ANDY WARHOL by Robert Shore and ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI by Jonathan Jones will debut as the first titles in a collectible set of art books. Inspired by Giorgio Vasari’s Lives of the Artists, this new series of highly readable brief biographies will be available on March 31.

Launching with Andy Warhol and Artemisia Gentileschi, the Lives of the Artists series will continue to feature the world’s most-popular artists with Frida Kahlo by Hettie Judah (October 2020) and David Hockney by James Cahill (2021).

ARTEMISIA GENTILESCHI by Jonathan Jones (LKP Hardcover; On Sale March 31; $17.99)

Artemisia Gentileschi was the greatest female artist of the Baroque age and with words and images, she fought back against the male violence that dominated the world she lived in.

As a young woman she was raped by her tutor, and then had to endure a seven-month-long trial during which she was brutally examined by the authorities. Gentileschi was shamed in a culture where honor was everything. Yet she went on to become one of the most sought-after artists of the seventeenth century. 

Gentileschi was not just a successful artist in an age when doors were usually closed to women; she also communicated a powerful personal vision. She was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Rembrandt, a friend of Galileo, and one of the most brilliant followers of the incendiary artist Caravaggio. Now, in the 21st century, she is fulfilling the prediction she made in a letter written in 1649: “I’ll show you what a woman can do.”

Artemisia Gentileschi is timed to be published at the same time as a major exhibition of her work at the National Gallery in London in Spring 2020.

Jonathan Jones is the art critic for The Guardian newspaper. He was on the jury for the 2009 Turner Prize and is the author of Sensations: The Story of British Art from Hogarth to Banksy, as well as The Loves of the Artists: Art and Passion in the Renaissance and The Lost Battles: Leonardo, Michelangelo and the Artistic Duel that Defined the Renaissance.

ANDY WARHOL by Robert Shore (LKP Hardcover; On Sale March 31; $17.99)

After Warhol, nothing would be the same – he changed art forever, expanded our ideas of what an artist could be, and continues to be massively influential. Somewhere within the iconic images, carefully made personae, star-studded milieu, million-dollar price tags and famous quotes lies the real Andy Warhol. But who was he?

In telling the story of Warhol’s life, dissecting his existence as undisputed art-world hotshot, recreating the amazing circle that surrounded him, looking at what drove and influenced him, and tracing his path to stardom back through his early career and his awkward and unusual youth.

The Creative Director of Elephant magazine, Robert Shore unfolds the remarkable story of the multi-dimensional artist in Andy Warhol. The book is timed to the major new Warhol exhibit at the Tate Modern.

Robert Shore is the author of Post-Photography: The Artist with a Camera (2014) and Beg, Steal and Borrow: Artists against Originality (2017). He has worked as creative director of the contemporary visual culture brand Elephant and as deputy editor of Art Review magazine.