Fiona MacCarthy Knihy

* A Times and New Statesman Book of the Year * * BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week * * Illustrated with over 130 colour photographs and drawings * 'A masterpiece.' Edmund de Waal 'Commanding, intelligent, gripping.' The Times From 1910 to 1930 Gropius was at the very centre of European modern art and design, as the founder of the German art school, the Bauhaus. Yet Gropius's beliefs and affiliations left him little choice but to leave Germany when Hitler came to power. In this riveting book, Fiona MacCarthy draws on new research to re-evaluate Gropius's work and life. From his shattering experiences in the First World War to his turbulent marriage to the notorious Alma Mahler and the tragic early death of their daughter, MacCarthy leads us through his disorientating years in London, to his final peaceful and productive life in America. This is biography at its finest and most vivid.

Fiona MacCarthy's definitive biography republished by Byron's own publisher.

Since his death in 1896, William Morris has come to be regarded as one of the giants of the Victorian era. The author has managed to encompass all the different facets of Morris' complex character, shedding light on his immense creative powers as artist and designer of furniture, fabrics, wallpaper, stained glass, and as a poet, and novelist.

Mention the Bauhaus and iconic design objects such as a Marianne Brandt teapot, an Anni Albers weaving or a Marcel Breuer chair come to mind. But the Bauhaus was more than an art school - it was the birth of a whole new philosophy of art. Fiona MacCarthy argues that Walter Gropius's visionary ideas still influence the way we live, work, and think today. From 1910 to 1930 Gropius was at the very centre of European modern art and design. The Bauhaus stood for delight, experiment and creative freedom. Gropius gathered talents that included Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, Josef Albers, and Laszlo Moholy-Nagy into an art school that became an alternative way of life. Once Hitler came to power in 1933 Gropius's situation became increasingly untenable. The Nazis opposed everything the Bauhaus stood for. Gropius's beliefs and his affiliations left him little choice but to leave Germany. His story is one of exile in a century of buffeting and conflict. MacCarthy draws on new research to re-evaluate Gropius's work and life. She brings the reader into the world of an inspiring, energetic man and illuminates the events and people that shaped him - from his shattering experiences in World War One, to his turbulent marriage to the notorious Alma Mahler and the tragic early death of their daughter Manon, through his disorientating years in London, to his final peaceful and productive life with Ise Gropius and his late starring role in twentieth-century architecture and design in America. She challenges more recent views of Gropius as a doctrinaire modernist, exploring his intellectual and emotional life with psychological insight, wit and sympathy

Eric Gill, who died in 1940, was among the greatest English artist-craftsmen of the 20th century: a typographer and lettercutter of genius, and a master in the art of sculpture and wood-engraving. In this biography, the problems and contradictions of Gill the man and Gill the artist are examined.

The Simple Life (1981) was Fiona MacCarthy's first book, written while she was the Guardian's design correspondent (and before her acclaimed lives of Eric Gill, William Morris, and Edward Burne-Jones.) It tells of a venturesome effort to enact an Edwardian Utopia in a small town in the Cotswolds.The leader of this endeavour was progressive-minded architect Charles Robert Ashbee, who in 1888 founded the Guild of Handicraft in Whitechapel, specialising in metalworking, jewellery and furniture and informed by the desire to improve society. In 1902 Ashbee and his East London comrades removed the Guild to Chipping Campden in Gloucestershire, hoping to construct a socialistic rural idyll. MacCarthy explores the impact of the experiment on the lives of the group and on the little town they occupied - tracing the Guild's fortunes and misfortunes, hilarious and grave, and the many fellow idealists and artists who were involved (among them William Morris, Roger Fry, and Sidney and Beatrice Webb.)

Alan Fletcher (1931 - 2006) is one of the most influential and respected figures in British design. Fletcher became renowned as one of the most creative graphic designers on the British scene. This book offers an introduction to the alphabet, expressing the pleasure he took in turning work and play into the same activity.

As part of a year-long series of celebrations around its 175th anniversary in 2012, this title explores key facets of the Royal College of Art over three centuries, providing insight into the world's oldest art and design school in continuous operation. It explores the evolution of this renowned institution, since its founding in 1837.

The angels on our Christmas cards, the stained glass in our churches, the great paintings in our galleries - Edward Burne-Jones' work is all around us. Winner of the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for biography, this book gives an account of the life of Edward Burne-Jones, the greatest British artist of the second half of the nineteenth century.

Arcyciekawy, bogato ilustrowany portret jednego z najważniejszych architektów XX wieku, Waltera Gropiusa. Autorka, uznawana w Wielkiej Brytanii za mistrzynię biografii, śledzi nie tylko twórczość i koncepcje Gropiusa, ale też przybliża jego historię osobistą, nie mniej intrygującą od twórczości. Przy okazji otrzymujemy całą panoramę życia kulturalnego i społecznego Niemiec od końca XIX do lat sześćdziesiątych XX wieku, na tle której pojawiają się najwybitniejsze postacie sztuki i architektury tamtych czasów.