Tag Archives: oscar zarate

Discover Thomas Girtin, The Forgotten Painter, this June

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Part historical narrative, part modern fiction, the book consists of two interlinked stories: the first focuses on the 18th-century painter Thomas Girtin and his relationship with his friend and rival J.M.W. Turner; the second tells the tale of three amateur artists in the present day, united by a shared interest in Girtin’s art.

Using this dual narrative to draw parallels between two eras of rapid technological advancement and socio-political turbulence, writer/artist Oscar Zarate’s long-awaited new graphic novel, Thomas Girtin, The Forgotten Painter, restores to modern eyes this unjustly forgotten figure, whose work has been almost entirely ignored despite his huge influence in British painting. At the time of death, aged just 27, Girtin had already established himself as a pioneer and a master: his expressionist approach was a significant turning point in the British watercolour tradition. But the brevity of his career, coupled with his chosen medium (compared to oils, watercolours were a humbler and less easily exhibited form) meant that his work came to be overshadowed by that of Turner. As Turner himself famously remarked, “If Tom had lived, I should have starved.”

Thomas Girtin, The Forgotten Painter is out this June from SelfMadeHero.

Thomas Girtin, The Forgotten Painter

SelfMadeHero’s new titles include graphic biographies of Frida Kahlo, and Starman, Reinhard Kleist’s celebration of Bowie

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Releasing in March, Francisco de la Mora’s Frida Kahlo: Her Life, Her Work, Her Home explores the public and private faces of this iconic artist, whose transformation of personal pain and political vision into unforgettable art has made her one of the most inspiring personalities of the 20th century. This latest addition to SelfMadeHero’s ART MASTERS series depicts and defines the astonishing context against which her paintings struggled to be seen, her emergence from the shadow cast by her on-off life-partner Diego Rivera, and the beautiful home she created in Mexico City.

US Release: 4 April 2023 • UK Release: 16 March 2023
Published by SelfMadeHero
US Sales & Distro by Abrams Books • UK Sales & Distro Abrams & Chronicle Books72pp Hardback • 190 x 260mm / 7 ½ x 10 ¼ • Colour • US $18.99 / CAN $23.99 • UK £15.99 • ISBN: 978-1-914224-10-2

Frida Kahlo: Her Life, Her Work, Her Home

In May SelfMadeHero celebrates another reluctant muse and feminist champion. Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington, from the acclaimed team of Mary M. Talbot and Bryan Talbot, tells the astonishing story of another hidden genius. Only ten years younger than Frida Kahlo, the no less troubled life and art of Leonora Carrington – painter, writer, activist – tracked and traced the surreal turmoil of the 20th century. Born to the purple of an English elite, Leonora came to keep company with Paris’s 1930s avant-garde, escaped the brutalities of Nazi Occupation and psychiatric confinement, and found contented exile in (where else but?) Mexico City…

UK Release: 11 May 2023 • US Release: 25 April 2023
Published by SelfMadeHero
UK Sales & Distro Abrams & Chronicle Books • US Sales & Distro by Abrams Books 
144pp • Hardback • 216 x 152mm / 81/2 x 6” • Colour • UK £19.99 • US $24.99 / CAN $31.99 •ISBN: 9781914224126

Armed with Madness: The Surreal Leonora Carrington

… AKA “Suffragette City”? David Bowie famously visited the Frida Kahlo Museum in 1997, and it was one of Leonora Carrington’s short stories that inspired his final single, “Lazarus”, in 2016. But that was long after the appearance of his most original chameleon creation – now the subject of the multi-award-winning Reinhard Kleist’s stunning new graphic novel, launching this April. Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years relates the genius of that slow genesis, and the enduring impact it made on cultural history – as well as the toll its performance took on Bowie himself.

UK Release: 30 March 2023 • US Release: 2 May 2023
Published by SelfMadeHero
UK Sales & Distro Abrams & Chronicle Books • US Sales & Distro by Abrams Books
176pp • Paperback with flaps • 170 x 240mm 6 ¾ x 9 ½ • Colour • UK £16.99 • US $19.99 / CAN $24.99 • ISBN: 978-1-914224-08-9

Starman: Bowie’s Stardust Years

And talking of visionary South Londoners, SelfMadeHero confirms the publication in June of Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter – the long-awaited new work by veteran graphic novelist Oscar Zarate. A friend and rival of the great J.M.W. Turner, by the time of his early death in 1802, Girtin had already transformed the humble art of watercolour into a transcendent medium. Interweaving historical narrative with modern fiction, Zarate’s own masterpiece pays unique homage to this neglected pioneer.

UK Release: 8 June 2023 • US Release: 13 June 2023
Published by SelfMadeHero
UK Sales & Distro Abrams & Chronicle Books • US Sales & Distro by Abrams Books
392pp • Hardback • 190 x 260mm / 7 ½ x 10 ¼ • Colour • UK £34.99 • US $39.99 / CAN $49.99 • ISBN: 978-1-914224-07-2

Thomas Girtin: The Forgotten Painter