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I would like to alert my readers to a new book on the neglected Austrian Expressionist artist Emma Bormann (1887-1974), by her grandson Andreas Johns, The Art of Emma Bormann , published by Ariadne Press in 2016. Emma Bormann, Universit�t in Groningen Woodcut, 1922 Emma Bormann's art was vibrant, and her life too was unusual. She travelled widely in Europe and Asia, and spent the years 1939-1950 in China. Later she lived in Tokyo and in Riverside, California, where she died.

Charles-Fran�ois Daubigny was born in Paris in 1817. One of the leading artists of the Barbizon School, Daubigny is a significant fore-runner of Impressionism. Because of the impressionistic nature of his oils, which seemed unfinished to the tastemakers of the day, his works were criticized as "rough sketches". Charles Chaplin, Daubigny Etching, 1862 B�raldi 3 Daubigny was a very active printmaker, creating 127 etchings, aquatints, and drypoints, 18 clich�s-verre, and 4 lithographs. I have six of his etchings to share with you. Charles-Fran�ois Daubigny, Le marais Etching, 1851 Delteil/Melot 84 The earliest etching I have by Daubigny is Le marais, dating from 1851 though my copy is from the 1874 printing for the Gazette des Beaux-Arts. Although this is already no. 84 in the catalogue raisonn� of Daubigny's etchings, it is actually right at the beginning of his true career as an original etcher, many of the earlier works being illustrative plates of little significance. I

Starting from 1905 and working up to a crescendo in the 1920s, German art saw an incredible flowering of brilliance in the early decades of the last century. The art movement which encapsulates the work of many different artists and smaller aesthetic cross-currents is called German Expressionism. The formation of the Br�cke artists� group in Dresden by Ernst Ludwig Kirchner, Erich Heckel, Karl Schmidt-Rottluff and Fritz Bleyl in 1905 is usually seen as the starting pistol for the whole Expressionist movement. Things developed very quickly from there. Emil Nolde and Max Pechstein joined Br�cke the following year, and Vassily Kandinsky and Oskar Kokoschka began working in a similar vein. Karl Schmidt-Rottluff, Elbhafen Lithograph, 1907 Wassily Kandinsky, Orientalisches Woodcut, 1911 Wassily Kandinsky, Motif aus improvisation 25: The Garden of Love Woodcut, 1911 Oskar Kokoschka, Madchenbildnis Lithograph, 1920 Lists of the major artists of German Expressionism usually include all the arti

The Book of Revelation (L'Apocalypse selon Saint Jean) is almost too rich in imagery for artistic interpretation, which hasn't stopped artists from trying! One very satisfying version is that published in 1969 by Simon S�gal. This project about the end of the world was undertaken at the end of S�gal's life. He was born into a Jewish family in Bialystok, Poland (then part of the Russian Empire, so it is a moot point whether S�gal should be regarded as having Polish or Russian origin) in 1898. After WWI, S�gal emigrated to Berlin, moving to France in 1926 and becoming a naturalized French citizen in 1949. L'Apocalypse: The Lamb The expressionist art of Simon S�gal was influenced by that of Chaim Soutine, Georges Rouault, and Marc Chagall, and echoes of all three can be seen in S�gal's lithographs for L'Apocalypse. I very much admire these vibrantly colourful works, with their vivid depictions of St John's phantasmagorical vision of the end of the world. L'

The death of Ellsworth Kelly on 27 December 2015 was perhaps not a surprise - he had been ill for some time with pulmonary disease - but it still comes as a real sadness. Born in Newburgh, New York, on 31 May 1933, Ellsworth Kelly studied art in Boston, and then at the Beaux-Arts, Paris, under the G.I. Bill. As painter, printmaker, draughtsman and sculptor, Kelly was one of the great masters of twentieth-century art. Ellsworth Kelly lived in France for a time, and has always been appreciated there, exhibiting with the Galerie Maeght, who published a number of his lithographs in the art revue Derri�re le Miroir (DLM). The art of Ellsworth Kelly was influenced by modern avant-garde artists such as Arp, Brancusi, and his fellow-American Alexander Calder, but also by Matisse. Flower (Hommage � Aim� et Marguerite Maeght) Lithograph, 1982 This flower study, contributed to issue 250 of DLM, reminds us that Kelly's art was not all about hard-edge minimalism. His bold, simple plant studies

Sonia Delaunay was born Sara Stern in 1885 in Odessa in Ukraine, into a relatively-poor Jewish family. At the age of 5 she was adopted by a wealthy uncle, Henri Terk, and renamed Sofia Terk (though she was always known as Sonia). She doesn't appear to have had much if any contact with her birth parents after this point. She grew up in St. Petersburg in wealthy, educated circles, becoming fluent in English, German, and French. In 1904 she went to Germany to study at the Karlsruhe Academy, moving two years later to Paris to study at the Acad�mie de la Palette. Sonia's early paintings, mainly highly-coloured portraits of people in her circle, were influenced by the work of Paul Gauguin, but also by the German Expressionists of Die Br�cke, and by the Fauves, who were just exploding onto the Paris art scene. She met and married the art dealer William Uhde, in what was essentially a marriage of convenience; Uhde was gay, and Sonia wanted to stay in Paris. Uhde put on her first show i