World Food Books' programme is largely produced on Kulin Nation land. We acknowledge the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation as the first and continuing custodians of this land, and pay respect to their Elders past, present, and emerging.
World Food Books is an arts and special interests bookshop in Naarm / Melbourne. Founded in 2010, World Food Books is devoted to the presentation of a rotating, hand-selection of international art, design, literary and counterculture publications with an emphasis on the anti-traditional, the experimental, the avant-garde, the heretic, the marginal.
Presenting new titles alongside rare and out-of-print books, catalogues and journals spanning the fields of modern and contemporary art, design, photography, illustration, film, literature, poetry, cultural theory, philosophy, sexuality, popular and underground culture in its many radical forms, World Food Books wishes to encourage adventurous, thoughtful and open-minded reading, looking, writing, and exchange of publishing and ideas, both current and historical.
As well as our bookshop, located in Melbourne's historical Nicholas Building, all of our inventory is available internationally via our online mail-order service.
World Food Books semi-regularly co-ordinates "Occasions", a programme of exhibits and events at the bookshop and in partnership with other hosts (such as museums and art galleries) that develop out of the activities, relationships and content of the bookshop itself.
World Food Books
The Nicholas Building
37 Swanston Street
Room 5, Level 6
Melbourne 3000
Australia
SHOP HOURS:
THU—FRI 12—6 PM
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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Pick-Ups
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after order date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 2 weeks of ordering as we have limited storage space. Orders will be released back into stock if not collected within this time. No refunds can be made for pick-ups left un-collected. If you cannot make it in to the bookshop in this time-frame, please choose postage option.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund or exchange) for items received in error. All our orders are packed with special care using heavy-duty padding and cardboard book-mailers or bubble mailers (for smaller books), using reinforcement where required. We cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels.
Insurance
Should you wish to insure your package, please email us directly after placing your order and we can organise this at a small extra expense. Although all standard/express tracked packages are very safe and dependable, we cannot take responsibility for any lost, stolen or damaged parcels. We recommend insurance on valuable orders.
Interested in selling your old books, catalogues, journals, magazines, comics, fanzines, ephemera? We are always looking for interesting, unusual and out-of-print books to buy. We only buy books in our fields of interest and specialty, and that we feel we can resell.
We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels. We offer cash, store credit, and can take stock on consignment. All
about 25% of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Sell your books any day of the week. You can drop them off and return later. If you have a lot of books, we can visit your Sydney home.
We buy books that we feel we can resell. We offer about 25 % of the price we expect to get when we sell them, or 30% in store credit. We base these prices on desirability, market value, in-print prices, condition and our current stock levels.
Philadelphia Wireman
03 August - 01 September, 2018
World Food Books is proud to announce our next Occasion, the first presentation of sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman in Australia.
The Philadelphia Wireman sculptures were found abandoned in an alley off Philadelphia’s South Street on trash night in 1982. Their discovery in a rapidly-changing neighbourhood undergoing extensive renovation, compounded with the failure of all attempts to locate the artist, suggests that the works may have been discarded after the maker’s death. Dubbed the "Philadelphia Wireman" during the first exhibition of this work, in 1985, the maker’s name, age, ethnicity, and even gender remain uncertain. The entire collection totals approximately 1200 pieces, all intricately bound together with tightly-wound heavy-gauge wire (along with a few small, abstract marker drawings, reminiscent both of Mark Tobey and J.B. Murry). The dense construction of the work, despite a modest range of scale and materials, is singularly obsessive and disciplined in design: a wire armature or exoskeleton firmly binds a bricolage of found objects including plastic, glass, food packaging, umbrella parts, tape, rubber, batteries, pens, leather, reflectors, nuts and bolts, nails, foil, coins, toys, watches, eyeglasses, tools, and jewellery.
Heavy with associations—anthropomorphic, zoomorphic, and socio-cultural responses to wrapped detritus—the totemic sculptures by Philadelphia Wireman have been discussed in the context of work created to fulfil the shamanistic needs of alternative religions in American culture. Curators, collectors, and critics have variously compared certain pieces to sculpture from Classical antiquity, Native American medicine bundles, African-American memory jugs, and African fetish objects. Reflecting the artist’s prolific and incredibly focused scavenging impulse, and despite—or perhaps enhanced by—their anonymity, these enigmatic objects function as urban artefacts and arbiters of power, though their origin and purpose is unknown. Philadelphia Wireman, whatever their identity, possessed an astonishing ability to isolate and communicate the concepts of power and energy through the selection and transformation of ordinary materials. Over the course of the past two decades, this collection has come to be regarded as an important discovery in the field of self-taught art and vernacular art.
Presented in collaboration with Fleisher-Ollman Gallery, Philadelphia, and Robert Heald, Wellington.
Susan Te Kahurangi King
02 February - 10 March, 2018
Susan Te Kahurangi King (24 February 1951 - ) has been a confident and prolific artist since she was a young child, drawing with readily available materials - pencils, ballpoint pens and felt-tip markers, on whatever paper is at hand. Between the ages of four and six Susan slowly ceased verbal communication. Her grandparents William and Myrtle Murphy had developed a special bond with Susan so they took on caring responsibilities for extended periods. Myrtle began informally archiving her work, carefully collecting and storing the drawings and compiling scrapbooks. No drawing was insignificant; every scrap of paper was kept. The King family are now the custodians of a vast collection containing over 7000 individual works, from tiny scraps of paper through to 5 meter long rolls.
The scrapbooks and diaries reveal Myrtle to be a woman of great patience and compassion, seeking to understand a child who was not always behaving as expected. She encouraged Susan to be observant, to explore her environment and absorb all the sights and sounds. Myrtle would show Susan’s drawings to friends and people in her community that she had dealings with, such as shopkeepers and postal workers, but this was not simply a case of a grandmother’s bias. She recognised that Susan had developed a sophisticated and unique visual language and sincerely believed that her art deserved serious attention.
This was an unorthodox attitude for the time. To provide some context, Jean Dubuffet coined the term Art Brut in 1945 to describe work created by self-taught artists – specifically residents of psychiatric institutions and those he considered to be visionaries or eccentrics. In 1972 Roger Cardinal extended this concept by adopting the term Outsider Art to describe work made by non-academically trained artists operating outside of mainstream art networks through choice or circumstance. Susan was born in Te Aroha, New Zealand in 1951, far from the artistic hubs of Paris and London that Dubuffet and Cardinal operated in. That Myrtle fêted Susan as a self-taught artist who deserved to be taken seriously shows how progressive her attitudes were.
Susan’s parents Doug and Dawn were also progressive. Over the years they had consulted numerous health practitioners about Susan’s condition, as the medical establishment could not provide an explanation as to why she had lapsed into silence. Dawn educated herself in the field of homeopathy and went on to treat all twelve of her children using these principles – basing prescriptions on her observations of their physical, mental and emotional state.
Doug was a linguist with an interest in philosophy who devoted what little spare time he had to studying Maori language and culture. To some extent their willingness to explore the fringes of the mainstream made them outsiders too but it was their commitment to living with integrity and their respect for individuality that ensured Susan’s creativity was always encouraged.
Even though Susan’s family supported her artistic pursuits, some staff in schools and hospitals saw it as an impediment to her assimilation into the community and discouraged it in a variety of ways. Her family was not always aware of this and therefore did not fully understand why Susan stopped drawing in the early 1990s. However, rather than dwell on the challenges that Susan faced in pursuit of her artistic practice, they prefer to highlight her achievements. In 2008 Susan began drawing again in earnest, after an almost 20 year interruption, and her work is now shown in galleries around the world.
Susan grew up without television and has been heavily influenced by the comics she read as a child. She is absolutely fearless in the appropriation of recognizable characters, such as Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse, in her work. She twists their limbs, contorts their faces, compresses them together, blends them into complex patterned backgrounds - always imbuing them with an incredible energy. Although Susan often used pop culture characters in her work they are not naive or childlike. These are drawings by a brilliant self-taught artist who has been creating exceptional work for decades without an audience in mind.
Mladen Stilinović
"Various Works 1986 - 1999"
02 February 16 - September 10, 2016
Various works 1986 - 1999, from two houses, from the collections of John Nixon, Sue Cramer, Kerrie Poliness, Peter Haffenden and Phoebe Haffenden.
Including: Geometry of Cakes (various shelves), 1993; Poor People’s Law (black and white plate), 1993; White Absence (glasses, ruler, set square, silver spoon, silver ladel with skin photograph and wooden cubes), 1990-1996; Exploitation of the Dead (grey and red star painting, wooden painting, black spoon with red table, red plate), 1984-1990; Money and Zeros (zero tie, paintings made for friends in Australia (Sue, John, Kerrie), numbers painting), 1991-1992; Words - Slogans (various t-shirts) - “they talk about the death of art...help! someone is trying to kill me”, “my sweet little lamb”, “work is a disease - Karl Marx”; Various artist books, catalogues, monographs, videos; Poster from exhibition Insulting Anarchy; "Circular" Croatian - Australian edition; Artist book by Vlado Martek (Dostoyevsky); more.
Thanks to Mladen Stilinović and Branka Stipančić.
Jonathan Walker
Always Will Need To Wear Winter Shirt Blue + Ochre Small Check Pattern
21 August - 21 September, 2015
Untitled
I am not a great reader of poetry but I always return to the work of Melbourne poet, Vincent Buckley (1925- 1988). Perhaps I find his most tantalising piece to be not a finished poem but a fragment left on a scrap of paper discovered on his desk after the poet’s death.
The poetry gathers like oil
In the word-core, and spreads
It has its music meet,
Its music is in movement.
This fragment is more the shell left behind from a volatile thought than a finished poem. I find the last two lines honest but awkward whereas the first two lines work like an arrow. Most likely he could not find a resolution so it was left. Still, in its present form, it remains an eloquent testimony to the ultimate failure of a medium to express mobile thought and sensation, in Buckley’s case, through verbal language. It’s an important matter because this is something all artists have to deal with regardless of the medium.
I have never written a poem, however, I am forever copying fragments from books on paper scraps in a vain effort to fix certain notions in my head. At first, they function as bookmarks that are sometimes returned to when I open the book. But before long, as they accumulate, they fall out littering the table interspersed with A4 photocopies, bills, books and medications.
To return to Buckley’s fragment, the first two lines very much evoke how I paint nowadays. As you age, detail diminishes and patches of light become more luminous and float. I feel the most honest way of dealing with this is by smearing the oil paint on the canvas with the fingers and working close-up, blind. Only if the patches coalesce into an approaching image can the work gain a life.
-
Jonathan Walker was born in Melbourne, Australia and brought up on a dairy farm in Gippsland. In the 1970’s he studied painting at RMIT and won the Harold Wright Scholarship to the British Museum, London. During the 1980’s he exhibited at Pinacotheca Gallery, Richmond and had work shown at the NGV and Heidi City Art Gallery. Over the same period he designed the cover for the “Epigenesi” LP by Giancarlo Toniutti, Italy and conducted a mail exchange work with Achim Wollscheid, Germany. The work with artists through the post resulted in an article published in the bicentenary issue of Art and Australia 1988. He showed in artist run spaces such as WestSpace in the 90’s and 2000’s, and until 2012, taught painting at Victoria University, which is where we (Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford) as organisers of the exhibition, among many others, had the privilege of being his student.
Walker’s knowledge was imparted to students through the careful selection of music, literature, and artists found in books that he himself had ordered for the library. Walker’s strategy was the generosity of sharing his vast knowledge with references specific to each student and their context.
Walker’s paintings share a similar focus and intimacy.
This exhibition presents a small selection of recent paintings alongside a publication that includes Walker’s writing. Observational and analytical, Walker’s work is a type of material notation — the time of day, colour and how it is blended, the both specific and fleeting location of a reflection on lino or the question of whether a chair leg should be included in a painting.
Please join us on Friday August 21 between 6-8pm to celebrate the opening of the exhibition.
Curated by Colleen Ahern and Lisa Radford.
B. Wurtz
Curated by Nic Tammens
March 26 - April 4, 2015
B.Wurtz works from a basement studio in his home on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.
This local fact is attested to by the plastic shopping bags and newsprint circulars that appear in his work. As formal objects, they don’t make loud claims about their origins but nonetheless transmit street addresses and places of business from the bottom of this long thin island. Like plenty of artists, Wurtz is affected by what is local and what is consumed. His work is underpinned by this ethic. It often speaks from a neighborhood or reads like the contents of a hamper:
“BLACK PLUMS $1.29 lb.”
“Food Bazaar”
“USDA Whole Pork Shoulder Picnic 99c lb.”
“RITE AID Pharmacy, with us it’s personal.”
“H. Brickman & Sons.”
“Sweet Yams 59c lb."
Most of the work in this exhibition was made while the artist was in residence at Dieu Donne, a workshop dedicated to paper craft in Midtown. Here Wurtz fabricated assemblages with paper and objects that are relatively lightweight, with the intention that they would be easily transportable to Australia. This consideration isn’t absolute in Wurtz’s work, but was prescriptive for making the current exhibition light and cheap. Packed in two boxes, these works were sent from a USPS post office on the Lower East Side and delivered to North Melbourne by Australia Post.
Wurtz appears courtesy of Metro Pictures, New York.
Thanks to Rob Halverson, Joshua Petherick, Sari de Mallory, Matt Hinkley, Helen Johnson, Fayen d'Evie, Ask Kilmartin, Lisa Radon, Ellena Savage, Yale Union, and "Elizabeth".
John Nixon
"Archive"
December 15 - January 20, 2014
The presentation of John Nixon's archive offered a rare showcase of this extensive collection of the artist's own publications, catalogues, posters, ephemera, editions and more, from the mid 1980s onwards, alongside a selection of his artworks.
Organized by John Nixon, Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley.
"Habitat"
at Minerva, Sydney (organised by Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley)
November 15 - December 20, 2014
Lupo Borgonovo, Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley,
Lewis Fidock, HR Giger, Piero Gilardi, Veit Laurent Kurz,
Cinzia Ruggeri, Michael E. Smith, Lucie Stahl, Daniel Weil, Wols
Press Release:
“...It contained seven objects. The slender fluted bone, surely formed for flight, surely from the wing of some large bird. Three archaic circuitboards, faced with mazes of gold. A smooth white sphere of baked clay. An age-blackened fragment of lace. A fingerlength segment of what she assumed was bone from a human wrist, grayish white, inset smoothly with the silicon shaft of a small instrument that must once have ridden flush with the surface of the skin - but the thing’s face was seared and blackened.”
William Gibson, “Count Zero”, 1986
"Autumn Projects Archive"
Curated by Liza Vasiliou
March 6 - March 15, 2014
World Food Books, in conjunction with the Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival 2014, presented the Autumn Projects archive, consisting of a selection of early examples in Australian fashion with a particular interest in collecting designers and labels from the period beginning in the 1980’s, who significantly influenced the discourse of Australian Fashion.
Curated by Liza Vasiliou, the exhibition provided a unique opportunity to view pieces by designers Anthea Crawford, Barbara Vandenberg, Geoff Liddell and labels CR Australia, Covers, Jag along with early experimental collage pieces by Prue Acton and Sally Browne’s ‘Fragments’ collection, suspended throughout the functioning World Food Books shop in Melbourne.
H.B. Peace
presented by CENTRE FOR STYLE
November 14, 2013
"Hey Blinky, you say chic, I say same"
Anon 2013
H.B. Peace is a clothing collaboration between great friends Blake Barns and Hugh Egan Westland. Their pieces explore the divergences between 'character’ and ‘personality’ in garments....etc
Special Thanks to Joshua Petherick and Matt Hinkley of WFB and Gillian Mears
and a Very Special Thank you to Audrey Thomas Hayes for her shoe collaboration.
Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley
"Aesthetic Suicide"
May 10 - June 8, 2013
The first of our occasional exhibitions in the World Food Books office/shop space in Melbourne, "Aesthetic Suicide" presented a body of new and older works together by artists Janet Burchill & Jennifer McCamley, including videos, prints, a wall work, and publications.
During shop open hours videos played every hour, on the hour.
1994, Czech / English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 276 pages, 23 x 20.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Foto Mida / Czech Republic
$100.00 - Out of stock
First edition of this now long-out-of-print and most comprehensive hardcover monograph the work of Czech surrealist photographer Vilém Reichmann. This exceptional volume is profusely with over 200 full-page colour and b/w plates of Reichmann's photographic works, including his incredible experimental photogram works, and a selection of rarely seen drawings and paintings. Texts throughout by accomplished curator and Czech photography specialist Antonín Dufek (b. 1943) in Czech with an inserted booklet of all texts translated to English. Includes biography, bibliography. A scarce resource on this great artist.
Vilém Reichmann (1908-1991) was one of the premiere Czech surrealist photographers. Reichmann comes from the German-Jewish community in Brno and began photographing in 1930, whilst working as a graphic artist for numerous left-wing magazines in Czechoslovakia. Influenced by the Depression and war years, he developed a Surrealist style modelled on lyrical interpretations of reality through visual metaphors. After World War II he became a member of ‘Ra’, a Czech Surrealist art group, and his work shows the influence of textural abstraction and absurdist humor. Antonín Dufek, an erudite specialist in the field of the Czech photography, confirms Reichmann’s fundamental position in the history of the Czech photography, especially its surrealist movement.
VG copy in VG dust jacket. Few marks to block edge, top of cloth, light waving to block.
1989, German
Hardcover, 136 pages, 25.5 x 21.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ex Pose Verlag / Berlin
$90.00 - In stock -
First edition of the out-of-print hardcover monograph on the work of Czech Surrealist photographer Vilém Reichmann, published on the occasion of a major survey exhibition at the Museum Bochum in 1989 and the Austrian Photo Archive in the Museum of Modern Art, Vienna in 1990. Extensive documentation of Reichmann's photographic works, including his incredible experimental photogram works. Includes portrait, biography, bibliography and texts by Antonín Dufek and Peter Spielmann in German.
Vilém Reichmann (1908-1991) was one of the premiere Czech surrealist photographers. Reichmann comes from the German-Jewish community in Brno and began photographing in 1930, whilst working as a graphic artist for numerous left-wing magazines in Czechoslovakia. Influenced by the Depression and war years, he developed a Surrealist style modelled on lyrical interpretations of reality through visual metaphors. After World War II he became a member of ‘Ra’, a Czech Surrealist art group, and his work shows the influence of textural abstraction and absurdist humor. Antonín Dufek, an erudite specialist in the field of the Czech photography, confirms Reichmann’s fundamental position in the history of the Czech photography, especially its surrealist movement.
Very Good copy, only very light wear to spine ends, cover, internally perfect.
1961, Czech
Softcover, 64 pages, 17.5 x 15.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
SNKLU / Prague
$80.00 - In stock -
Wonderful and long out-of-print Vilém Reichmann monograph, published in Prague in 1961 as part of the distinctive series of Czech monographs on photographers published by SNKLU, a wing of the great Odeon publishing house. Edited by fellow photographer/painter Václav Zykmund, this beautifully printed book presents a selection of 64 of his best lyrical surreal images, printed in gravure.
Vilém Reichmann (1908-1991) was one of the premiere Czech surrealist photographers. Reichmann comes from the German-Jewish community in Brno and began photographing in 1930, whilst working as a graphic artist for numerous left-wing magazines in Czechoslovakia. Influenced by the Depression and war years, he developed a Surrealist style modelled on lyrical interpretations of reality through visual metaphors. After World War II he became a member of ‘Ra’, a Czech Surrealist art group, and his work shows the influence of textural abstraction and absurdist humor. Antonín Dufek, an erudite specialist in the field of the Czech photography, confirms Reichmann’s fundamental position in the history of the Czech photography, especially its surrealist movement.
Good copy with some moisture ripple and general wear. Moisture stain at back but not affecting contents.
1977, Japanese
Softcover, 56 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gallery 8 / Tokyo
$90.00 - In stock -
Very scarce Japanese publication on German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols, published by Fuji Television Co. in 1977 on the occasion of an exhibition at Gallery 8, Tokyo. Beautifully illustrated throughout in colour and b/w with over 40 works, including chronology, exhibitions history, and bibliography. Exhibition work-list inserted.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Near Fine copy.
1965, French
Softcover, 34 pages, 21 x 17 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Alexander Iolas / Paris
$65.00 - Out of stock
Lovely catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition "Un Hommage a Wols" at Alexandre Iolas Gallery, Paris, in February 1965. Illustrated throughout with the paintings and drawings of German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols, alongside an excerpt from Jean-Paul Sartre's text "Wols in person", Gallery Europe, Paris. This copy includes "Oevres exposées" booklet inserted, listing the works exhibited at the Galerie Alexandre Iolas. Texts in French.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Very Good copy with light tanning.
2019, English
Paperback (w. corrugated board wrap), 212 pages, 21.1 x 25.9 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$95.00 - Out of stock
Before or After, at the Same Time: Rome, Milan, and Fabio Mauri, 1948–1968 is a landmark publication from Hauser & Wirth Publishers exploring post-war Italian art through the cultural lens of remarkable 20th-century thinkers and artists. Discover the fascinating narrative of Fabio Mauri, an artist, writer, producer and intellectual, alongside the history of his family, a publishing dynasty which thrived on close connections to radical Italian art, poetry, cinema, philosophy and literature. Mauri’s story becomes a starting point from which to explore Italian visual culture, its influences and the defining ideas behind it. The title refers to Mauri’s statement: "I can’t stay in step with my time. I am either before or after it, at the same time." (Fabio Mauri, Ideology and Memory).
The social and political aftermath of the Second World War engendered two highly energetic pockets of creativity in the cities of Rome and Milan. Uncover a tale of these two cities, with Mauri—a multi-disciplinary artist who resisted categorisation—acting as the point of introduction to the artistic practices that emerged from each of these distinct cultural, economic and political scenes. The book examines and, in cases, re-examines the artistic milieu surrounding Mauri which included Carla Accardi, Franco Angeli, Enrico Baj, Alberto Burri, Alighiero Boetti, Enrico Castellani, Dadamaino, Piero Dorazio, Tano Festa, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Piero Manzoni, Gastone Novelli, Mimmo Rotella, Mario Schifano, Giulio Turcato and Cy Twombly.
Edited by Ben Eastham, the publication features essays and newly commissioned texts by Giorgio Agamben, Ilaria Bernardi, Barbara Casavecchia, Pierre Testard, Andrea Viliani and Laura Cherubini; an interview between Achille and Sebastiano Mauri discussing the enduring and near unbelievable family history; a historic article by Fabio Mauri "In 1960 the 1950s Were 10 Years Old," bringing his prescient character to life; never before published and translated letters between Silvana Mauri, Fabio’s eldest sister, and Pier Paolo Pasolini, the filmmaker, writer and poet expressing a remarkable intimacy and honesty
1989, French
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 168 pages, 26 x 29.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Adam Biro / Paris
$180.00 - In stock -
First 1989 edition of Jacques Henric's monographic volume on the great Pierre Klossowski. One of the most comprehensive books ever published on the artist, with beautiful large reproductions of artworks in colour and b/w heavily featured throughout, alongside Henric's text (in original French) with a full catalogue of works and bibliography. First hardcover printing in original dust jacket.
Jacques Henric (b. 1938) is a French literary critic, essayist and novelist.
Pierre Klossowski (1905-2001) was a significant and influential philosopher, writer, translator and artist who befriended Georges Bataille and formulated an original stance on many theological issues, as well as the philosophy of the Marquis de Sade. His first novel, Roberte, ce soir, appeared in 1954 as a limited edition containing six of his own erotic illustrations, after he rejected drawings by his younger brother, the painter Balthus. Following the encouragement of Robert Lebel, Andre Masson and Alberto Giacometti, Klossowski held his first exhibition in Paris in 1956, and subsequently produced numerous life-size drawings of erotic scenes imbued with mythological, allegorical and philosophical connotations. By the 1970s, he had won the acclaim of such eminent thinkers as Maurice Blanchot, Michel Butor, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault and Felix Guattari. Of Klossowski, Gilles Deleuze once said, "That bodies speak has been known for a long time."
Near Fine copy of book and dj, preserved in archival mylar wrap.
1974, Italian / French / English
2 Vol., hardcovers (w. dust jackets in slipcase), 148 / 242 pages, 33 x 24 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
La Connaissance / Brussels
$340.00 - In stock -
Fine copy of the spectacular, original Lucio Fontana 2 volume Catalogue Raisonné , cloth-bound and housed in cardboard slipcase. Published by Archivio Lucio Fontana, Milan, and La Connaissance, Brussels, each volume comes wrapped in the great Ugo Mulas Fontana portrait dust jacket, with Volume 1 tracing the career of Fontana through in-depth essays by Italian art critic Enrico Crispolti and curator Jan van der Marck. Illustrated throughout in colour and b/w and closing with Fontana's "Manifestes de l'Art Spatial". Volume 2 is the Catalogue Raisonné "des Peintures, Sculptures, et Environements Spatiaux", comprehensively and chronologically illustrated with all of Fontana's works, listing texts relating to each on the facing pages. Also includes an extensive listing of the work inscriptions, bibliography and exhibition history, all edited by Enrico Crispolti. Texts in Italian, French and English.
Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) is one the most innovative artists of the 20th century. A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Fontana blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. The founder of Spatialism, a movement focused on the spatial qualities of sculpture and paintings with the goal of breaking through the two-dimensionality of the traditional picture plane, he pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts. He was best known for his monochrome canvases known as Concetti Spaziale that he would cut or puncture, leaving distinctive gaping slash marks and holes that imbued the finished work with an almost violent energy. In his seminal writing, White Manifesto (1946), the artist traced ideas for creating a new medium that blended architecture, painting, and sculpture. “I do not want to make a painting; I want to open up space, create a new dimension, tie in the cosmos, as it endlessly expands beyond the confining plane of the picture,” he said of his work. Fontana had widespread impact on the following generation of artists, who began to use installation media more aggressively to address the dynamics of space in gallery environments and Land Art. Fontana died on September 7, 1968 in Varese, Italy at the age of 69, just two years after being awarded the Grand Prize for painting at the Venice Biennale.
Both near fine in NF dust jackets. Good slipcase with tanning and wear.
2024, English / German
Softcover, 224 pages, 22 x 28 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
Schirn Kunsthalle / Frankfurt
$80.00 - Out of stock
Sexuality, passion, illness, death - these are the great human themes and fundamental experiences to which Carol Rama dedicated her art. Rama (1918–2015) is one of those outstanding female artists of modernism who, in spite of impressive and multifaceted oeuvres, achieved fame late in their career. Her depictions from the 1930s of female lust paved the way for today’s feminist art. Independent of artistic schools and groupings, the self-taught talent created over the course of 70 years an unconventional and highly personal oeuvre. Rama’s work defies simple categorization and is distinguished by an enthusiastic delight in experimentation. From her early days as an artist in the 1930s through to the early 2000s, she managed to reinvent her style every ten years or so with new groups of works, while always remaining true to herself. An adept iconoclast, she pushed the boundaries of artistic and social conventions in terms of both form and content.
This richly illustrated catalog traces the various phases of the artist's extensive and extraordinary work – from provocative watercolours and paintings to her bricolages: object montages in which Rama experimented with a wide range of materials. In addition to a comprehensive introduction by curator Martina Weinhart, who provides an in-depth look into the different phases of Rama's work, essays by Florian Werner and Elena Volpato explore specific aspects of her art. Companions of Rama, such as Lea Vergine and Eduardo Sanguineti, also contribute their insights. Also includes a joint foreword by the director of the Schirn, Sebastian Baden, and the director of the Kunstmuseum Bern, Nina Zimmer, and an extensive biography by Theresa Dettinger that presents the most important milestones of Rama's long life and artistic career.
2022, English
Softcover, 364 pages, 14.2 x 21.8 cm
Published by
Divided Publishing / London
$46.00 - In stock -
Recorded and transcribed throughout the 1960s, Carla Lonzi’s Self-portrait ruptures the narration of post-war modern art in Italy and beyond. Artmaking struck Lonzi as an invitation to be together in a ‘humanly satisfying way’, and this experiment in art-historical writing is a testament to her belief. Lonzi abolishes the role of the critic, her own, seeking change over self-preservation by theorising against the act of theorising.
The life and work of Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) is inseparable from the cultural, political, and social history of Italy in the decades following the Second World War; she occupies a singular position, which today merits reevaluation. A reputed art critic of the 1960s artistic scene, both friend and collaborator of such figures as Carla Accardi, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, and Jannis Kounellis, she wrote “Autoportrait” in 1969, a “love letter” to the artists and to creation, but also a farewell chorus to art criticism and the art world. The following year she founded Rivolta Femminile, an active feminist collective, thus becoming the central figure of Italian feminism.
Interviews with Carla Accardi, Getulio Alviani, Enrico Castellani, Pietro Consagra, Luciano Fabro, Lucio Fontana, Jannis Kounellis, Mario Nigro, Guilio Paolini, Pino Pascali, Mimmo Rotella, Salvatore Scarpita, Guilio Turcato, Cy Twombly.
Afterword by Claire Fontaine.
Translated by Allison Grimaldi Donahue.
"Before she spurred everyone to spit on Hegel, Carla Lonzi arranged her Self-portrait in the form of a dialogue recorded with friends – artists – with whom she had been in conversation for years. She wanted to feel less alienated, to figure out a way for art to be a part of living, not a stupid contrivance to be consumed. Soon after the book was published, in order to continue to ‘live life in a creative way, not in obedience with the models that society proposes over and over’, she abandoned art criticism, but not art – and never life." —Bruce Hainley
“The volume underscores the genderedness of its genre. Yet, it also pokes holes in the enterprise of art criticism more broadly and proves original precisely in its author’s intermittent passivity...”—Frieze Magazine
The life and work of Carla Lonzi (1931–1982) is inseparable from the cultural, political, and social history of Italy in the decades following the Second World War; she occupies a singular position, which today merits reevaluation. A reputed art critic of the 1960s artistic scene, both friend and collaborator of such figures as Carla Accardi, Luciano Fabro, Giulio Paolini, and Jannis Kounellis, she wrote “Autoportrait” in 1969, a “love letter” to the artists and to creation, but also a farewell chorus to art criticism and the art world. The following year she founded Rivolta Femminile, an active feminist collective, thus
1991, German
Softcover (loose-leaf), unpaginated, 42 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst / Reutlingen
$140.00 - Out of stock
Rare, over-sized, loose-leaf catalogue published in the occasion of the exhibition, Eikon = das Bild / Christliche Ikonen und moderne Kunst, Stiftung für Konkrete Kunst, Reutlingen, 1991/1992. Beautifully designed, the entire publication places Christian icon artworks into dialogue with modern artworks by Arman, Bernard Aubertin, Joost Baljeu, Stephen Bambury, Dadamaino, Margarete Dreher, Helmut Federle, Aurelie Nemours, John Nixon, Gerhard Richter, Peter Roehr, Klaus Staudt, Günter Uecker, Günter Wizemann. Ancient and modern face off on each page spread, with occasional full-bleed installation photography of the exhibition. Text by Renate Gebeßler und Gabriele Kübler. Wrap-around cover artwork by John Nixon.
New Fine—As New copy.
2023, English
Hardcover, 216 pages, 31.8 x 24.1 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$135.00 - Out of stock
This volume charts Lucio Fontana's exploration of sculpture from the 1930s until his death. The monograph, a collaboration with the Fondazione Lucio Fontana, also includes a biographical essay by the foundation’s Maria Villa, tracing the artist’s life through his ever-innovating sculptural practice, and serves as a companion volume to 'Lucio Fontana: Walking the Space'. This book also includes essays by Fontana scholar Luca Massimo Barbero, and researcher Cristina Beltrami.
Luca Massimo Barbero explores ceramics as 'the ideal material for the Fontanian gesture' and re-examines Fontana’s experimentation with terracotta, clay, plaster, concrete and metal. Researcher Cristina Beltrami resituates Fontana as a pioneering artist in the European post-war context, investigating his exchanges with other Italian and international practitioners.
2019, English
Hardcover (debossed cloth), 236 pages, 21.7 x 27.3 cm
Published by
The Metropolitan Museum of Art / New York
Yale University Press / New Haven
$99.00 - Out of stock
A fascinating reassessment of the work of one of the most innovative artists of the 20th century, emphasizing his Argentine background and interdisciplinary approach to both art and life
A major figure of postwar European art and a binational resident of Argentina and Italy, Lucio Fontana (1899–1968) blurred numerous boundaries in his life and art, crossing borders both literally and figuratively. This volume takes a fresh look at the renowned artist whose simultaneous innovations in painting, drawing, ceramics, and sculpture, as well as his spatial explorations, pushed the painterly into the sculptural and redefined the relationship between the arts.
Evaluating Fontana’s interest in synthesis and moving beyond his famous slashed canvases, this book reveals Fontana to be one of the first installation artists. Essays by international experts address his work from both an Italian and Argentine perspective, providing numerous insights into Fontana’s expansive practice. Archival images of environments, public commissions, installations, and now-destroyed pieces accompany lavish illustrations covering his production from 1930 to the late 1960s, establishing a new approach to an artist who responded to the political, cultural, and technological thresholds that defined the mid-20th century.
Edited by Iria Candela; With essays by Emily Braun, Enrico Crispolti, Andrea Giunta, Pia Gottschaller, and Anthony White
Iria Candela is Estrellita B. Brodsky Curator of Latin American Art at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
2001, Japanese
Softcover (w. original glassine jacket), 234 pages, 20.3 x 24.6 x 2.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Museum of Modern Art / Toyama
$140.00 - In stock -
Very scarce comprehensive catalogue published on the occasion of a major survey exhibition of Japanese Surrealist Shūzō Takiguchi (1903 – 1979), held at the Museum of Modern Art, Toyama and the Shoto Museum of Art, Shibuya from 2001 to 2002. Lavishly illustrated throughout with meticulous chronological detail, this exhaustive published survey of Takiguchi's archives of paintings and drawings remains the most comprehensive study of Takiguchi's art to date. Includes many biographical and analytical texts in Japanese, alongside portraits and biography. Exhibition leaflet inserted. Book in original glassine cover to protect dust jacket.
Born in Toyama Prefecture in 1903, Shūzō Takiguchi worked extensively as a poet, art critic, and artist. He was a leading Japanese authority on surrealism, instrumental to the its introduction and proliferation in Japan, and was a pillar of theoretical and spiritual support for the Japanese avant-garde from the pre- to post-war periods. While a student at Keio University (1930), Takiguchi translated the entirety of Andre Breton's "Surrealism and Painting", and later organized the Overseas Surrealist Works Exhibition with Yamanaka Sansei (1937). He provided leadership for many avant-garde groups, but was marked as dangerous by the Special Police and was arrested and detained in 1941. After the war, he began offering new experimental outlets for young postwar avant-garde artists who lacked opportunities for presenting their work in formats other than group exhibitions. He traveled to Europe as Japanese commissioner for the Venice Biennale in 1958, where he voted for Lucio Fontana. A prolific experimental poet and correspondent with Breton and Duchamp, Takiguchi devoted his life to exemplifying the Surrealist movement in its orthodox form. Takiguchi's own artistic work illustrated the covers and pages of many important avant-garde journals in Japan, and he held five solo exhibitions, but until this important retrospective most of his visual output had not seen light outside his own personal archive. His central works were decalcomanias, immediate impressions made with paints and inks pressed between glass and paper, which he began making around 1960. Decalcomania as a technique was adopted heavily by the Surrealists to create imagery by chance rather than through conscious control. Takiguchi's unadorned, prolific use of this technique in creating direct abstractions exemplified this approach. "It represents freedom of action, no matter how small and, freedom is always necessary." - Takiguchi (1961)
Very Good copy.
2020, English
Hardcover, 162 pages, 23.5 x 29.2 cm
Published by
Lévy Gorvy / New York
$135.00 - In stock -
Text by Robert Storr, Flavia Frigeri, Robert Lumley. Poetry by Sylvia Gorelick, Lara Mimosa Montes.
Accompanying Lévy Gorvy’s exhibition of the same name, this beautifully produced catalog highlights the celebrated Italian painter Carol Rama’s (1918–2015) engagement with the artistic landscape of her home city of Turin.
Alongside color plates, an essay by Robert Storr explores Rama’s examination of conventionally obscured and shamed parts of human bodies, and shows how she diverged from the oppressive social order of her time. Curator Flavia Frigeri places Rama within the artistic landscape of the city in her essay, and a text by the writer Robert Lumley explores Rama’s engagement with the political scene in Turin.
An illustrated chronology of Rama and the city highlights exhibitions of artists whose catalogs Rama collected in her home library, and newly commissioned poetry by Sylvia Gorelick and Lara Mimosa Montes responds to Rama and her oeuvre.
1963, English
Hardcover (cloth w. dust jacket), 234 pages, 32.5 x 29.2 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Editalia / Rome
$120.00 - Out of stock
Published in 1963 by Editalia in Rome, this major, over-sized hardcover monograph by Cesare Brandi on the work of Alberto Burri gives an outstanding and copiously illustrated (in colour and black and white) overview of his work spanning 1948—1962. Included is a full list of works, biography, essay, bibliography, list of exhibitions. All texts in English.
Alberto Burri (12 March 1915 – 13 February 1995) was an Italian abstract painter considered a key figure in Post-War European art. Associated with the Arte Povera movement, he is perhaps best known for his sacchi (“sacks”) series, wherein he stitched, patched, and painted on rough burlap bags. Born on March 12, 1915 in Citta di Castello, Italy, he studied medicine before serving in Mussolini’s army during World War II as a doctor. Captured in Tunisia, Burri was interned at Camp Howze in Texas as a prisoner of war, where he began painting on readily available discarded burlap. After his release in 1946, he moved to Rome where his art practice turned towards abstraction. His interest in non-traditional materials continued with experiments using wood, tar, plastic, zinc oxide, pumice, PVC adhesives, and fabric. In one of his very rare statements, Burri claimed that the critics’ words, as well as his own, were of no use in offering a description of his artworks, affirming that its only real key strength was the formal balance that poor and industrial materials were surprisingly able to give.
First edition in Good—VG dust jacket — Average—Good book with ex-libris markings and wear to extremities.
1975, Italian / French
Hardcover (linen bound), 277 pages, 30 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Nuova Prearo Editore / Milan
$190.00 - Out of stock
First edition of the wonderful (in progress) catalogue raisonné of Piero Manzoni — General Catalogue — edited by Germano Celant and published by Nuova Prearo Editore, Milan, 1975. This heavy, richly illustrated book provided the first overview of Piero Manzoni’s oeuvre. Illustrated exclusively with black and white photographs, the book featured an extensive text by Germano Celant, divided into chapters, a selection of writings by the artist and the register of works “ordered chronologically by groups, determined by type” and the appendices with exhibitions and bibliography. It was later re-printed and expanded in 1989. Texts in Italian and French.
Piero Manzoni (1933—1963) was an Italian artist best known for his ironic approach to avant-garde art. Often compared to the work of Yves Klein, his own work anticipated, and directly influenced, the work of a generation of younger Italian artists brought together by the critic Germano Celant in the first Arte Povera exhibition held in Genoa, 1967. Manzoni is most famous for a series of artworks that call into question the nature of the art object, directly prefiguring Conceptual Art. His work eschews normal artist's materials, instead using everything from rabbit fur to human excrement in order to "tap mythological sources and to realize authentic and universal values". His work is widely seen as a critique of the mass production and consumerism that was changing Italian society (the Italian economic miracle) after World War II. Italian artists such as Manzoni had to negotiate the new economic and material order of post-war Europe through inventive artistic practices which crossed geographic, artistic, and cultural borders.
Very Good copy. Book is Near Fine in every way, yet missing dust jacket, therefore VG.
2012, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 287 pages, 24 x 31.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Skira / Milan
Rizzoli / New York
MOCA / Los Angeles
Museum of Contemporary Art / Chicago
$180.00 - In stock -
First and only edition of this incredible out-of-print book, Destroy the Picture: Painting the Void, 1949–1962 is the first book (and exhibition) to focus on one of the most significant transnational developments in contemporary abstract painting: the artist’s literal assault on the picture plane. Responding to the physical and psychological destruction wrought by World War II—especially the existential crisis resulting from the atomic bomb—artists ripped, cut, burned, and affixed objects to the canvas in lieu of paint. Destroy the Picture emphasizes this internationally shared artistic sensibility in the context of devastating global change and dynamic artistic dialogues, offering an innovative and expansive view of art making in the postwar period.
As artists from war-torn countries like Italy and Japan—including Lucio Fontana, Alberto Burri, Kazuo Shiraga, and Shozo Shimamoto—channeled their ruined surroundings into artistic form; artists throughout the world—such as Yves Klein and Niki de Saint Phalle in France, John Latham in the United Kingdom, Robert Rauschenberg and Lee Bontecou in the United States, Otto Müehl in Austria, and Manolo Millares in Spain, among others—pursued similar approaches and strategies. Destroy the Picture presents an opportunity to reconsider the profound repercussions of this remarkably coherent approach in painting, from artists’ early experiments with translating gestures into materials to their emphasis on a rupture between two and three dimensions, as well as the expansion of the painting medium to incorporate performance, assemblage, and time-based strategies. In many cases, the exhibition places the work of now-established artists back into the radical context in which it originally emerged.
Organised by Paul Schimmel, former Chief Curator of The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, in association with the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the exhibition and this remarkable accompanying hardcover catalogue mark the first time that these strategies have been considered together as a coherent mode of artistic production, expanding the scholarship on this critical moment in history. Alongside major essays by Paul Schimmel, Nicholas Cullinan, Astrid Handa-Gagnard, Shoichi Hirai, Sarah-Neel Smith, and Robert Storr, Destroy the Picture is heavily illustrated throughout with works dating 1949 and 1962 by artists from eight countries, including Lee Bontecou, Alberto Burri, Lucio Fontana, Salvatore Scarpitta, Kazuo Shiraga, Gérard Deschamps, François Dufrêne, Jean Fautrier, Adolf Frohner, Raymond Hains, Yves Klein, John Latham, Gustav Metzger, Otto Müehl, Manolo Millares, Saburo Murakami, Robert Rauschenberg, Niki de Saint Phalle, Shozo Shimamoto, Antoni Tàpies, Chiyu Uemae, Jacques Villeglé, Wolf Vostell, and Michio Yoshihara.
Very Good—Near Fine copy in Very Good—Near Fine dust-jacket.
1958, Dutch
Softcover (staple-bound), 26 pages, 26 x 19 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Stedelijk Museum / Amsterdam
$25.00 - In stock -
Rare early Jackson Pollock catalogue published by Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam (SM Catalogue nr 189) in 1958, designed by the legendary Willem Sandberg. Profusely illustrated in b/w with Pollock's artworks, including a colour centrefold, printed across various paper stocks, accompanied by biography, exhibition history, catalogue and text by Sam Hunter (translated into Dutch).
Very Good copy but ex-National Gallery of Victoria library copy, therefore two stamps to cover, plus staple holes to top right of cover, otherwise VG throughout.
1978, German
Softcover (w. dust jacket), 220 pages, 20 x 20 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Schirmer & Mosel / Munich
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
Schirmer Mosel
$80.00 - Out of stock
First 1978 edition of this gorgeous German book dedicated entirely to the magnificent photographic work of Wols. Lavishly illustrated throughout in b/w with a comprehensive collection of over 100 pages of his accomplished photography of still life object assemblages, portraits, the streets of Paris, interiors, and more, including an additional 120 pages of heavily illustrated in-depth biographical text on the artist, featuring many of his paintings, drawings, photographs and private photo-documents.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter, photographer, engraver, and graphic designer. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, Wols was close to Surrealism, and is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement, and of Informal art in Europe. He moved to France when he fled the Hitlerian regime, with a recommendation from the artist-teacher Moholy-Nagy. Illegal immigrant, he was considered as a deserter and a stateless person, arrested many times by the French police. In 1936, Wols received, with Léger and Rivière's help, a limited resident permit, working as a photographer — his unusual fashion and interiors photographs were sold as postcards and printed in many international fashion magazines. Immediately after the beginning of the Second World War, Wols was enprisoned with many Germans in different French internment camps, where Wols realized many surrealist drawings and watercolours that he is now well-known for. He spent most of the war trying to emigrate to the United States, an unsuccessful and costly enterprise that may have driven him to alcoholism. After the hype from the war had died down, he had his first exhibition of watercolors in December 1945 at the Galerie René Drouin, Paris, where despite the lack of commercial success he made an impression. His paintings represented a rejection of figuration and abstraction, and a projection into a metaphysical plane. In the years following the war, Schulze concentrated on painting and etching. His health declined severely towards the end of the 1940s; in 1951 he died of food poisoning at the Hotel Montalembert in Paris, after releasing himself from hospital against medical advice. After his death his works were shown at the Kassel documenta (1955), documenta II (1959) and documenta III (1964).
Very Good with some cover wear/rubbing.
1959, French
Softcover (french-folds), 46 pages, 22 x 16 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gallery Europe / Paris
$70.00 - Out of stock
Beautifully designed catalogue published on the occasion of the exhibition Wols - Decembre 1959 - Fevrier 1960, Gallery Europe, Paris. Illustrated throughout with the paintings and drawings of German painter and photographer Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze, known as Wols, mounted as plates in colour and b/w on raw black boards with accompanying texts/lyrics of Will Grohmann, Henri Miller and Wols in French printed on blue machine paper throughout. Closes with Oevres exposées. On of the loveliest Wols catalogues.
Wols was the pseudonym of Alfred Otto Wolfgang Schulze (27 May 1913, Berlin – 1 September 1951, Paris), a German painter and photographer predominantly active in France. Though broadly unrecognized in his lifetime, he is considered a pioneer of Lyrical Abstraction, one of the most influential artists of the Tachisme movement. He is the author of a book on art theory entitled Aphorismes de Wols.
Very Good copy with some tanning to cover edges.
1977, Japanese
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 25.5 x 18 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jiyugaoka Gallery / Tokyo
$120.00 - Out of stock
Very rare Japanese Japanese catalogue of Lucio Fontana's work published on the occasion of an exhibition at Jiyugaoka Gallery, Tokyo, in 1977. Cataloguing 27 works (canvas, metal, paper, litho, vinyl collage) all illustrated in b/w, accompanied by introductory text (in Japanese), biography, bibliography and list of exhibitions.
Good copy with crease to cover (running parallel to spine — looks like it was published this way to fold open), light wear, light tanning, light cover marking.
1990, German
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 31 x 22 cm
Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Westermann / Braunschweig
$60.00 - Out of stock
1990 German edition of this 1986 monograph on Antoni Tàpies by Victoria Combalia Dexeus, originally published by Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, this edition by Westermann, Braunschweig.
"This book by Victoria Combalia Dexeus strengthens our intrinsically artistic knowledge of the painter with a text supported by a lucid, well-documented cultural consciousness. The author analyses a good number of specific paintings, the reciprocal relationships and connections of which with other cultural facts or events are established with very sound arguments. Her intelligent exposition is of great assistance to us in our attempts to further our acquaintance with the work of this great Catalan artist - an 'oeuvre' capable of successive interpretations which gradually reveal to us, as in this case, its 'greatness and its profundity." The chapters are: abstract art; childhood, adolescence & the Surrealist period; the international context; a many-faceted realism; imitation through textures; transpoition of textures; objects; ambiguous perspectives, poetic geometriess, empty spaces; bodies; elusive presences; signs. Heavy illustrated throughout.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.
1986, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 128 pages, 31 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Ediciones Poligrafa S. A. / Barcelona
$65.00 - Out of stock
First English edition of this great monograph on Antoni Tàpies by Victoria Combalia Dexeus and published by Ediciones Poligrafa S. A., Barcelona, in 1986.
"This book by Victoria Combalia Dexeus strengthens our intrinsically artistic knowledge of the painter with a text supported by a lucid, well-documented cultural consciousness. The author analyses a good number of specific paintings, the reciprocal relationships and connections of which with other cultural facts or events are established with very sound arguments. Her intelligent exposition is of great assistance to us in our attempts to further our acquaintance with the work of this great Catalan artist - an 'oeuvre' capable of successive interpretations which gradually reveal to us, as in this case, its 'greatness and its profundity." The chapters are: abstract art; childhood, adolescence & the Surrealist period; the international context; a many-faceted realism; imitation through textures; transpoition of textures; objects; ambiguous perspectives, poetic geometriess, empty spaces; bodies; elusive presences; signs. Heavy illustrated throughout.
Antoni Tàpies (1923 – 2012) was a Spanish painter, sculptor and art theorist. At 17, Tàpies suffered a near-fatal heart attack caused by tuberculosis and spent two years as a convalescent in the mountains, reading widely and pursuing an interest in art. After studying law for 3 years, he devoted himself from 1943 onwards only to his painting. At this time he also became increasingly interested in philosophy, especially that of Sartre as well as Eastern thought. In 1948, Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau al Set, alongside poet Joan Brossa, which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. In 1953 he began working in mixed media as a member of the Art Informal school; this is considered his most original contribution to art. Working in a style known as pintura matèrica, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into paintings (clay, marble dust, waste paper, string, and rags), he became known as one of Spain's most renowned artists in the second half of the 20th century. Social themes run throughout his highly textured and tactile paintings, which were influenced by his experience of the politics and environment of the wartime and the postwar state of the Spanish government. His abstract and avant-garde works were displayed in many major museums all over the world. “If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination,” he reflected.