Artists in Love: From Picasso & Gilot to Christo & Jeanne-Claude, a Century of Creative and Romantic Partnerships

For centuries, great artists have been drawn together in friendship and in love. In Artists in Love, curator and writer Veronica Kavass delves into the passionate and creative underpinnings of the art world's most provocative romances. From Picasso and Francoise Gilot to Lee Miler and Man Ray to Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne, Kavass' graceful and daring text provides a generous glimpse into the inspiring and sometimes tempestuous relationships between celebrated artists throughout the 20th and 21st centuries. 

From poetic beginnings to shocking endings (and vice-versa), the various dimensions of the artist couple archetypes are ceaselessly explored.  Some are enduring and collaborative, yielding astonishing parallel bodies of work, as with Robert and Sonia Delaunay and Christo and Jeanne-Claude. Others are adoring and explosive, such as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera and Robert Rauschenberg and Jasper Johns. Essays revealing what compelled these dynamic artists to partner, how their pairing influenced their work, and why their love may have faltered, are accompanied by lush illustrations of their art and documentary photographs of the couple. 

The first visual book to explore this subject in such epic scope, Artists in Love is a revelatory and riveting journey into the hearts and minds of artists in love. 

Artists featured include:
Wassily Kandinsky & Gabriele Münter
Robert & Sonia Delaunay
Alfred Stieglitz & Georgia O’Keeffe
Jean Arp & Sophie Taeuber-Arp
Anni & Josef Albers
Frida Kahlo & Diego Rivera
Lee Miller & Man Ray
Jacob Lawrence and Gwendolyn Knight
Barbara Hepworth & Ben Nicholson
Elaine & Willem de Kooning
Pablo Picasso & Françoise Gilot
Jackson Pollock & Lee Krasner
Dorothea Tanning & Max Ernst
Nancy Spero & Leon Golub
Jasper Johns & Robert Rauschenberg
Robert Motherwell & Helen Frankenthaler
Christo & Jeanne-Claude
Bernd & Hilla Becher
Eva Hesse & Tom Doyle
Charles and Ray Eames 
Kay Sage and Yves Tanguy
Saul Steinberg and Hedda Sterne
Robert Smithson & Nancy Holt
Niki de Saint Phalle & Jean Tinguely
Marina Abramović & Ulay
Claes Oldenburg & Coosje van Bruggen
Bruce Nauman & Susan Rothenberg
David McDermott and Peter McGough

About the Author

Veronica Kavass holds a masters in curatorial practice and critical writing from Chelsea College of Art in London, and has trained as an oral historian through her work with StoryCorps.  Her first book, The Last Good War: The Faces and Voices of WWII, was a powerful chronicle of American veterans' experiences during the war, and was a recipient of Foreword Magazine's Book of the Year award. She currently lives between New York City and Nashville, Tennessee where she writes about local art for the newspaper The Nashville Scene.