When you think of art, what do you think about? Most likely famous artists, their artworks, or different types of art. However, the art world is not just about artists but also famous collectors and influential art museum curators. We've put together a list of books about famous visual artists (sculptors, painters, photographers), collectors and curators that influenced the art world. 

These books can be found available on BARD, Braille and Audio Reading Download, a download service from the National Library Service for the Blind and Print Disabled provided to all Kansas Talking Books patrons to access the collection any time, anywhere. Take it on the go with you as you travel this summer and listen in the car or wherever life takes you with BARD Mobile. Search, download and listen directly on your Mobile device or use BARD Express to download and listening using the built in player. To find out more, please visit the Kansas Talking Books' BARD Resources webpage, the NLS BARD website, or contact our office at 1-800-362-0699 or KTB@ks.gov. 

DB 14315 A concise history of modern sculpture by Herbert Read 
A chronological survey of modern sculptors and their work, beginning with Rodin.

DB 83037 Listening to stone: the art and life of Isamu Noguchi by Hayden Herrera 
Author of Frida (DB 55556) profiles Japanese-American sculptor and landscape architect Isamu Noguchi (1904-1988). Describes the influence of his dual heritage and childhood in Japan on the development of his art, his family and personal relationships, and his major works of art and architecture. 2015

DB 24362 Giacometti, a biography by James Lord 
The author, who turned a chance encounter with the great sculptor in 1952 into a lifelong obsession, here gives the story of a life lived purely for art. Included are many side-biographies of the great cultural figures with whom Giacometti shared his life--Sartre, Genet, Picasso, and Samuel Beckett.

DB 32636 Louise Nevelson: a passionate life by Laurie Lisle 
Biography of an unconventional American sculptor, born in Russia just prior to the turn of the twentieth century. When she was five, she and her family emigrated to the U. S., settling in Maine, where as Jews and foreigners, they were ostracized. The author describes Nevelson's beauty and flamboyance, the power she brought to her work, and her struggle to enter the male-dominated world of art. Some strong language.

DB 107129 The radical potter: the life and times of Josiah Wedgwood by Tristram Hunt 
The director of the Victoria & Albert Museum presents a biography of one of the world's most famous makers of ceramics. The author draws from an array of letters, journals, and historical documents to illuminate the achievements of Wedgwood as a potter, entrepreneur, and abolitionist. 2021.

DB 89588 Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson 
Author of Steve Jobs (DB 73682) chronicles the life of the iconic Renaissance man, Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519). Examines his early life in Vinci, artistic pursuits, patronage from leading Italian Renaissance families, engineering projects, investigations into human anatomy, and more. 2017.

DB 15919 The world of Durer, 1471-1528 by Francis Russell 
Examines the German artist's achievement in oils, watercolors, drawings, woodcuts, paintings, and engravings.

DB 79812 Michelangelo: a life in six masterpieces by Miles J. Unger 
Journalist examines the life of Renaissance Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarotti (1475-1564) through the lens of six of his works: the PietaÌ, his statue of David, the Creation of Adam ceiling fresco in the Sistine Chapel, the Medici tombs, The Last Judgment, and the Basilica of St. Peter's in Rome. 2014.

DB 14957 The world of Bruegel, c. 1525-1569 by Timothy Foote 
Biography of the Flemish painter who excelled in portraying the common man in art and in the contemporary life of Northern Europe. 1968.

DB 49716 Caravaggio: a passionate life by Desmond Seward 
Biography of the Italian painter Michelangelo da Caravaggio, born in 1571. Explores what is known about his life; investigates his world, his acclaim as an artist, the fatal duel that made him an outlaw, and his untimely death in 1610. Presents a portrait of a tortured soul.

DB 14790 The world of Rembrandt, 1606-1669 by Robert Wallace 
Surveys the life and works of the Dutch artist and corrects some of the myths about him. First published 1968.

DB 53408 Vermeer: a view of Delft by Anthony Bailey 
A portrait of the seventeenth-century Dutch artist and the society in which he lived. Augments biographical facts with educated supposition. Includes historical and cultural information about Delft and some of its important citizens. Discusses Vermeer's paintings and their lasting contribution to the arts. 2001.

DB 58883 Goya by Robert Hughes 
Interpretive biography of Spanish artist Francisco Goya (1746-1828) by Time magazine art critic and author of Culture of Complaint (DB 36854). Chronicles Goya's development as a man and artist, offering critical analyses of his work, social milieu, professional influences, and dominant events like the Inquisition. 2003.

DB 86025 Turner: the extraordinary life and momentous times of J. M. W. Turner by Franny Moyle 
An account of the life of J. M. W. Turner, one of Britain's most famous landscape painters. Discusses the committal of his mother to an insane asylum, the personal sacrifices he made for his career, and the odd double life he led in the last years of his life. Commercial audiobook. 2016.

DB 12774 The world of Delacroix, 1798-1863 by Tom Prideaux 
Reveals the paradoxical personality of the talented French artist and interprets his art.

DB 101244 The private lives of the impressionists by Sue Roe 
Examination of the group of French artists known as the Impressionists who gathered together between 1860 and 1886. Artists profiled include Camille Pissarro, Berthe Morisot, Edgar Degas, Claude Monet, and Auguste Renoir. Discusses their relationships with each other and attempts to be accepted by the Parisian art establishment. Some violence. 2006.

DB 118345 The grand affair: John Singer Sargent in his world by Paul Fisher 
"A great American artist, John Singer Sargent is an abiding enigma. He scandalized viewers with the frankness and sensuality of his work, while dressing like a businessman and crafting a highly respectable persona. He charmed the possessors of new money and old, while reserving his greatest sympathies for Bedouins, Spanish dancers, and the gondoliers of Venice. At the height of his renown in Britain and America, he quit his lucrative portrait-painting career to concentrate on allegorical murals with religious themes-and on nude drawings of male models that he kept to himself. In The Grand Affair, scholar Paul Fisher offers a vivid life of the artist and his work. Sargent's nervy, edgy portraits exposed illicit or dark feelings in himself and his sitters-feelings that London, Paris, and New York high society was fascinated by yet kept at bay. Fisher traces Singer's life from his wandering trans-European childhood to the salons of Paris, and the scandals and enthusiasms he elicited, and on to London, where he mixed with other aristocrats and eccentrics, and formed a close relationship with a boxer who became his model, valet, and traveling partner. Relating Sargent's restless itinerary, Fisher explores the enigmas of fin de siecle sexuality and art, fashioning a biography that grants the man and his paintings new and intense life." -- Provided by publisher. -- Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

DB 74364 Van Gogh: the life by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith 
Biography of Dutch artist van Gogh (1853-1890) by the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of Jackson Pollock (DB 33540). They use primary documents from the van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam to analyze his family life, work, and death at age thirty-seven--and raise doubts that van Gogh killed himself. 2011.

DB 41024 Toulouse-Lautrec: a life by Julia Frey 
Portrait of the French painter best known for his posters of cabaret performers. Drawing on family letters, the author focuses on the artist's aristocratic heritage, his mentally ill father and pious mother, his chronic illness and physical deformity, his alcoholism, and his untimely death at age thirty-six. Frey also speculates on probable artistic influences, including Degas, Japanese prints, and the art nouveau movement.

DB 125496 Mondrian: his life, his art, his quest for the absolute by Nicholas Fox Weber 
"The extraordinary and surprising life of Piet Mondrian, whose unprecedented geometric art revolutionized modern painting, architecture, graphic art, dress design, and much more"-- Provided by publisher. -- Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

DB 10054 Chagall by Jean Paul Crespelle 
A colorful account of the life and work of the celebrated Russian-born Jewish artist whose joyous and creative talents have influenced the development of 20th-century art.

DB 110062 Ninth Street women: Lee Krasner, Elaine de Kooning, Grace Hartigan, Joan Mitchell, and Helen Frankenthaler: five painters and movement that changed modern art by Mary Gabriel 
"Set amid the most turbulent social and political period of modern times, Ninth Street Women is the impassioned, wild, sometimes tragic, always exhilarating chronicle of five women who dared to enter the male-dominated world of twentieth-century abstract painting--not as muses but as artists. From their cold-water lofts, where they worked, drank, fought, and loved, these pioneers burst open the door to the art world for themselves and countless others to come. Gutsy and indomitable, Lee Krasner was a hell-raising leader among artists long before she became part of the modern art world's first celebrity couple by marrying Jackson Pollock. Elaine de Kooning, whose brilliant mind and peerless charm made her the emotional center of the New York School, used her work and words to build a bridge between the avant-garde and a public that scorned abstract art as a hoax. Grace Hartigan fearlessly abandoned life as a New Jersey housewife and mother to achieve stardom as one of the boldest painters of her generation. Joan Mitchell, whose notoriously tough exterior shielded a vulnerable artist within, escaped a privileged but emotionally damaging Chicago childhood to translate her fierce vision into magnificent canvases. And Helen Frankenthaler, the beautiful daughter of a prominent New York family, chose the difficult path of the creative life. Her gamble paid off: At twenty-three she created a work so original it launched a new school of painting. These women changed American art and society, tearing up the prevailing social code and replacing it with a doctrine of liberation. In Ninth Street Women, acclaimed author Mary Gabriel tells a remarkable and inspiring story of the power of art and artists in shaping not just postwar America but the future." -- Provided by publisher. -- Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

DB 31323 Georgia O'Keefe: a life by Roxana Robinson 
Georgia O'Keeffe struggled most of her ninety-eight years to capture the radiance of light, with paint on canvas. Robinson, an art historian, describes O'Keeffe's early years in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin; her career as an art teacher; her relationship with photographer Alfred Stieglitz, first as protege, then as model and lover, and later as his wife; and her final years with a much younger companion, Juan Hamilton.

DB 50710 Lives of the great 20th-century artists by Edward Lucie-Smith  
Biographical sketches of 100 deceased artists, presented roughly in chronological order, grouped by movement or nationality. Begins with Edvard Munch and major European trends--cubism, dada, and the Bauhaus. Proceeds to North Americans such as Diego Rivera and Edward Hopper, abstract expressionists, pop artists, and Jean-Michel Basquiat. 1999.

DB 33760 Matisse and Picasso: a friendship in art by Francoise Gilot 
Picasso's mistress from the end of World War II until 1954, the year of Matisse's death, provides biographical information about the artists and describes their close personal relationship. An artist herself, Gilot reveals her role as a catalyst in this complicated trio, focusing on the friendly rivalry between the two men, with particular emphasis on the work they produced during this period. 1990.

DB 49684 Dreaming with his eyes open: a life of Diego Rivera by Patrick Marnham 
Biography of the early twentieth-century Mexican muralist. Describes his friendship with Picasso in Paris, his Communist leanings, and his series of love affairs including his tumultuous relationship with Frida Kahlo. Discusses his devotion to his art and his tendency to embellish his past. 1998.

DB 101615 Frida in America: the creative awakening of a great artist by Celia Stahr 
Art historian examines the work and life of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo while she lived in America with new husband and fellow artist Diego Rivera. Discusses the influence of living in the place Kahlo called "Gringolandia" on her sense of Mexican identity and subsequent work. 2020.

DB 95666 Almost nothing: the 20th-century art and life of Józef Czapski by Eric Karpeles 
Biography of Polish painter Józef Czapski (1896-1993), best known for his work in the Kapist art movement and for being one of the few survivors of the Katyn massacre of 1940. Describes his early years and artistic influences, his experiences during World War II, and his lasting impact. Some violence. 2018.

DB 76264 Banksy: the man behind the wall by Will Ellsworth Jones 
Biography of the graffiti artist known as Banksy details his early work in Bristol, England; the success of his Oscar-nominated film Exit through the Gift Shop; and his efforts to maintain his anonymity. Explores the culture of outsider art and Banksy's place in it. Young adult appeal. 2012.

DB 120468 Radiant: the life and line of Keith Haring by Brad Gooch 
"A stunning life of the iconic American artist, Keith Haring, by the acclaimed biographer Brad Gooch. In the 1980s, the subways of New York City were covered with art. In the stations, black matte sheets were pasted over outdated ads, and unsigned chalk drawings often popped up on these blank spaces. These temporary chalk drawings numbered in the thousands and became synonymous with a city as diverse as it was at war with itself, ravaged by poverty and oppression but alive with art and creative energy. And every single one of these drawings was done by Keith Haring. Keith Haring was one of the most emblematic artists of the 1980s, a figure described by his contemporaries as "a prophet in his life, his person, and his work." Part of an iconic cultural crowd that included Andy Warhol, Madonna, and Basquiat, Haring broke down the barriers between high art and popular culture, creating work that was accessible for all and using it as a means to provoke and inspire radical social change. Haring died of AIDS in 1990. To this day, his influence on our culture remains incontrovertible, and his glamorous, tragically short life has a unique aura of mystery and power. Brad Gooch, noted biographer of Flannery O'Connor and Frank O'Hara, was granted access to Haring's extensive archive. He has written a biography that will become the authoritative work on the artist. Based on interviews with those who knew Haring best and drawing from the rich archival history, Brad Gooch sets out to capture the magic of Keith Haring: a visionary and timeless icon"-- Provided by publisher. -- Unrated. Commercial audiobook.

DB 93710 Broad strokes: 15 women who made art and made history (in that order) by Bridget Quinn 
Feminist art historian profiles women artists from the seventeenth to twenty-first centuries. Subjects include Artemisia Gentileschi, Rosa Bonheur, Vanessa Bell, Lee Krasner, Kara Walker, and Susan O'Malley. Provides an overview of the world they grew up in and their development as artists. Strong language, some descriptions of sex. Commercial audiobook. 2017.

DB 91210 Berenice Abbott: a life in photography by Julia Van Haaften 
Biography of photographer Berenice Abbott (1898-1991). Discusses her early life in Ohio with a fractured family, developing interest in photography, work in the United States and Europe, personal relationships, involvement in socialist causes, and more. Strong language. 2018.

DB 90167 Vivian Muir: a photographer's life and afterlife by Pamela Bannos 
Examination of the life of a photographer who supported herself as a nanny and whose work only came to broad recognition after her death. Chronicles Maier's years growing up in France, return to America, and eventual life in Chicago. Discusses the disposition of the storage lockers which housed her photography. 2017.

DB 20363 Stieglitz: a memoir/biography by Sue Davidson Lowe 
Portrait of the celebrated photographer and modern art impressario by his grandniece, who draws on her own recollections and those of his friends, relatives, and colleagues. Among the avant-garde artists he helped launch were Picasso, Rousseau, Brancusi, Marin, Hartley, Dove, and wife Georgia O'Keefe.

DB 53639 Brunelleschi's dome: how a Renaissance genius reinvented architecture by Ross King 
Discusses the intermittent construction during the 1300s of a cathedral in Florence that would require the largest dome in the world. Explains how this led to the 1418 competition for solving the architectural puzzle; how it was won by Filippo Brunelleschi, a clockmaker; and how he achieved engineering marvels. 2000. 2000.

DB 54671 Art lover: a biography of Peggy Guggenheim by Anton Gill 
Portrait of an influential collector of modern art. Discusses the New York socialite's promiscuous and scandalous private life, her years in Europe among artists and intellectuals, and her promotion of abstract painters such as Jackson Pollock. 2002.

DBC02722 Unstill life: a daughter's memoir of art and love in the age of abstraction by Gabrielle Selz 
Gabrielle Selz's father, chief curator of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art was known to the world as Mr. Modern Art. Leaving her to grew up in a home full of the most celebrated artists of the day. Like the art he loved, he was vibrant and freewheeling, but his enthusiasm for both women and art took its toll on family life. When he left MoMA and his family to direct his own museum in California, marrying four more times, Selz's mother, moved the family into a Utopian artist community. Unrated.