The History of Art

An artist’s fascinating history of art, beautifully illustrated and handwritten, in which his own eclectic personal experience is combined into a narrative that is both artistic and educational.
A work of art in itself, this extraordinary book is the first account of the history of art that has been both written and illustrated from an artist’s point of view. Originally published as a series in Flash Art magazine, Jori presents art in a way that is both personal and engaging. Beginning with the birth of art itself, the reader experiences art through the early Egyptians and great civilizations of the past to the “high” art of ancient Greece, the trio of Renaissance masters (Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo), and then to Caravaggio, up to the grand era of nineteenth-century French painting, the groundbreaking works of van Gogh, Gauguin, and Cézanne, and the abstract and deconstructed imagery of Pablo Picasso, which has remained a leitmotif in art. The narrative reaches up to the present day and age, closing with Christo’s recent platform stretched over the waters of Lake Iseo in Italy.

Marcello Jori is a painter, comic-strip writer, photographer, writer, and illustrator. He has taken part in three Venice Biennales, the Paris Biennale, and two Rome Quadriennales, and has had exhibitions in galleries and museums, both national and international. In Italy, his work has appeared in the comics Linus, Alter, and Frigidaire, and also in Vogue and Vanity Fair. Recently he has made furnishing accessories for Alessi and Moroso and designed advertisements for Montblanc.