Illustrated throughout with original, evocative imagery as well as reproductions of art, these introductory biographies explore the works and lives of important artists and architects in detail, and trace the influence of their legacies on our world.

Thrown out of his parents' home, coming of age in the chaos and carnality of Berlin and Paris between the wars, Francis Bacon had little formal art training but voraciously consumed images all around him, which were all ground up in his mind and came out on the canvas in unplanned ways. "It's all so meaningless," he liked to say, "we may as well be extraordinary." With illuminating perspectives on some of his most enigmatic works, this biography explores Bacon's attempts to make art with the shock of news images and the permanence of the Old Masters.