August Strindberg. Painter, photographer, writer

While August Strindberg (1849 -1912) is well known to an international audience as a prolific writer of plays, novels, poetry, scientific essays and letters, his work in the visual arts has remained largely unseen. This beautifully illustrated book examines the paintings, drawings and photographs that display Strindberg's independent and radical approach to art, and his experimental innovations in photography. Critics have compared Strindberg's paintings with Turner's but also with those of much later movements such as Informalism and Expressionism. In his youth, working as an art critic for a Swedish magazine in the 1870s, he was one of the first in Sweden to show understanding for the Impressionist movement in Paris. In writings in the 1890s he anticipated ideas favoured by Dada and Surrealism. Strindberg's friend, the painter Paul Gauguin, asked him to write a catalogue essay for one of his exhibitions. Strindberg's letter of refusal was so eloquent that Gauguin asked his permission to use it in the catalogue. This correspondence is included in the book as well as new translations of his poem " Cloud Images " and his passionate manifesto " New Arts ! Or the rote of chance in artistic production ". Freshly commissioned essays on Strindberg's photography by David Campany and on his scenography for Mary Stuart by Göran Söderström complete this illuminating survey of a remarkable artist.