Kandinsky
Edited by Helmut Friedel and Annegret Hoberg
Prestel £99, 320 pages
My art book of the year: a giant, lavish, boxed extravaganza offering the most complete overview yet of the pioneering Russian painter. Fresh archive material and photographs complement top-quality illustrations. Kandinsky’s dissolving forms of brilliant colour are exquisitely reproduced, illuminating him as, among other things, a great romantic.

Moscow and St Petersburg in Russia’s Silver Age
By John E. Bowlt
Thames & Hudson £24.95, 396 pages
Billionaire collectors, post-glasnost revisions of history and ambitious young artists all make Russia an intoxicating force in today’s global culture. This account of renaissance and revolution – from Akhmatova and Diaghilev to Malevich and Stravinsky – during the twilight of the tsarist empire is sumptuous, unforgettable and revelatory.