The artist's complex life framed in a book

Book Day is here and we're going to spend a few minutes looking for interesting books that stop to consider the complex personality of unforgettable artists. Enigmatic, troubled lives like those of artists such as Marina Abramovic, the enigmatic Banksy, Da Vinci, Chillida or Frida Khalo. Understanding the work of many artists means diving into those unforgettable episodes that marked everything they made.

Marina Abramovic's dark childhood

One of the most eagerly awaited books has been Marina Abramovic's memoir Walk Through Walls: A Memoir (2016). An autobiography in which she tells us, in her own words, stories as dark as the time she tried to kill her epileptic brother or played Russian roulette at 14. An easy read in which she recounts in detail many of the episodes of her life, from her birth in post-Second World War Belgrade to her performance The Artist Is Present, which she staged at MoMA in 2010. A milestone for the art world, with more than 750,000 people queuing up to sit in a chair and look Abramovic straight in the eye. On one side, Marina Abramovic came from the long, extravagant aristocratic tradition of her mother's family, which had been betrayed by her own mother, who handed all the family property over to the Party in a show of communism. Her father came from a very poor background, but what he liked were women, cigars and military strategy. A contradictory, difficult childhood that would mark all of her work. While the people of Belgrade lived piled up in tiny flats, the Abramovics were in a large apartment in the centre that had belonged to a Jewish family persecuted during the Nazi occupation of the city. There were many books in that apartment, and Marina even had a small space where she could take refuge from that family atmosphere: her art studio.

Banksy, the art of breaking the rules

Banksy, el arte rompe las reglas (Editorial Mediterrània), the first book about the artist in Spanish and Catalan, was presented recently. A reissue of the edition launched by the British publisher Wayland in 2014 and written by Hettie Bingham. A curious book, because the best kept secret is still kept: who is Banksy? Only two very basic and unproven facts are mentioned, that he is a man and that he is thought to be from Bristol. All you can talk about is speculation, like the theory that he could be a collective, or the guesses that have dared to name names, pointing, among others, at Damien Hirst himself. But the book focuses on how this enigmatic artist thinks, how he works and how he acts. It also goes over his career from his beginnings in the 90s to the present day. It tells us about his main artworks, but it also looks at questions such as the legality of street art or the divide between those who consider Banksy nothing more than a vandal. An edition in which Banksy is defined as a genius who brings art together, who always uses humour as a powerful weapon. An artist who puts his strong message to people far removed from conventional art.

The enigmatic Frida

Another of the most harrowing biographies is the one about the artist Frida Kahlo by Gérard de Cortanze, published by Paidós. A book that analyses her highly original painting. Frida Kahlo. La belleza terrible shows in her brushstrokes her political choices, her physical pain and her love for Diego. A woman who managed to create a forceful, colourful pictorial universe. The book is neither an essay nor a biography in the classic sense of the word, but rather a walk through her work and her life. Madness and mystery in the life of that young Mexican woman who, in September 1925, has an accident that will completely change her life. Tortured by physical pain but swept away by her tumultuous love affairs, she was able to create a powerful body of painting.

Chillida's work and life

Another of the biographies that brings us closer to another singular artist is Una mirada sobre Eduardo Chillida by Edorta Kortadi Olano, published by Editorial Síntesis. A book that talks about the complexity of the ways of looking at and reading Chillida's sculpture that have developed and settled over time and from different cultures. The author mixes biography and artistic production and unravels the main lines of his sculpture. Chillida's life and work are clear, classical, balanced, simple and deep.

The magic of Leonardo da Vinci

Finally, we recommend a classic, the biography of Leonardo da Vinci by Frank Zöllner and Johannes Nathan, published by Taschen. One of the most gifted minds of all time, examined exhaustively in these two volumes. A magnificent book with full-page details of Leonardo's masterpieces that covers his life and his work with a catalogue raisonné of all his paintings, both surviving and lost, and texts describing their state of conservation. It also includes an extensive catalogue of 663 of his drawings, arranged by category: architecture, technical, anatomical, figures, proportions, cartography…

We hope you enjoy these recommendations. And you, what art book have you read that you'd recommend to us?