Migliori Libri sullo Still Life

THE INSTANT SUNDAY TIMES BESTSELLER AND BBC RADIO 4 BOOK AT BEDTIME PICK ‘Sheer joy’ Graham Norton, author of Home Stretch ‘Utterly beautiful … filled with hope’ Joanna Cannon, author of Three Things About Elsie ‘A bear-hug of a book’ Rachel Joyce, author of Miss Benson’s Beetle From the author of When God was a Rabbit and Tin Man, Still Life is a big-hearted story of people brought together by love, war, art and the ghost of E.M. Forster. 1944, in the ruined wine cellar of a Tuscan villa, as bombs fall around them, two strangers meet and share an extraordinary evening. Ulysses Temper is a young British soldier, Evelyn Skinner is a sexagenarian art historian and possible spy. She has come to Italy to salvage paintings from the wreckage and relive memories of the time she encountered EM Forster and had her heart stolen by an Italian maid in a particular Florentine room with a view. Evelyn’s talk of truth and beauty plants a seed in Ulysses’ mind that will shape the trajectory of his life – and of those who love him – for the next four decades. Moving from the Tuscan Hills and piazzas of Florence, to the smog of London’s East End, Still Life is a sweeping, joyful novel about beauty, love, family and fate. ‘Four course nourishment for all Winman fans’ Patrick Gale, author of Take Nothing With You ‘Extraordinary . . . my book of the year’ Liz Nugent, author of Our Little Cruelties ‘The kind of story that bolsters the heart and soul’ Donal Ryan, author of Strange Flowers Sunday Times bestseller 09/06/2021

Still life is one of the great art forms. The first still life photograph was created around 1827, more than a decade before the news of photography’s invention was announced in Paris and London in 1839. There is a resurgence of interest in the still life genre as the digital age transforms the medium. A sumptuous visual and narrative survey of the innovative ways in which photographers throughout the eras have explored the traditional genre of still life. An introductory essay is followed by an illuminating sequence and juxtaposition of plates showing how still life has served as both a conventional and an experimental form during periods of significant aesthetic and technological change. Illustrating the above are 19thC masterpieces by practitioners such as Hippolyte Bayard and Roger Fenton, 20thC examples from Irving Penn and Edward Weston, and a sampling of contemporary artists, some recalling styles from the past.