Founded in 1928 by Albert Skira in Lausanne this publishing house was soon afterwards transferred to Geneva where its head offices remained for over sixty years. Its earliest editions have become legendary, the Metamorphosis of Ovid, illustrated with thirty original engravings by Pablo Picasso and the Poésies of Stèphane Mallarmè accompanied by twenty-nine gravures by Henri Matisse.
From its foundation, Geneva 1928, it has been the ambitious objective of Skira to unite the scientific and editorial quality of its products and message with a distribution that extends beyond an exclusively specialised public. It was in the spirit of this philosophy that legendary series have come into being and, in keeping with these ideals, Skira has launched itself in the field of major Italian and international exhibitions becoming the European leader in this sector. Our specialised team provides organisers with unique experience in the areas of planning, production and commercialisation of graphic and editorial products for artistic events and also communications and promotion. Skira has produced catalogues for Italian events such as Il Cinquecento Lombardo, Monet, Novecento. Arte e Storia in Italia, Rinascimento, Rembrandt, the major exhibition devoted to the Gonzaga family in Mantua, Anton Van Dyck at Palazzo Reale in Milan, Botticelli e Filippino in Florence, Caravaggio e l'Europa at Palazzo Reale in Milan, Veronese at Museo Correr in Venice and Manet at the Complesso del Vittoriano in Rome, to mention but a few. Abroad too, Skira has been responsible for the catalogues at exhibitions such as Vermeer in the Hague, Bruegel in Vienna, El Greco in Madrid, Athens and Rome, the triptych on Evard Munch, Amedeo Modigliani and Marc Chagall in Lugano, Raphael in Paris, the Rau Collection in Paris and the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, Francis Bacon in Basel, Giorgione at the Kunsthistorisches Museum in Vienna, Il Modo Italiano first in Montreal and Toronto and then at the MART Rovereto, Titian at the Musée du Luxembourg in Paris Women in Impressionism at Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek in Copenhagen. Skira also continues with the catalogues for exhibitions at the Milan Triennial such as the Andy Warhol Show, the Keith Haring Show and the Jean-Michel Basquiat Show or at the Md'AM in Lugano for example Arnaldo Pomodoro, Christo e Jeanne-Claude and Miquel Barceló, the events for the five-hundredth anniversary of the death of Mantegna, the current exhibitions on Tamara De Lempicka and Umberto Boccioni at Palazzo Reale in Milan and those at Palazzo Grassi in Venezia, such as Where are we going and Picasso. These catalogues unite scientific quality, completeness and spectacularity becoming real reference books on the subjects in question: though the exhibitions come to an end their memory lives on in the catalogue.
Modern Art Catalogue Raisonné
The pride of Skira's production is its rigorous series of catalogue raisonné which are a solid reference on a global level: richly illustrated and containing technical dossiers on the works in question these volumes cover the complete output of single artists and are an indispensable tool for scholars and collectors the world over. The following catalogue raisonné have already been published: Lucio Fontana, Paul Gauguin, Le Corbusier, Umberto Lilloni, Piero Manzoni, Giannino Marchig, Marino Marini, Albert Marquet, Fausto Melotti, Piet Mondrian, Ennio Morlotti, Arnaldo Pomodoro, Daniele Ranzoni, Mimmo Rotella, Arpad Szenes, Guido Tallone, Italo Valenti, Édouard Vuillard.