SPRING 2026 CATALOGUE

HANDLE WITH CARE

There are words like care, prudence, and consideration: they describe how things are done. And there are words like process optimization, productivity increase, or MVP; they describe how quickly or efficiently things should be done.

Our preview quotes the call Handle with Care, based on a work by artist Rolf Walz. It's just a shame that the glass pane is completely shattered! A wonderful image for the tension between mindfulness and mishap, between prudence and chance—and for the challenges that bookmaking faces every day.

Handle with Care—a seemingly lighthearted appeal that addresses so many things: how we treat objects and each other. How we exchange ideas of creatives, editors, and technicians; how we deal with the wishes of producers, distributors, and readers; and how we tackle the concerns of our partners in the book trade, in museums, and in the broad field of culture in general. We want to approach them all with this attitude: attentive, open, and engaged.
As such, Handle with Care is the perfect start to our spring program for 2026, which allows us to discover Charlotte Perriand as a great pioneer of designed living spaces. In a revised new edition, Hartz 4 Möbel continues to think sustainably about furniture and spaces.

The Fondation Beyeler's major Cezanne book offers a fresh look at this exceptional painter who redefined our relationship with nature through his art. Karl Kolbitz's fascinating and lavishly illustrated study shows how painted marble symbolizes divine presence. Marcel Duchamp as a strategically savvy and well-connected chess player is the focus of Astrid Honold's book; she documents and comments on 315 of his chess games and links them in an inspiring way to art history.

And finally, we are particularly pleased to announce the long-awaited commentary volume on Aby Warburg's Bilderatlas Mnemosyne by Roberto Ohrt and Axel Heil. With their faithful reconstruction of the picture atlas on the one hand, and the first volume of commentary on the other, the two authors set standards for the research and reception of the great founder of modern visual studies: with care, prudence, and consideration.

With warm regards into the sea of books,
Nicola von Velsen and the Hatje Cantz team

You can get an overview of our available publications by taking a look at the Backlist 2025/26