Comprehensive, authoritative, highly readable and generously illustrated, Herbert Read's text surveys modern painting from its roots in the work of Cezanne, through Cubism, Futurism, Surrealism and Dada in the early decades of the twentieth century and on to Abstract Expressionism in the 1950s. The works of Frank Stella, Richard Hamilton, Andy Warhol, Robert Rauschenberg and many others are discussed and analyzed by Caroline Tisdall and William Feaver in a lively final chapter that takes the story forward. This is an indispensable reference work that bears witness to the genius of Herbert Read - artist, poet and art historian.