The Story of Art

Description

The Story of Art, one of the best-known and best-loved books on art ever written, has been a world bestseller for over half a century. Professor Gombrich's clear and engaging text combines with hundreds of full-colour illustrations to trace the history of art in an unfolding narrative, from primitive cave paintings to controversial art works of the present day. This pocket edition presents The Story of Art in a compact format with an entirely new design, giving Gombrich's classic work a new acessibility and opening it up to an even wider readership than it currently enjoys.

Sir Ernst Gombrich's (1909 2001) standing in the world of art and his popularity with experts and a vast general readership alike remain unrivalled. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and many titles have become classics. Ernst Gombrich was born in Vienna and came to England in 1936. He spent the larger part of his working life at the University of London's Warburg Institute, where he was Director from 1959 until his retirement in 1976. His 'retirement' saw the publication of numerous books, reviews and articles, and the conferring of many international honours, including a knighthood and the Order of Merit. In 1994 the city of Frankfurt awarded him the Goethe Prize. His bestselling book The Story of Art, first published over fifty years ago, continues to delight and inform students of art around the world. Professor Gombrich's books are models of good art-historical writing, and reflect his deep and abiding concern with the standards and values of our cultural heritage.

'This is a book which, widely read as it will certainly be, may well affect the thought of a generation. Gombrich writes conversationally and intimately. His learning, though very perceptible to any student of the subject, is worn lightly, but he has something new to say on almost every subject. He can illuminate with a few words the whole atmosphere of a period.' T J Boase, Times Literary Supplement, reviewing the 1st edition, 27 January 1950 'The country's bestselling book on art, never out of print, still in demand (and not just by students) and one of the few "gift books" that actually gets read. The work is not so simplistic as the title implies, but it is this very title that rendered the book enormously attractive in 1950 to a new sort of book buyer: the self-educator. This field was set to grow, publishers eagerly wooing punters into buying the one big book on every impossibly massive but key subject. But with Gombrich, art was all sewn up.' The Times