Twenty artists are featured in these brief, breezy biographical sketches accompanied by an iconographic painting containing visual clues to that person's works and quirks. Krull and Hewitt begin where encyclopedias typically stop, just as they did in Lives of the Musicians (Harcourt, 1993) and Lives of the Writers (Harcourt, 1994). They create somewhat unconventional portraits of each artist, leaving readers with a sense of him/her as an actual person and a zest to know more. The artists are da Vinci, Michelangelo, Bruegel, Anguissloa, Rembrandt, Hokusai, Cassett, van Gogh, Kollwitz, Matisse, Picasso, Chagall, Duchamp, O'Keeffe, W. H. Johnson, Dali, Noguchi, Rivera, Kahlo and Warhol. (Ages 7-14)

Most people can name some famous artists and recognize their best-known works. But what's behind all that painting, drawing, and sculpting? What was Leonardo da Vinci's snack of choice while he painted Mona Lisa's mysterious smile? Why did Georgia O'Keeffe find bones so appealing? Who called Diego Rivera "Frog-Face"? And what is it about artists that makes both their work and their lives so fascinating--to themselves, to their curious neighbors, and to all of us? This book presents the humor and the tragedy in twenty artists' lives as no biography has done before.