Reproductions of Vladimir Tretchikoff’s green-faced woman once hung in countless suburban homes. This illustrated biography reveals how, despite being born in poverty in Siberia, he made his name as an artist in Singapore. He fled the island when it was invaded by the Japanese and almost drowned when his boat was sunk, but then relaunched his career in South Africa, receiving both massive popular success and critical disdain.

Known for his realistic style, Matania worked as a war artist during the First World War, then as a painter of historical scenes and an illustrator for publications including Illustrazione Italiana. This catalogue showcases more than 250 of his original paintings, drawings, sketches, signed prints, leaflets and ephemera.

When Picasso exhibited his portraits of Sylvette, ‘the girl with the pony tail’, in Paris in 1954, he created an international media sensation. Sixty years later, the Kunsthalle Bremen held an exhibition that explored the relationship of Picasso with Sylvette and his other female models. This accompanying catalogue, with informal photographs, reproductions of the paintings and drawings and 13 essays, reveals something of the artist’s creative processes at work in a series of portraits that range from realistic likenesses to abstraction. Slightly off-mint.

In this first in-depth study and catalogue raisonné of the work of Ivor Roberts-Jones (1913–1996), the authors explore the career of this exceptional British sculptor in a number of essays, beginning with a biographical sketch. The essay topics include Roberts-Jones’s most familiar work, the statue of Winston Churchill that stands in Parliament Square; other portraits of Churchill in Oslo, New Orleans and Prague; and the portrait heads; while the catalogue illustrates and comments on over 156 works, with sketches and variants.

Based on two 2017 exhibitions in Bern, at the Museum of Fine Arts and the Paul Klee Centre, this catalogue explores the impact of the Russian revolution on contemporary art, from socialist realism to the subversive artwork inspired by the eventual disintegration of the Soviet Union. Artists featured include Kazimir Malevich, the founder of suprematism, and Russian constructivists such as Vladimir Tatlin and Alexander Rodchenko. The book also traces the revolution’s impact on avant-garde movements worldwide.

Beginning with Otto Freundlich’s own Confessions of a Revolutionary Painter, written in 1935, this volume provides a comprehensive overview of the artist’s work and his influence as a pioneer of modernism. Published to accompany a major retrospective at Museum Ludwig in Cologne and Kunstmuseum Basel in 2017, the book comprises several essays on topics including Freundlich’s aesthetics and The Large Head shown in the Nazis’ Degenerate Art exhibition, and reproductions of over 170 paintings and drawings.

Discussing and reproducing 103 works, from Stone Head (1933) to Easter and the Totem (1953), this catalogue, with essays and commentary, focuses on Jackson Pollock’s artistic development as a figurative artist, leaving aside the familiar ‘drip’ paintings. Originally accompanied an exhibition at the Kunstmuseum Basel. Bound in grey linen.

Esphyr Slobodkina (1908–2002) emigrated to New York in 1928. In the 1930s and 1940s, she helped to translate European modernist art into an American idiom, and continued painting and illustrating into her nineties. Published to accompany a centennial exhibition, this volume comprises six illustrated essays along with reproductions of over 90 works.

From the Blitz to the Swinging Sixties, London was home to a major art scene. Several key players – Auerbach, Bacon, Freud – were figurative painters rebelling against the prevailing Abstract orthodoxy. Others – Bridget Riley, John Hoyland – found their own distinctive forms of abstraction. Gayford’s study profiles the artists and explores their influences and connections. Drawing on first-hand interviews and illustrated with 114 paintings and photographs, it recreates the Soho bohemia these painters inhabited, with its friendships, feuds and legendary drinking sessions.

Best known as a furniture designer and architect, Irish-born Eileen Gray was a pioneer of Art Deco in the Paris of the 1920s and a follower and associate of Le Corbusier, among other luminaries of the period. This collection of her private and essentially unknown artworks was assembled for an exhibition at London’s Osborne Samuel Gallery in 2015 and comprises drawings, paintings, collages and photographs made between the 1920s and the 1950s.

Twentieth-century war at sea posed problems for artists: gone were the traditional naval confrontations; in modern, long-range battle the enemy could be invisible, in the sky or under the surface. Drawing on the National Maritime Museum’s outstanding collection of modern British art, this volume looks at how artists rose to the challenge of depicting the Navy and Merchant Marine at war. With over 160 colour reproductions, it discusses works by artists including Norman Wilkinson, John Everett, Eric Ravilious and Charles Wheeler.