From Picasso's Cubism and Duchamp's readymades to Warhol's silkscreens and Smithson's earthworks, the art of the twentieth century broke completely with earlier artistic traditions. A basic change in the market for advanced art produced a heightened demand for innovation, and young conceptual innovators - from Picasso and Duchamp to Rauschenberg and Warhol to Cindy Sherman and Damien Hirst - responded not only by creating dozens of new forms of art, but also by behaving in ways that would have been incomprehensible to their predecessors.

From the influential craftsmen of the high renaissance to the Dutch masters, and from the rococo and neoclassical movements of the 18th century to romanticism, modernism and contemporary art, the lives of the great artists are as varied and multifaceted as the works of creative genius they produced.
The Great Art Guide introduces readers to 100 of the world’s most important artists, from the 13th century to the present. Works by artists such as Caravaggio, Vermeer, van Gogh and Warhol are arranged chronologically and set in their historical context by Susie Hodge’s authoritative narrative.