancers by Edgar Degas (1834–1917). One of the most popular of nineteenth-century artists, Degas was fascinated by movement, especially that of dancers. His highly trained eye enabled him to capture the dancer's grace and power as well as subtleties and nuances of pose and execution, making his pictures as true in fact as they are in spirit.This original compilation includes 41 full-page and six half-page black-and-white Degas drawings of dancers. Some are finished works, others are sketches or studies for future works. Singly, in pairs, and in groups, the dancers appear on stage, in the classroom, and at rehearsals — pirouetting, executing grand battements and portes de bras, practicing at the barre, and adjusting their costumes in moments of repose.Art enthusiasts and balletomanes who prize Degas's pictures of dancers will delight in the sublime beauty and mastery of expression of these images. This inexpensive edition allows lovers of art and the dance to savor these enchanting, beautifully reproduced drawings.

Degas's scenes of the ballet seem to summarize the vitality and the fragile glamour of the modern spectacle. The text which accompanies the illustrations looks at Degas's varied use of media and discusses the in-between world of theatre wings where fact and fiction collide.

Der neue Band der erotischen Skizzenbücher zeigt über 30 selten gezeigte Aktstudien des französischen Ballett-Malers Edgar Degas. Er war ein geradezu körpervernarrter Frauenmaler, der mit seinen erotischen Skizzen, die er überwiegend in den Pariser Bordellen anfertigte, freimütige und selbstvergessene Momente seiner Modelle einfing. Nicht zuletzt durch die außergewöhnliche Gestaltung, die an ein Originalskizzenbuch erinnert, wird aus diesem Band ein ganz besonderer Kunstgenuss.