Art as natural science: gorgeous paintings of plants and animals, from the author of the bestselling The Art of Arts

The popular award-winning artist and writer Anita Albus (born 1942) creates detailed images of plants and animals using color pigments that she makes herself. Inspired by the still lifes of the Old Masters, Albus nonetheless operates within the realm of the contemporary, at the intersection of meticulous nature research, creative work and high craftsmanship. Her famous 2000 publication, The Art of Arts (Norton), ostensibly a history of the birth and evolution of trompe-l'oeil painting in oils in the 15th to 17th centuries, is a manifesto for her vision of art as synonymous with research and with science; her art is the expression of this vision.
In 2016, Kunsthalle Kiel purchased a collection of her works through the Karl-Walter Breitling und Charlotte Breitling-Stiftung, and published the accompanying monograph The Art of Seeing. This enchanting new edition of that (long unavailable) survey volume invites the reader on a discovery tour of Albus' tender, scrupulously rendered artistic research.