Sebastian Schütze Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen 

Around 1900, a small group of influential patrons, critics, writers, and artists turned Weimar; the capital of the small Duchy of Sachsen-Weimar-Eisenach in present-day Germany, into a utopian centre of modern art and thought. Artists like Max Klinger, Edvard Munch, and Ludwig von Hofmann, and writers like André Gide, Hugo von Hofmannsthal, and Rainer Maria Rilke sought to create a “New Weimar” and position Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900) at its head as the radical prophet of modernity.

In 1902, two years after Nietzsche's death, Max Klinger was commissioned to carve his portrait. Only three monumental bronze versions were cast, one of which is now in the collection of the National Gallery of Canada. With this sculpture in focus, Friedrich Nietzsche and the Artists of the New Weimar shows how Klinger and his patrons invented the “official” Nietzsche, transforming a highly expressionist portrait into an idealized classical cult image.

Softcover | 120 pages
20.5 x 24 cm (8 x 9.4 in.)
Publication Date: 2019

Sonia Del Re and Kirsten Appleyard

Delve into Canada’s premier collection of international drawings and discover never-before-seen artworks straight from the vault. Founded in 1921 and the first of its kind in the country, the National Gallery of Canada’s Department of Prints and Drawings boasts ever-evolving, world-class holdings of historical drawings dating from the 15th to the 20th century, in every medium – from graphite to ink, pastel to watercolour. Enjoy this rare opportunity to view works by Gustav Klimt, Théodore Géricault and Élisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun, among many others, including newly acquired sheets and little-known but historically significant drawings that for conservation reasons are usually kept in the dark. The selection is wide-ranging, featuring everything from preparatory works for paintings to subjects drawn from history and mythology, portraits, landscapes, forays into abstraction and poignant explorations of the human condition.

Celebrate the legacy of the Department of Prints and Drawings first-hand through this captivating exhibition and richly illustrated catalogue marking its recent 100-year anniversary.

Gathered Leaves: Discoveries from the Drawings Vault is organized by the National Gallery of Canada. The publication is made possible with support from the Getty Foundation through its “The Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century” initiative.

Hardcover | 203 pages
Publication Date: 2024

Edited by Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle with contributions by Elizabeth C. Childs, Dario Gamboni, Linda Goddard, Claire Guitton, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, and Alastair Wright

Accompanying the ground-breaking exhibition Gauguin: Portraits, this publication marks the first in-depth investigation of Gauguin’s portraits, revealing how the artist expanded the possibilities of the genre in new and exciting ways.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) broke with accepted conventions and challenged audiences to expand their understanding of visual expression. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in his portraits, a genre he remained engaged with throughout all phases of his career.

A welcome addition to the scholarship on one of the 19th century’s most innovative and controversial artists, this richly illustrated volume contains more than 160 illustrations, presenting fascinating insights into the crucial role that portraiture played in Gauguin’s overall artistic practice.

Hardcover | 272 pages
24.5 x 31 cm (9.6 x 12.2 in.)
Publication Date: 2019

Edited by Cornelia Homburg and Christopher Riopelle with contributions by Elizabeth C. Childs, Dario Gamboni, Linda Goddard, Claire Guitton, Jean-David Jumeau-Lafond, and Alastair Wright

Accompanying the ground-breaking exhibition Gauguin: Portraits, this publication marks the first in-depth investigation of Gauguin’s portraits, revealing how the artist expanded the possibilities of the genre in new and exciting ways.

Paul Gauguin (1848–1903) broke with accepted conventions and challenged audiences to expand their understanding of visual expression. Nowhere is this phenomenon more evident than in his portraits, a genre he remained engaged with throughout all phases of his career.

A welcome addition to the scholarship on one of the 19th century’s most innovative and controversial artists, this richly illustrated volume contains more than 160 illustrations, presenting fascinating insights into the crucial role that portraiture played in Gauguin’s overall artistic practice.

Hardcover | 272 pages
24.5 x 31 cm (9.6 x 12.2 in.)
Publication Date: 2019

Edited by Adam Welch

Contributors: David Balzer, AA Bronson, Diedrich Diederichsen, Dominic Johnson, Theodore Kerr, Alex Kitnick, Sholem Krishtalka, Élisabeth Lebovici, Philip Monk, Diana Nemiroff, and Beatrix Ruf

General Idea (1969–1994) were pioneers of conceptual and media art whose work attained international prominence through the art world and the streets in equal measure. The ground-breaking collective practice of AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal spanned twenty-five years, addressing aspects of mass media, consumer culture, queer identity, the art economy and the AIDS crisis. They remain some of the most influential artists to have emerged from Canada.

This monumental publication presents a visual survey of General Idea’s artworks, from their earliest performances and actions to their use of consumer and advertising media in the public realm to their gallery and museum work. Including texts by a range of scholars and more than 500 illustrations, it is the definitive resource on General Idea. 

Softcover | 756 pages 
27 x 30 cm (10.6 x 11.8 in.) 
Publication Date: 2022

Edited by Adam Welch 

Contributors: David Balzer, AA Bronson, Diedrich Diederichsen, Dominic Johnson, Theodore Kerr, Alex Kitnick, Sholem Krishtalka, Élisabeth Lebovici, Philip Monk, Diana Nemiroff, and Beatrix Ruf

General Idea (1969–1994) were pioneers of conceptual and media art whose work attained international prominence through the art world and the streets in equal measure. The ground-breaking collective practice of AA Bronson, Felix Partz and Jorge Zontal spanned twenty-five years, addressing aspects of mass media, consumer culture, queer identity, the art economy and the AIDS crisis. They remain some of the most influential artists to have emerged from Canada.  

This monumental publication presents a visual survey of General Idea’s artworks, from their earliest performances and actions to their use of consumer and advertising media in the public realm to their gallery and museum work. Including texts by a range of scholars and more than 500 illustrations, it is the definitive resource on General Idea.

Softcover | 756 pages 
27 x 30 cm (10.6 x 11.8 in.) 
Publication Date: 2022

Anabelle Kienle Poňka, Lily Foster and Sarah Fillmore

A year after the city was devastated by the Halifax Explosion, Harold Gilman (British, 1876–1919) and Arthur Lismer (Canadian, 1885–1969) were working in Halifax as war artists. Both commissioned by the Canadian War Memorials Fund to record the war activity on the home front, the two men struck up a friendship and worked side-by-side on occasion.

With the effects of the explosion still clearly visible, Gilman and Lismer turned their attention to the bustling harbour. Produced in conjunction with the Halifax Harbour 1918 exhibition, this compelling book traces the artists' meticulous approach to their mission, the challenges of working during the aftermath of the tragedy and their role during a critical moment in the history of Canadian landscape painting.

Paperback | 144 Pages
25.5 x 23 x 1 cm (10 x 9 x 0.4 in.) 
Publication Date: 2018
Bilingual

Moyra Davey, Dalie Giroux and Andrea Kunard

Over the past 40 years, artist Moyra Davey has perfected a unique synthesis of photography, film and text to critically engage with the past, present and future of the world around her. Based on Davey’s eponymous 2019 film, this publication unites three main sources in a chronicle of late 20th-century Quebec, shaped by themes of race, poverty, language and nationalism. Using American writer James Baldwin’s 1962 novel Another Country as its point of departure, it focuses on the life and work of Québécois revolutionary Pierre Vallières and Ottawa-based political philosopher Dalie Giroux.

Published to accompany the exhibition Moyra Davey: The Faithful at the National Gallery of Canada, this deeply personal and highly political book seeks to examine an unresolved chapter of Québécois history from a uniquely interdisciplinary perspective that draws attention to contemporary issues of separatism, while reflecting the artist’s understanding of photography and text as unique corollaries.

This publication features writings by the artist, Dalie Giroux and National Gallery of Canada’s Associate Curator Andrea Kunard, and a poster insert.

Softcover | 168 pages (90 illustrations)
17.3 x 24.1 cm (6.7 x 9.5 in.)
Publication Date: 2020

David Franklin

Seventy of the finest Italian drawings from the 16th to the 18th centuries in the permanent collection of the National Gallery of Canada are featured in this volume. Brilliant examples by such artists as Giulio Romano, Parmigianino, Annibale Carracci and Piranesi were selected and described. This is the first in a series of catalogues presenting selected treasures from the Gallery's permanent collection.

Paper | 176 pages
Publication Date: 2003

Scotiabank Photography Award

Covering over 30 years of artistic practice, this book celebrates the complex yet highly distilled photographs of Jin-me Yoon’s dynamic vision. Showcasing a camera that is a witness to performative acts occurring both inside and outside the frame, the book reveals how Yoon has expanded conceptualist understandings of image-making and contributed to ongoing discussions of place and identity. In doing so, this volume illustrates how she uses the inherent mobility of images and the forces of diasporic thinking to bring disparate worlds together in poetic relation and create conditions for a different future.

Hardcover | 228 pages
24.8 x 30.5 cm (9.76 x 12 in.)

Edited by Zoë Chan and Diana Freundl

Jin-me Yoon is an important Canadian lens-based artist who has been working steadily since emerging on Vancouver’s contemporary art scene in the 1990s. Produced in tandem with a major exhibition at the Vancouver Art Gallery in 2022, About Time focuses on Yoon’s monumental and multifaceted production during the 2010s, which typically combines photography, video, performance, and installation. In these layered works, Yoon addresses the subject matter of diasporic experience, colonialism, imperialism, and militarism, but with an increasingly politicized awareness of what it means to live and work as a diasporic artist on land stolen from Indigenous peoples. Characterized by a restrained poetic style, the use of slowness and repetition, and the sensory use of sound, this period in Yoon’s corpus is undergirded by a strong environmentalist thrust. Recurring tropes of this mature phase of her work include cinematic tableaux of individuals integrated within the Pacific West Coast’s stunning natural landscapes.

Hardcover | 208 pages
17.78 x 24.77 cm (7 x 9.75 in.) 

Ming Tiampo

In Jin-me Yoon: Life & Work, Ming Tiampo reveals how Yoon’s multidisciplinary art—which includes photography, video, performances, and installations—reconnects troubled pasts with damaged presents and offers hope for a better future. It considers how one of Canada’s most important voices on the nature of identity developed a critical perspective on the representation of this country in museums, art history, the tourist industry, and monuments with groundbreaking works such as Souvenirs of the Self, 1991, and Group of Sixty-Seven, 1996, projects that, as Tiampo notes, have become “canonical touchstones in the public articulation of Canadian identity and race.”

Hardcover | 128 pages
20x28 cm (8x11 in.)

Winning Title (Pictorial), The Alcuin Society Awards for Excellence in Book Design in Canada, 2017

Marc Mayer

This magnificent hardcover publication commemorates 150 years of Confederation with a selection of 150 works of art made in Canada, drawn mainly from the Gallery's remarkable collection from the late seventeenth century to the present day. In his candid discussion, NGC Director Marc Mayer offers a fresh perspective on how art reflects our shared history while helping to articulate Canada's identity. Mayer traces our cultural development in the years since Confederation, while raising provocative questions about the role of the country. Also included is a brief history of the NGC written by Katherine Stauble. Featuring 150 stunning, full-colour plates, Art in Canada is a must-have for any art lover.

Hardcover | 200 pages
32.5 x 26 cm (12 ¾ x 10 ¼ in.)
Publication Date: 2017

David Franklin

Among Renaissance artists, Parmigianino was perhaps more conscious than any of the potential of the graphic arts to convey, and indeed broadcast, complex ideas. He explored this potential himself, not only by means of his numerous drawings but also through the etchings he produced on his own (effectively introducing this print medium into Italian art) and through the engravings and chiaroscuro woodcuts that were made after his designs.

Paper | 289 pages
Publication Date: 2001
Available in French only

Andréi Nakov

Beginning in 1914 in Russia, a group of artists primed for experimentation introduced an entirely new direction for the visual arts, articulating the language of abstraction with Suprematism and Constructivism. This catalogue centers on the emergence of the Russian avant-garde movement in Moscow until the mid-1920s. Works by El Lissitzky, Vladimir Tatlin, Kazimir Malevich, Ilya Chashnik, Liubov Popova, Olga Rozanova and Ivan Kliun are featured. Also included is a rich selection of books, manuscripts, drawings and prints, reminding us that, for many Russians in the early twentieth century, art was a part of everyday life.

Paperback | 168 pages
Publication date: 2016

Sonia Del Re, Dennis T. Lanigan, Christopher Newall

Beauty's Awakening expresses the richness, diversity and flair of British draftsmanship and illustrates the appreciation developed for the art of drawing during the Victorian era. Included are drawings by such masters as Edward Burne-Jones, John Everett Millais, William Holman Hunt, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Poynter and Frederic Leighton.

Paperback | 216 pages
Publication Date: 2015

Jean Clair

The Great Parade: Portrait of the Artist as Clown is a spectacular international exhibition featuring masterpieces that explore the fascination the circus has held for artists from the 18th century to the present. The catalogue brings together nearly 200 works - paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, sculptures and videos - from Watteau and Chardin to Boltanski and Cindy Sherman, via Tiepolo, Goya, Daumier, Courbet, Seurat, Ensor, Rouault, Léger, Klee, Chagall and Picasso, among others.

Hardcover | 424 pages
Publication Date: 2004
Available in French only

Andrea Kunard

The variety, width and breadth of photographic culture in Canada is extraordinary, and Canadian photographers are among the most prominent and influential in the world today. From classic street photography, documentary images and landscape imagery, to experimental abstractions and conceptual work, photography is an area of particularly rich exploration in our country. Photography in Canada 1960–2000 is the fifth in a series that presents the Gallery's Photographs Collection, and this catalogue is the first to be published by the newly established Canadian Photography Institute (CPI).

Featured artists: Raymonde April, Roy Arden, Barbara Astman, Claire Beaugrand-Champagne, Pierre Boogaerts, Robert Bourdeau, Jim Breukelman, Robert Burley, Edward Burtynsky, Michel Campeau, Serge Clément, Lynne Cohen, Sorel Cohen, Carole Condé, Marlene Creates, Donigan Cumming, Walter Curtin, Jack Dale, Robert Del Tredici, Stan Denniston, Jennifer Dickson, Lutz Dille, Evergon, Charles Gagnon, Pierre Gaudard, General Idea, Tom Gibson, Lorraine Gilbert, Rafael Goldchain, Rodney Graham, Ted Grant, Angela Grauerholz, Clara Gutsche, Dave Heath, Fred Herzog, Hubert Hohn, Thaddeus Holownia, George Hunter, Geoffrey James, Yousuf Karsh, Holly King, Suzy Lake, Michel Lambeth, Ken Lum, Chris Lund, Arnaud Maggs, John Massey, John Max, Susan McEachern, David McMillan, N.E. Thing Co. (NETCO), Shelley Niro, Nina Raginsky, John Reeves, Mark Ruwedel, Jacye Salloum, Michael Semak, Orest Semchishen, Sandra Semchuk, Michael Snow, George Steeves, Gabor Szilasi, Sam Tata, Jeff Thomas, Diana Thorneycroft, Serge Tousignant, Larry Towell, Bill Vazan, Jeff Wall, Ian Wallace, and Jin-me Yoon.

Paperback | 176 pages
20.5 x 26.5 cm (8 x 10 ½ in.)
Publication Date: 2016

Lori Pauli, Marta Weiss, Ann Thomas, Karen Henry

Since the earliest days of photography, artists have directed models posing before the camera and, through the use of theatrical props, costumes, and lighting, have created "staged" photographs that tell a story. Acting the Part is the first major history of this enduring and highly creative branch of photography. Beautiful illustrations range from the earliest salted paper prints and daguerreotypes to today's digitally manipulated images. The book also presents 57 short biographies of the genre's leading practitioners, including Oscar Rejlander, Julia Margaret Cameron, Lewis Carroll, Man Ray, Duane Michals, Les Krims, Jeff Wall, Yasumasa Morimura and Wang Qingsong, among others.

Softcover | 176 pages
28.5 x 23.5 x 1.5 cm (11.2 x 9.3 x 0.6 in.)
Publication Date: 2006

René Villeneuve

During the late 18th and early 19th centuries, Laurent Amiot redefined religious, domestic and commemorative silversmithing, turning it into an art form. Produced in conjunction with the first retrospective devoted to one of Canada’s finest silversmiths, this stunning, richly-illustrated catalogue explores the quality and importance of Amiot’s oeuvre while providing a fresh perspective on the history of the society he helped shape and define.

Hardcover | 240 pages
25 x 30 cm (9.8 x 11.8 in)