Best Books About Artists in 2020 – A Pick List by Hauser & Wirth Publishers

recommended by Romas Viesulas

2020 has been a fine year for artists’ voices, exceptional art, scholarship, design, and bookmaking, all of which are at the heart of Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ mission. With the special access granted by artists to their writings and archives, the gallery’s publishing program features more than twenty-five titles per year while the backlist comprises monographs, artists’ books, and exhibition catalogs – often bringing new and overlooked aspects of an artist’s creative practice into focus. Here, Michaela Unterdörfer, Director of Publishing, chooses five definitive titles published this year.

  • 1

    Buy

    Richard Jackson
    by John Welchman, Dagny Corcoran & Richard Jackson

    A highly comprehensive and in-depth title showcasing Hauser & Wirth's editorial approach to artists and their archives.

  • 2

    Buy

    Young, Gifted and Black: A New Generation of Artists: The Lumpkin-Boccuzzi Family Collection of Cont
    by Antwaun Sargent, Thomas Lax, Jamillah James, Jessica Brown, Graham Boettcher, Connie H. Choi, Anthon

    This book features a handful of artists from the Hauser & Wirth family — Mark Bradford & Glenn Ligon —and presents a number of fresh curatorial voices.

  • 3

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    Maria Lassnig: Letters to Hans Ulrich Obrist: Living with Art Stops One Wilting!
    by Hans Ulrich Obrist, Peter Pakesch, Hans Werner Poschauko & Maria Lassnig

    Connects to the forthcoming Hauser & Wirth biography of Maria Lassnig by Natalie Lettner, along with the 2009 H&W title ‘Maria Lassnig: The Pen is the Sister of the Brush, Diaries 1943–1997,’ which was edited and introduced by renowned art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist.

  • 4

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    Luchita Hurtado
    by Karen Marta, Hans Ulrich Obrist & Luchita Hurtado

    In August 2020 we bid farewell to Luchita Hurtado, an artist associated with a vast network of internationally renowned artists and intellectuals, including members of the Dynaton group, the Mexican muralists, and the Surrealists. To mark her centenary, Hauser & Wirth have published an account of her extraordinary life, as related in a series of interviews with art critic Hans Ulrich Obrist, from beginnings in Venezuela, to New York, Mexico, and finally to California and New Mexico. Hurtado made the TIME list of 100 most influential people, and crossed paths with some of the most celebrated artists of the 20th century, such as Leonora Carrington, Marcel Duchamp, Arshile Gorky, Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Agnes Martin, Robert Motherwell, Isamu Noguchi, Man Ray, Mark Rothko, and Rufino Tamayo, all of whom are referenced and remembered in this beautiful book, available via Hauser & Wirth Publishers.

  • 5

    Buy

    Philip Guston Now (D.A.P./NATIONAL)
    by Harry Cooper, Mark Godfrey, Alison de Lima Greene, Kate Nesin, Philip Guston, Peter Fischli, Trenton

    This title is as an addition to the definitive resources available on Philip Guston, complementing the numerous books that Hauser & Wirth Publishers has produced on the artist; it also highlights other artist voices—including Glenn Ligon—and how Guston’s work has inspired them.

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