Book description
About Modern Art
is the long-awaited collection of David Sylvester's essays on
twentieth-century artists. This is not dry, remote, academic criticism:
it has an immediacy and passion which leave one with an inspiring sense
of the relevance and importance of art to life. David Sylvester was
born in 1924 in London and lived mainly there. His published books
include Henry Moore (1968), Interviews with Francis Bacon (1975), Rene
Magritte (1992), the five-volume catalogue raisonne of Magritte
(1992-1-4-5), Looking at Giacometti (1994, also available in Pimlico)
and Looking Back at Francis Bacon (2000). From 1951 he curated or
co-curated numerous major exhibitions at museums in London, Paris,
Venice, New York and Washington, including Dada and Surrealism Reviewed
and one-man shows of Picasso, Laurens, Soutine, Miro, Magritte,
Giacometti, de Kooning and Francis Bacon. His films include Matisse and
his Model (1968) and Magritte: the False Mirror (1969). He was awarded
C. B.E. in 1983, and was a Commandeur de l'Ordre des Arts et des
Lettres, an Honourary Fellow of the Royal Academy and a Senior Fellow of
the Royal College of Art. In 1993 he became the first critic ever to
receive a Golden Lion at the Venice Biennale. He died in June 2001.
