John Ashbery

Edwin Denby

H.D.

Patrick Modiano

Rainer Maria Rilke

Gertrude Stein

ekphrasis

Experience art in its many forms through the minds of some of the 20th century’s greatest poets, from Rainer Maria Rilke to Gertrude Stein. Writing on dance, visual art, paradise, New York streets, and youth, among so much else, through eloquent verse, intimate letters, and vivid essays, these poets explore the intersections of creativity, work, and emotion.

Included in this bundle:


Ashbery, Denby, H.D., Modiano, Rilke, Stein

The Poets (ekphrasis)

Photograph of a bookshelf of 150 books published by David Zwirner, 2013-2024

An extraordinary gift for the art enthusiast: Add onto—or instantly create—a notable art book collection with this curated collection of 150 titles published by David Zwirner Books, featuring an extensive survey of leading modern and contemporary artists. This comprehensive selection—at a 30% retail-value discount—includes monographs, exhibition catalogues, and artist writings, providing a rich resource for collectors, scholars, or anyone looking to deepen their understanding of influential artists and movements. Order by December 8 to receive in time for the holidays.

An extraordinary curated collection of 150 books at a 30% discount

Instant Art Library (150 books)

Photograph of a bookshelf of 100 books published by David Zwirner, 2013-2024

Give the gift of art—and books—with this curated collection of one hundred art books published by David Zwirner Books, an extensive survey of titles on leading modern and contemporary artists. This comprehensive selection—at a 30% retail-value discount—includes monographs, exhibition catalogues, and artist writings, providing a rich resource for collectors, scholars, or anyone looking to deepen their understanding of influential artists and movements. Order by December 8 to receive in time for the holidays.

An extraordinary curated collection of 100 books at a 30% discount

Instant Art Library (100 books)

Émile Bernard

Romaine Brooks

Guy Davenport

Paul Gauguin

Katsushika Hokusai

Marcel Proust

Virginia Woolf

Photograph of Painters collection of ekphrasis books, published by David Zwirner Books

From personal letters and memoirs to form-bending essays, these works by painters, novelists, and poets impart many stories of the modern era’s beloved painters, including Hokusai, Van Gogh, and Romaine Brooks.

On Balthus, Chardin and Rembrandt, Van Gogh, and more

The Painters (ekphrasis)

Derek Jarman

Auguste Rodin

Explore the writings of history’s greatest artists, from Hokusai to Auguste Rodin, Paul Gauguin, and more. Personal insights and reflections on art and aesthetics unite visual and literary expression.

Brooks, Gauguin, Hokusai, Jarman, Rodin

Artist as Writer (ekphrasis)

Vernon Lee

Cynthia Zarin

Photograph of Women Authors collection of ekphrasis books, published by David Zwirner Books

This curated bundle features writing by women authors who explore the intersection of art, literature, and personal experience. From poetic portraits to memoirs to essays on the nature of artistic expression, this selection of books offers a diverse range of voices and perspectives.

Brooks, H.D., Lee, Stein, Woolf, Zarin

Women Authors (ekphrasis)

Raoul De Keyser, 2009. Photo by Christophe Vander Eecken

Edited by Steven Jacobs and Hilde D'haeyere. Contributions by Steven Jacobs, Hilde D'haeyere, Wouter De Vleeschouwer, Benedict Vandaele, and Klaartje Vanthuyne

This book focuses on Belgian artist Raoul De Keyser's hitherto understudied early works, including a catalogue raisonné of paintings made between 1964 and 1980. A leading exponent of European painting from the late 1980s to the early 2000s, De Keyser started painting in the 1940s but aborted his artistic career in the early 1950s, becoming a civil servant and journalist. Only in 1964 did he take up painting again with works blending the influence of Raveel, Dine, Held, and Noland. Soon, he developed his own idiom, evolving into a more subdued and abstract style in the 1970s. Based on extensive archival research, this book contains a wealth of artworks, photographs, posters, and documents that never have been published before.

Catalogue of Paintings 1964–1980

Raoul De Keyser: Early Works

A still from a film by Francis Alys, titled Children’s Game #26: Kisolo, Tabacongo, DR Congo, dated 2021.

This immersive publication explores the artistic journey of one of today's most prominent conceptual artists, with a specific focus on his groundbreaking series, “Children’s Games.”



Whether he's moving a sand dune in Peru or pushing an enormous ice block through the streets of Mexico City, Francis Alÿs is constantly seeking to decipher complex social, political, and cultural issues in ways that are simultaneously affecting, imaginative and provocative. 

Highlighting rarely seen source material, this richly illustrated book delves into the impulses behind Alÿs's influential works. Celebrating the breadth and importance of the artist’s work, a series of essays by leading scholars and writers look at his studio practice and influences across art, history, and literature, revealing new perspectives on his prolific career and ongoing preoccupations.

It also examines the most recent iteration of his critically acclaimed series 

, in which he documents children's games from various cultures around the world. From whimsical explorations of everyday life to his engagement with cross-cultural contexts from Latin America to North Africa and the Middle East, Alÿs’s work serves as a platform for navigating the world, inviting viewers to engage with the poetic and transformative potential of artistic expression.

Francis Alÿs: Ricochets

Photograph of ekphrasis series of 29 books, published by David Zwirner Books

 series, available now as a bundle of our 29 in-print titles. The 

 series is dedicated to publishing rare, out-of-print, and newly commissioned texts as accessible paperback volumes. It is part of David Zwirner Books’s ongoing effort to publish new and surprising pieces of writing on visual culture.

The ekphrasis Collection (29 books)

Portrait of Chris Ofili, 2017. Photo by Carlos Arias

Jason Allen-Paisant

Text by the studio of Chris Ofili. Poems by Jason Allen-Paisant

A stunning presentation of the acclaimed British painter Chris Ofili’s newest body of work that continues his exploration of Shakespeare’s Othello

Renowned for his rich, multilayered paintings, Ofili here expands his engagement with William Shakespeare’s 

(1603–1604). The transmuting colors and forms of the watercolors and paintings in this volume reflect the complex interiority of the character Othello—his vulnerabilities and his joyful sorrows. The artist also considers these works, which investigate ideas of authenticity, meaning, and selfhood, to be partly self-portraits. As viewers and readers, encountering a subject whose features split and shift with each repeated representation, we are asked to consider metamorphosis, love, the bearing of outside influences on our inner selves, and the force we exercise on the world.

Published on the occasion of a two-site exhibition staged by David Zwirner Paris and Victoria Miro in Venice, the catalogue includes a text from Ofili’s studio and a selection of poems by Jason Allen-Paisant from his 2023 collection 

Chris Ofili: Joyful Sorrow

 was published on the occasion of Christopher Williams’ exhibition Radio/Rauhfaser/Television at Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society at the University of Chicago. It focuses on Williams’ research into a broadcast of Franz Xaver Kroetz’s 1972 stage play Upper Austria and an accompanying panel discussion – consisting of Franz Xaver Kroetz, Dieter Braun, Ludwig Hannover, Dieter Schnabel, and Hans-Georg Frieser – that was cancelled by West German public television broadcaster ZDF in 1973 due to Kroetz’s communist party affiliations. This book publishes, for the first time, a complete transcript of the panel discussion along with contemporaneous newspaper articles, opinion pieces, and open letters written in the wake of the cancellation, and an introduction by Neubauer Collegium curator Dieter Roelstraete. Translated into English by Maximilian Klemens Sänger in conjunction with Williams Studio, this book was edited by Williams and designed by Petra Hollenbach.

Theatre in Review: Upper Austria

 was published on the occasion of Christopher Williams’ exhibition Werbung: A 48 hour display of quality framing materials at Maxwell Graham, New York. The book includes 124 typographic poems by Williams, based on the format of 1970s film festival press packets which contained camera-ready art for advertising. These poems are presented as camera-ready art to be used to advertise the availability of ‘Inklusive’ in paperback, broadcast radio, and long play vinyl.

Inklusive 1972 / Inclusive 1974

A detail from a painting by Oscar Murillo, titled manifestation, dated 2019.

Oscar Murillo in his studio, 2022. Photo by Jason Schmidt

Edited with interview by Alessandro Rabottini. Text by Mark Godfrey, Eleanor Nairne, Gabi Ngcobo. Conversation with Oscar Murillo.

Canvases decorated by schoolchildren across the globe offer humor, hope and joy

This book brings together the archive of 

, a global participatory project initiated by artist Oscar Murillo (born 1986). For over a decade, members of Murillo’s team have visited schools around the globe and invited students to freely write and draw on raw canvas. The elegant volume features a lay-flat binding, dust jacket and richly produced slipcase.

Cover of a book titled Oscar Murillo: Frequencies, published by Hatje Cantz in 2024.

Oscar Murillo: Frequencies

A portrait of Gerhard Richter by Werner Bartsch.

Cover of a book titled Gerhard Richter (Special Edition), published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

A special edition signed by the artist and featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 100 copies.

Tiered pricing:
$200 editions 100–56
$250 editions 55–26
$300 editions 25–11
$350 editions 10–1

Gerhard Richter’s newest facsimile-like artist’s book is focused on a single work comprising twenty-six drawings



“[Richter’s drawings] are of stringent individuality and recognizably by Richter’s hand, not based on their signature style but rather because they make their theme the act of drawing itself, gauging the conditions of drawing.” —Dieter Schwarz

In this new work, Richter combines various elements from a limited set of forms and techniques—meandering lines, broad tonal planes applied with angled strokes of graphite, and passages of smudging, hatching, and erasure—thereby uniting choice and chance in an infinitely generative process. The suite of works on paper from 2023 encapsulates and refines the fundamental principles that have consistently defined Richter’s artistic journey. Reproduced at actual size, the drawings encourage in-depth observation and inspire a compelling reimagining of abstraction. 

Interior spread from a book titled Gerhard Richter (Special Edition), published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Gerhard Richter: Foricano (Special Edition)

Luc Tuymans in his studio, 2022. Photo by Otman Q

Éric de Chassey

Joshua Cohen

Jonathan Crary

Lynne Tillman

Su Wei

Cover of a book titled Luc Tuymans (Special Edition) published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

This special edition signed by the artist and featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 250 copies.

Texts by Éric de Chassey, Joshua Cohen, Jonathan Crary, Lynne Tillman, and Su Wei

Stunning translations of images from the internet and the artist’s iPhone to canvas, Luc Tuymans’s quiet paintings belie an underlying moral complexity.



“Once Tuymans’s muted compositions felt fatalistic; now they appear as committed assaults on our digital fragmentation and the lies that thrive in its cracks.” —Jason Farago, 



One of the most important painters working today, Luc Tuymans pioneered a distinctive figurative style beginning in the 1980s that has proven singularly influential among his peers as well as subsequent generations of artists. Tuymans’s deeply resonant compositions insist on the power of images to simultaneously convey and conceal meaning. Rendered in a restrained and muted palette, the artist’s canvases are based on preexisting imagery from a range of historical, cultural, and popular media sources.

This monograph of recent work reveals how Tuymans’s paintings grasp the mystery, strangeness, and possibilities of contemporary image making. It highlights a body of work that Tuymans has been working on since 2020, bringing together three exhibitions: 

, at David Zwirner, New York. For this trilogy, Tuymans has heightened the contrast and saturation in his paintings, underscoring the urgency of our contemporary global moment. With texts by the novelist Joshua Cohen, the art historians Jonathan Crary and Éric de Chassey, the writer and critic Lynne Tillman, and the writer Su Wei, this publication offers an in-depth, dimensional understanding of both Tuymans’s outlook and his assertion of the relevance of painting in our digitally saturated world.

Interior spread of a book titled Luc Tuymans (Special Edition) published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

Luc Tuymans: Nice (Special Edition)

Gaby Bazin

Vineet Lal

Written and illustrated by Gaby Bazin. Translated by Vineet Lal

Enter the workshop, meet the typographer, and discover the world of letterpress printing.

 showcases the fascinating evolution and technique of letterpress printing in colorful and engaging illustrations. Armed with little characters made of lead, a typographer reveals the secrets of his craft and its history, from Gutenberg to the present. Gaby Bazin takes readers into the studio, unveiling the enchanting world of movable type.

Following the mission of the children’s imprint at David Zwirner Books, this publication illuminates yet another creative role in the art industry, offering a distinct perspective on the printed medium and the fine art of typography.

Cover of a book titled Meet the Typographer, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Interior spread of a book titled Meet the Typographer, published by David Zwirner Books in 2025.

Meet the Typographer

Doro Globus

Rose Blake

 series, a collaborative project by author Doro Globus and illustrator Rose Blake, aims to dismantle barriers within the art world, paving a colorful and accessible path for budding artists. Through engaging narratives, hands-on activities, and insights into the lives of a diversity of artists, these books provide a gateway for children in classrooms everywhere to explore their creative impulses and discover the boundless possibilities of self-expression.

 offers young readers exciting insights into the many ways artists work and the reasons why they make art. Geared to children ages 4 to 8, but with appeal for all ages, this colorful and playful book asks: Who are artists? Why do they make art? What materials do they use? What tools do they work with? What forms do their artworks take?

 explores the inner workings of artists and museums. This fun, inside look at the life of an artwork shows the journey of two artists’ work from studio to exhibition. Stopping along the way we meet colorful characters—curators, photographers, shippers, museum visitors, and more!

How Art Works

A scuplture by Yayoi Kusama called Dancing Pumpkin dated 2020

Yayoi Kusama, 2021.  Photo by Yusuke Miyazaki

Lynn Zelevansky

Robert Slifkin

Cover of a book titled Yayoi Kusama (Special Edition), published by David Zwirner Books in 2024.

This special edition featuring a slipcase is available in a limited run of 300 hand-numbered copies.

Texts by Robert Slifkin and Lynn Zelevansky

The newest book on the internationally celebrated Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama presents her latest monumental and vibrant work and is the first to explore the experience of seeing it from the lens of the visitor

“My entire life has been painted here. Every day, any day. I will never cease dedicating my whole life to my love for the universe.” —Yayoi Kusama

One of the most influential artists of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Kusama has created a profoundly personal oeuvre that resonates with a global audience. Distinctly recognizable, her works frequently deploy repetitive elements such as dots to evoke both microscopic and macroscopic universes.

Celebrating the visitor experience, this publication offers an immersive tour of Kusama’s 2023 exhibition at David Zwirner, New York. Illustrating thirty-five paintings, a gigantic sculptural installation of pumpkins, a trio of towering, colorful flower sculptures, and a fan-favorite Infinity Mirror Room, 

is a vivid document with varying perspectives that echo Kusama’s own.

New scholarship by Robert Slifkin considers how Kusama innovates and complicates art-historical traditions of image production and how her art seeks to connect humans with the greater cosmos. An essay by Lynn Zelevansky reflects on her own long-standing engagement with Kusama’s work and the ways in which it, across the decades, can be seen as a record of love in all its complexity: full of humanity, generosity, affection, sadness, and pain.

Yayoi Kusama: I Spend Each Day Embracing Flowers (Special Edition)

By Robert Storr. Edited with text by Francesca Pietropaolo

A scholarly meditation on Reinhardt’s work, bringing together his abstract painting, comics and slide lecture series

 takes as its subject the work of American artist Ad Reinhardt (1913–67). An American abstract painter, he worked in New York alongside artists including Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko and Willem de Kooning. Renowned art critic and historian Robert Storr curated the award-winning 2013 exhibition of Reinhardt’s work at David Zwirner gallery. This book brings together, for the first time, Storr’s writings on Reinhardt’s abstract painting—for which the artist became hugely influential on the younger generations of Minimal and Conceptual practitioners—his satirical cartoons addressing political and social issues and advocating for abstract art, and his famous slide lecture series. With introductory texts by Storr and art historian Francesca Pietropaolo, this book features an essay previously published in 

 (2013) and a companion text, also written in 2013, that appears in print for the first time.

Focal Points: Ad Reinhardt

Edited with text by Brigitte Kölle. Text by Juliane Au, Hubertus Butin, Johanna Hornauer, Vija Celmins, Gerhard Richter

Contemplating perception and representation with two titans of photorealism

This publication brings together for the first time the work of New York–based artist Vija Celmins (born 1938) and Colgone-based painter Gerhard Richter (born 1932) in a transatlantic dialogue that reveals surprising connections. Their works have been paired together at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in an exhibition spanning over 60 paintings, drawings, prints and objects. This study offers comparisons between some of the artists’ most notable works, including Celmins’ 

. In addition to their thematic similarities and the fact that both have worked with photographic models throughout their careers, Celmins and Richter share an interest in the most elementary conditions of representation. This revelatory pairing invokes questions of reality, visibility and the nature of perception itself.

Vija Celmins & Gerhard Richter: Double Vision

Jordan Wolfson, 2023, National Gallery of Australia. Photo by Karlee Holland. Courtesy National Gallery of Australia

Edited by Russell Storer. Contributions by Genevieve Bell, Russell Ferguson, Anne Imhof, Andrew Meares, Mark Setrakian, and Richard Taylor. 

A celebration of the first work by Wolfson to enter an Australian collection



Artist Jordan Wolfson is emblematic of the time in which we live. As we grapple with our relationship to technology, our immersion in internet culture, and social issues of racial and gender inequality, alienation, and violence, Wolfson confronts us with their images, actions, and effects. His works act as witnesses on the world we are in right now rather than taking a moral position or articulating a particular point of view. They are therefore often uncomfortable to experience, as well as being deeply intriguing in their extraordinary visual power and technical sophistication.

In this publication, the National Gallery of Australia has gathered robust ideas, facilitated discussions, and sought unique perspectives that position Wolfson's major work within diverse contexts, including art history, cybernetics, and media theory. Contributors include Mark Setrakian, Wolfson's principal collaborator; Richard Taylor of Wētā Workshop; Russell Ferguson, a curator, writer, and longtime observer of Wolfson's work; Genevieve Bell and Andrew Meares from the Australian National University School of Cybernetics; and artist Anne Imhof. The publication's creative vision has been driven by the artist and features stunning documentary photographs by David Sims and design by Joseph Logan.

Body Sculpture: Jordan Wolfson

Detail of an oil on linen painting, titled Clear Message, dated 2019.

A double catalogue covering two manifestations at Xavier Hufkens gallery by Josh Smith, who is known for painting series of simple yet highly distinctive visual motifs. Part of the New York-based artist’s ongoing process of image production and experimentation, the paintings are autonomous entities but also part of a larger “family” of interrelated works. ‘Finding Emo’ (2019) featured new paintings and monotypes depicting the Grim Reaper. Following on that was ‘Keyhole’ (2022), in which Smith showed a new series of large-format paintings and figurative monotypes in which he addresses abstraction, expanding on this recurrent theme in terms of scale, palette, and energy.

Josh Smith: Finding Emo / Keyhole

Edited by Glenn Adamson, Dakin Hart and Kate Wiener. Contributions by Ai Fukunaga, Nonie Gadsden, Diana Jocelyn Greenwold, Laura Kina, Leilehua Lanzilotti, Margo Machida, Laura Mott and Katy Siegel

An expansive look at the multifaceted American artist Toshiko Takaezu within the history of postwar artmaking

Toshiko Takaezu (1922–2011) was an American artist whose multidisciplinary work in ceramics, painting, sculpture, weaving, and installation innovatively drew from the natural world, combining expressionist energies with influences from East Asia. The closed ceramic forms for which she is best known are effectively abstract paintings in the round. Her reputation as a ceramic artist, however, has obscured the breadth of her output in other mediums and her role within the larger art movements of the twentieth century. This book provides the first retrospective assessment of Takaezu’s art and life, representing her diverse oeuvre, which spanned six decades, and her hybrid identity as an Asian American woman, artist, and teacher. 

This ambitious volume features essays exploring Takaezu’s biography, her background as a Hawai‘i-born artist of Okinawan heritage, the relationship between her abstract work and that of her contemporaries, the role of cultural exchange in her art, her impact as an educator, and more. Beautifully illustrated with nearly 300 images of artworks and archival photographs, and including an updated chronology, exhibition history, and recollections from the artist’s former apprentices, the book offers a compelling and comprehensive account of this singular artist’s career.

Toshiko Takaezu: Worlds Within

An untitled painting by Noah Davis, dated 2015.

A sculpture by Ruth Asawa, called Untitled (S.175, Hanging Single-Lobed, Four-Layer Continuous Form within a Form), dated c. 1992.

The Artist Journals

 go beyond canonical art to capture the modern and contemporary spirit of today’s most acclaimed painters, sculptors, and other major creative forces. Created in close collaboration with each artist or artist’s estate, these beautifully produced blank books—with their stunning wraparound cover artwork, endpapers, patterned interior pages, and bellybands that transform into collectible bookmarks—are works of art themselves, designed to inspire, collect, and gift to a wide audience.

The Artist Journals Collection

All Books

Collect: Discover, Buy and Sell Art

David Zwirner is an art gallery with locations in New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Hong Kong. We present physical and online exhibitions, podcasts, books, and more.