Along the three major themes of technique, art epochs, and pictorial genres, art history can delve into the smallest details. The concern of “Don’t think, but look!” is diametrically opposed. Foregoing any commentary text, this book is about the conscious act of seeing without distraction in order to recognize the essential—the “unexplainable”— in the work of art. This publication does not intend to be a comprehensive history of art. Instead, this quite subjective selection of 338 paintings aims to provide an unclouded view of the chronological development of Western painting over seven centuries. The key painting is on the cover: Cezanne’s Bathers (Les Grandes Baigneuses) that, like a gateway, opens the path to the non-representational image of our time.

WALTER FEILCHENFELDT jr. (*1939, Amsterdam) is a Swiss art dealer, collector and researcher. After studying economics at the University of Zurich, he went to London to work for Sotheby's as an art expert in the Impressionist and Modernist fields, before joining the Walter Kunsthandlung Walter Feilchenfeldt in 1966, which his father had founded in succession Paul Cassirer’s Art Salon in Zurich. He made a name for himself as an expert on Paul Cezanne and Vincent van Gogh and was co-editor of numerous publications.