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:
OPEN 12—5 THU—FRI
WEB-SHOP OPEN 24/7.
World Food Books
Postal Address:
PO Box 435
Flinders Lane
Victoria 8009
Australia
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All prices in AUD (Australian dollars)
Pick-Ups
Please note: The bookshop is closed until February 1, 2024.
Pick-up orders can be collected in our bookshop during opening hours after this date. Please collect any Pick-up orders within 3 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.
Return Policy
All sales are final. We do accept returns (for refund, 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.
2014, English
Softcover, 280 pages, 12 x 18 cm
Published by
Xavier Hufkens / Brussels
$44.00 - Out of stock
Walter Swennen started his artistic life as a poet, but switched to painting as his primary means of expression in the early 1980s. Although his oeuvre varies greatly in scale, style, and materials, it can be seen as an ongoing exploration into the nature, potentialities, and limitations of painting, the fundamental question of what subject matter to choose, and how to depict it. Swennen is recognised for his experimental and associative approach to painting, in which meanings perpetually float and shift across images that recall a familiar place or situation – a place where something has happened.
This compact but dense catalogue published by Xavier Hufkens, Brussels, is filled with Swennen's wonderful works on paper. Published on the occasion of an exhibition of Works on Paper in 2014-2015 at the gallery.
2017, English / German / Portuguese
Softcover, 152 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art / Porto
$42.00 - Out of stock
Exploring the continual exhaustion, withdrawal, engagement and renewal of painting, the work of Michael Krebber is a central reference in conversations about the mediumʼs continued relevance.
The large selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures featured in this two-volume publication showcases Krebber’s practice over the last three decades.
Stations in a recursive cycle of starts, fits and restarts, scattered in a variety of motifs and gestures, by turns emphatic, arresting or ironic together they trace the artistʼs approach to painting, its expressive language as well as its critical function.
Volume 1 of 2.
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Michael Krebber: The Living Wedge at Fundação De Serralves, Porto, Portugal (15 October 2016 – 15 January 2017) and at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (18 February – 30 April 2017).
English, German and Portuguese text.
2017, English / German / Portuguese
Softcover, 160 pages, 28 x 21.5 cm
Published by
Koenig Books / London
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
Serralves Museum of Contemporary Art / Porto
$42.00 - In stock -
Exploring the continual exhaustion, withdrawal, engagement and renewal of painting, the work of Michael Krebber is a central reference in conversations about the mediumʼs continued relevance.
The large selection of paintings, drawings and sculptures featured in this two-volume publication showcases Krebberʼs practice over the last three decades.
Stations in a recursive cycle of starts, fits and restarts, scattered in a variety of motifs and gestures, by turns emphatic, arresting or ironic together they trace the artistʼs approach to painting, its expressive language as well as its critical function.
Volume 2 of 2
Published on the occasion of the exhibition, Michael Krebber: The Living Wedge at Fundação De Serralves, Porto, Portugal (15 October 2016 – 15 January 2017) and at Kunsthalle Bern, Switzerland (18 February – 30 April 2017).
English, German and Portuguese text.
2002, English / German
Softcover, 68 pages, 22 x 27 cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$35.00 - Out of stock
The Best Book About Pessimism I Ever Read, a group exhibition curated by Scottish artist Lucy McKenzie at Kunstverein Braunschweig in 2002, builds a bridge between international artists to create a forum in which subject areas such as "content as a metaphor for meaning", "pictoriality as a medium for the concept" and "negation through representation" are up for discussion. Features the work os John Byrne, Bonnie Camplin, Enrico David, Keith Farquhar, Alasdair Gray, Ronnie Heeps, Paulina Olowska, Mathilde Rosier, Lucy Skaer, Joanne Tatham & Tom O'Sullivan. All works and installation views are documented here with media spanning drawing, embroidery, painting, illustration, literature, film, video, sculpture and spatial installation. Includes bios, texts by Lucy McKenzie, Karola Grässlin, Andrea Kusel and Neil Mulholland.
2020, Softcover, 68 pages, 20 x 15 cm
Edition of 100
Published by
Tutto / Naarm—Melbourne
$35.00 - In stock -
Working from NIAD Art Centre in Richmond, California, artist Karen May has been creating drawings on top of ArtForum advertisements over the past several years. This inaugural publication from TUTTO gathers 57 of these détournements made from 2015–2019.
Let it be a book documents May’s freewheeling linework and prowess as a draftsperson whilst simultaneously surveying and hijacking the contemporary art world.
Edition of 100
2010, English
Softcover, 496 pages, 18 x 22 cm
Published by
The MIT Press / Massachusetts
$84.00 - In stock -
The artist Francis Picabia -- notorious dandy, bon vivant, painter, poet, filmmaker, and polemicist -- has emerged as the Dadaist with postmodern appeal, and one of the most enigmatic forces behind the enigma that was Dada.
In this first book in English to focus on Picabia's work in Paris during the Dada years, art historian and critic George Baker reimagines Dada through Picabia's eyes. Such reimagining involves a new account of the readymade -- Marcel Duchamp's anti-art invention, which opened fine art to mass culture and the commodity. But in Picabia's hands, Baker argues, the Dada readymade aimed to reinvent art rather than destroy it. Picabia's readymade opened art not just to the commodity, but to the larger world from which the commodity stems: the fluid sea of capital and money that transforms all objects and experiences in its wake. The book thus tells the story of a set of newly transformed artistic practices, claiming them for art history -- and naming them -- for the first time: Dada Drawing, Dada Painting, Dada Photography, Dada Abstraction, Dada Cinema, Dada Montage. Along the way, Baker describes a series of nearly forgotten objects and events, from the almost lunatic range of the Paris Dada "manifestations" to Picabia's polemical writings; from a lost work by Picabia in the form of a hole (called, suggestively, The Young Girl) to his "painting" Cacodylic Eye, covered in autographs by luminaries ranging from Ezra Pound to Fatty Arbuckle. Baker ends with readymades in prose: a vast interweaving of citations and quotations that converge to create a heated conversation among Picabia, Andre Breton, Tristan Tzara, James Joyce, Friedrich Nietzsche, Jacques Derrida, Gilles Deleuze, and others. Art history has never looked like this before. But then again, Dada has never looked like art history.
George Baker is Assistant Professor of Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles, and an editor at October magazine and October Books. He is the editor of James Coleman (MIT Press) and a frequent contributor to Artforum.
2018, English
Softcover (staple-bound), 12 pages, 14.8 x 21 cm
Ed. of 50,
Published by
Pataphysics Books / Melbourne
$40.00 - Out of stock
NEW YORK DRAWINGS
SUNDAY 12 FEB 2017
543 8th Av NYC
JOHN NIXON
Published by Pataphysics Books (Melbourne) in 2018, this artist's book by John Nixon presents a series of drawings on newspaper.
Edition of 50 copies.
2020, English
Paperback, 504 pages, 17.8cm x 17.8cm
Published by
Walther König / Köln
$88.00 - Out of stock
From poems to statements and lectures, the writings of post-minimalist virtuoso Richard Tuttle possess the same instinct for materiality and delicacy as his art.
Over the course of more than 50 years, American artist Richard Tuttle (born 1941) has invented new possibilities of scale and humour, sometimes adding almost nothing to an object, at other times recklessly heaping up his materials or pressing them to the brink of compositional incoherence. With just the same sensitivity, humour and nuance, Tuttle has also composed numerous texts, mostly in response to specific commissions and publications. Tuttle does not approach writing as a transparent communicative medium, but rather as simply another material.
Beautifully designed, as Tuttle books always are, A Fair Sampling brings together a selection of the artist's writings published in exhibition catalogs, books and newspapers, as well as hitherto unpublished texts. These include not only reflections and commentaries on art and drawing, but also tributes to artist friends, including various texts on Agnes Martin, travel notes, poems and lectures that Tuttle delivered in various institutions.
1980, German / English
Softcover, 74 pages, 24 x 17 cm
Ed. of 500 hand-numbered,
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Jörg Johnen / Köln
$45.00 - Out of stock
Hand-numbered, self-published edition of 500 copies of Poetische Punkte : Der Zufall als Erkenntnisprinzip im Werk von Richard Tuttle (Poetic points. Chance as a cognitive principle in the work of Richard Tuttle), self-published by Jörg Johnen in 1980. An in-depth German-language study on the work of American artist Richard Tuttle, including correspondence from Tuttle (in English and German), plus a bibliography and wonderful illustrated section of references, works, exhibits.
Jörg Johnen opened his first gallery in Cologne in 1984, with an exhibition of works by Thomas Schütte and Aldo Rossi. In the 30 years of its existence, the gallery organized nearly 250 exhibitions, first as Johnen+Schöttle in Cologne, and since 2004 as Johnen Galerie in Berlin.
Richard Tuttle is an American postminimalist artist known for his small, subtle, intimate works. His art makes use of scale and line. His works span a range of media, from sculpture, painting, drawing, printmaking, and artist’s books to installation and furniture.
Very Good copy.
2020, English / German
Hardcover, 216 pages, 24.6 x 17.4 cm
Published by
Ludwig Museum / Cologne
Walther König / Köln
$70.00 - Out of stock
The German artist Peter Heisterkamp (1943–1977), who named himself after the mafioso Frank “Blinky” Palermo, is known for his objects, installations, and above all for the bright colour fields of his fabric and metal pictures, which supposedly directly illustrate what they conceptually question: the sensual qualities of contemporary painting. Less well known yet no less clever and stimulating are works he created in editions: screen prints and offset prints, lithographs, objects, and a template for painting. Palermo made these editions throughout almost his entire career. They not only reflect his development from the 1960s to his early death in 1977, but also represent a deliberate expansion of his work.
Thanks to a donation from the Cologne collector Ulrich Reininghaus, since 2018 the Museum Ludwig has been the only public institution to have a complete collection of Palermo’s editions. The exhibition catalogue documents the results: it includes an updated version of the out-of-print catalogue raisonné Die gesamte Grafik und alle Auflagenobjekte 1966 bis 1975, published in 1983 by the Munich gallerist and publisher Fred Jahn.
Includes texts by Yilmaz Dziewior, Susanne Küper, Julia Frirdrich, Fred Jahn.
1979, German
Softcover, 360 pages, 22 x 22 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Akademie der Künste / Berlin
$65.00 - Out of stock
First edition of Heinz Trökes : Bilder, Zeichnungen, Collagen uns Skizzenbücher 1938-1979, published on the occasion of the major survey exhibition at the Akademie der Künste in Berlin in 1980. Profusely illustrated throughout with the paintings, collages, and drawings of German artist Heinz Trökes (1913–1997), whose work, obliged to a surrealist tendency, oscillate between biomorphic landscapes and geometrical abstraction. Trökes, who had received artistic training from, among others, Johannes Itten and Georg Muche, started his career with his first solo exhibition in 1938 at the Berlin Galerie Nierendorf being shut down by the Nazis. Banned from working as an artist and from exhibiting, he left Germany for Zurich where he earned a living designing textiles. Ordered by the authorities to return to Germany when the war broke out, Trökes was forced to work secretly and no longer signed his works with his full name. He co-founded of the Berlin gallery Gerd Rosen, the first private art gallery in Germany after the war, where he was artistic director between 1945-1946. In 1947 he was called to teach at the Bauhaus together with the painter Mac Zimmermann. A close friend of the artist Wols, Trökes lived in Paris in the 1950s and joined the Rixes group alongside Roberto Matta, Jaroslaw Serpan, Jean-Paul Riopelle, etc., a group associated with the surrealists and founded by critic Edouard Jaguer, Max Clarac-Serou and Iaroslav Serpan. He also participated in the regular meeting group, Jour fixe, around André Breton, alongside Benjamin Péret, Marcel Duchamp, Toyen, Max Ernst, Rufino Tamayo and Jacques Hérold.
Catalogues many works, with an introduction by Rolf Szymanski and a text by Eberhard Roters, biography, bibliography, photographic portraits, and more.
Texts in German.
Very Good - Fine copy.
2019, English
Hardcove (w. dust jacket), 428 pages, 24.1 x 27.9 cm
Published by
Hauser & Wirth / Zurich
$120.00 - Out of stock
This monumental tome contains the entirety of the important German artist’s drawings held in the collection of the Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, Ohio. The AMAM was the first museum to purchase a sculpture by Hesse, Laocoon, in 1970. In gratitude for its recognition of Hesse's work, and following the artist's untimely death, her sister Helen Hesse Charash generously donated the artist's notebooks, diaries, sketchbooks, photographs and letters to the museum.
Hesse’s drawings played a crucial role in her work, which in turn gave way to an array of highly innovative techniques and styles that today still defy classification. As she commented in 1970: “I had a great deal of difficulty with painting but never with drawing ... the translation or transference to a large scale and in painting was always tedious.... So I started working in relief and with line.” Hesse’s custom of introducing sculptural materials into drawing and painting continues to influence artmaking today.
Edited by Barry Rosen. Foreword by Helen Hesse Charash, Andria Derstine. Text by Briony Fer, Gioia Timpanelli, Manuela Ammer, Andrea Gyorody, Jörg Daur.
Eva Hesse (1936–70) was one of the foremost artists of the 20th century. Her work combined the seriality and reductionism of 1960s minimalism with emotion, sensuousness and physicality. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Tate, Guggenheim and many others.
1978, German
Softcover, 224 pages, 21 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / Used*,
Published by
Galerie Levy / Hamburg
$95.00 - Out of stock
Incredible monographic catalogue produced on the occasion of the exhibition "Meret Oppenheim - Arbeiten von 1930 - 1978" at Galerie Levy in Hamburg, September 11 - November 11, 1978.
Forming an amazing, visually-rich and valuable partial catalogue raisonné document, this volume collects, page by page, 205 of the exceptional works by one of the world's most independent artists of the twentieth century, German-born Swiss Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim. Includes her sculptural objects, paintings, drawings, prints, collages, furniture, and more, all reproduced in colour and black and white. Includes a short introduction in German alongside a number of portraits of Oppenheim by Man Ray.
A highly recommended collection.
Méret Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist. Oppenheim was a member of the Surrealist movement of the 1920s along with André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Max Ernst, and other writers and visual artists. Besides creating art objects, Oppenheim also famously appeared as a model for photographs by her friend Man Ray.
A a young age Oppenheim discovered the writings of Carl Jung, a friend of her father's, and was inspired to record her dreams in 1928. Her dreams would serve as important sources for much of her art throughout her life. The work of Paul Klee, the focus of a retrospective at the Kunshalle Basel in 1929, provided another strong influence on Oppenheim, arousing her to the possibilities of abstraction.
In 1932, at the age of 18, Oppenheim moved to Paris and met Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti, who after visiting her studio and seeing her work, invited her to participate in the Surrealist exhibition in the “Salon des Surindépendants,” Paris. Oppenheim later met André Breton and began to participate in meetings at the Café de la Place Blanche with the Surrealist circle. The conceptual approach favored by Marchel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Francis Picabia became important to her work. She continued to contribute to Surrealist exhibitions until 1960. Many of her pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged to allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex. Oppenheim’s paintings focused on the same themes. Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the Surrealist movement.
Méret Oppenheim's first one-woman exhibition in the Galerie Sohulthess, Basel featured surrealist objects. In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel and this marked the start of her artistic block. She struggled after she met success and worried about her development as an artist. Méret Oppenheim usually worked in spontaneous bursts and at times destroyed her work. Oppenheim took a hiatus from her artistic career in 1939 after an exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin started by Rene Drouin in Paris. In the exhibition she was featured alongside many artists, including Leonor Fini and Max Ernst. She did not share any art with the public again until the 1950s. Oppenheim then reverted to her "original style" and based her new artworks on old sketches and earlier works and creations.
Méret Oppenheim's best known piece is Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) - Object (Breakfast in Fur)(1936). The sculpture consists of a teacup, saucer and spoon that the artist covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. It was purchased by Alfred Barr for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and included the museum's first surrealist exhibition Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism in 1936. Oppenheim was willing to sell the piece for one thousand francs, but Barr only offered her $50 and she accepted. This was the first piece of art that the museum acquired, and Oppenheim became known as the First Lady of MoMA. The enormous success of this early work would later create problems for Oppenheim as an artist. Soon after its creation she drifted away from the Surrealists.
In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel, training as an art conservator in order to ensure her financial stability. This marked the beginning of a creative crisis that lasted until 1954. Although she maintained some contact with her friends in Paris, she created very little and destroyed or failed to finish much of what she created.
In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Daniel Spoerri’s production of Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne. She and artist Lilly Keller were cast as the curtains. Three years later, in 1959, she organized a Spring Banquet (Le Festin) in Bern for a few friends at which food was served on the body of a naked woman. With Oppenheim's permission, Andre Breton restaged the performance later that year at the opening of the Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS), at the Galerie Cordier in Paris. Outside its original intimate setting, the performance was overly provocative and Oppenheim felt her original intention for the work was lost.
In the 1960s, Oppenheim's home base of Bern became much more important as an art center. She continued to live and work there, as well as at a second home in Carona, Italy (1968), and maintained a studio in Paris starting in 1972. She was an important figure in feminist debates in the early 1970s, although she refused to identify as a feminist.
In 1983 Oppenheim designed The Spiral Column (Spiralsaule), unofficially known as "Meret Oppenheim Fountain," on the Waisenhausplatz in Bern. A tall concrete column wrapped with a garland of grass over a small watercourse, the fountain provoked a petition for its removal. In 1985 City of Paris commissioned Spiral (Nature's Way) [Spirale (Gang de Natur) from Oppenheim for the Jardins de l'ancienne Ecole polytechnique on the Montagne Ste. Genevieve near the Pantheon. The work was based on a 1971 model and finished posthumously a few months after Oppenheim's death in 1986.
Levy Galerie, founded in 1970 by Hamburg resident Thomas Levy, represents the estate of Meret Oppenheim, in close collaboration with the artist's family.
1984, German
Softcover, 38 pages, 27 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Kunsthalle Bern / Bern
$48.00 - In stock -
Catalogue published on the occasion of a major travelling exhibition of German-born Swiss Surrealist artist Meret Oppenheim at Kunsthalle Bern 8th September - 14th October 1984; Frankfurter Kunstverein December 19, 1984 - January 27, 1985; Haus am Waldsee Berlin February 23 - April 14, 1985. Includes illustrations of Oppenheim's sculptures, paintings and drawings throughout, alongside a complete work list, biography and various texts in German by Jean-Hubert Martin and Jim Palette as well as excerpts from a conversation. Back cover features a photograph of Oppenheim's 1983 Spiral Column (Spiralsaule), unofficially known as "Meret Oppenheim Fountain," on the Waisenhausplatz in Bern. A tall concrete column wrapped with a garland of grass over a small watercourse, the fountain provoked a petition for its removal.
very good copy.
Méret Elisabeth Oppenheim (6 October 1913 – 15 November 1985) was a German-born Swiss Surrealist artist. Oppenheim was a member of the Surrealist movement of the 1920s along with André Breton, Luis Buñuel, Max Ernst, and other writers and visual artists. Besides creating art objects, Oppenheim also famously appeared as a model for photographs by her friend Man Ray.
A a young age Oppenheim discovered the writings of Carl Jung, a friend of her father's, and was inspired to record her dreams in 1928. Her dreams would serve as important sources for much of her art throughout her life. The work of Paul Klee, the focus of a retrospective at the Kunshalle Basel in 1929, provided another strong influence on Oppenheim, arousing her to the possibilities of abstraction.
In 1932, at the age of 18, Oppenheim moved to Paris and met Hans Arp and Alberto Giacometti, who after visiting her studio and seeing her work, invited her to participate in the Surrealist exhibition in the “Salon des Surindépendants,” Paris. Oppenheim later met André Breton and began to participate in meetings at the Café de la Place Blanche with the Surrealist circle. The conceptual approach favored by Marchel Duchamp, Max Ernst, and Francis Picabia became important to her work. She continued to contribute to Surrealist exhibitions until 1960. Many of her pieces consisted of everyday objects arranged to allude to female sexuality and feminine exploitation by the opposite sex. Oppenheim’s paintings focused on the same themes. Her originality and audacity established her as a leading figure in the Surrealist movement.
Méret Oppenheim's first one-woman exhibition in the Galerie Sohulthess, Basel featured surrealist objects. In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel and this marked the start of her artistic block. She struggled after she met success and worried about her development as an artist. Méret Oppenheim usually worked in spontaneous bursts and at times destroyed her work. Oppenheim took a hiatus from her artistic career in 1939 after an exhibition at the Galerie René Drouin started by Rene Drouin in Paris. In the exhibition she was featured alongside many artists, including Leonor Fini and Max Ernst. She did not share any art with the public again until the 1950s. Oppenheim then reverted to her "original style" and based her new artworks on old sketches and earlier works and creations.
Méret Oppenheim's best known piece is Object (Le Déjeuner en fourrure) - Object (Breakfast in Fur)(1936). The sculpture consists of a teacup, saucer and spoon that the artist covered with fur from a Chinese gazelle. It was purchased by Alfred Barr for the collection of the Museum of Modern Art in New York and included the museum's first surrealist exhibition Fantastic Art: Dada and Surrealism in 1936. Oppenheim was willing to sell the piece for one thousand francs, but Barr only offered her $50 and she accepted. This was the first piece of art that the museum acquired, and Oppenheim became known as the First Lady of MoMA. The enormous success of this early work would later create problems for Oppenheim as an artist. Soon after its creation she drifted away from the Surrealists.
In 1937, Oppenheim returned to Basel, training as an art conservator in order to ensure her financial stability. This marked the beginning of a creative crisis that lasted until 1954. Although she maintained some contact with her friends in Paris, she created very little and destroyed or failed to finish much of what she created.
In 1956, Oppenheim designed the costumes and masks for Daniel Spoerri’s production of Picasso’s play Le Désir attrapé par la queue in Berne. She and artist Lilly Keller were cast as the curtains. Three years later, in 1959, she organized a Spring Banquet (Le Festin) in Bern for a few friends at which food was served on the body of a naked woman. With Oppenheim's permission, Andre Breton restaged the performance later that year at the opening of the Exposition inteRnatiOnale du Surrealisme (EROS), at the Galerie Cordier in Paris. Outside its original intimate setting, the performance was overly provocative and Oppenheim felt her original intention for the work was lost.
In the 1960s, Oppenheim's home base of Bern became much more important as an art center. She continued to live and work there, as well as at a second home in Carona, Italy (1968), and maintained a studio in Paris starting in 1972. She was an important figure in feminist debates in the early 1970s, although she refused to identify as a feminist.
In 1983 Oppenheim designed The Spiral Column (Spiralsaule), unofficially known as "Meret Oppenheim Fountain," on the Waisenhausplatz in Bern. A tall concrete column wrapped with a garland of grass over a small watercourse, the fountain provoked a petition for its removal. In 1985 City of Paris commissioned Spiral (Nature's Way) [Spirale (Gang de Natur) from Oppenheim for the Jardins de l'ancienne Ecole polytechnique on the Montagne Ste. Genevieve near the Pantheon. The work was based on a 1971 model and finished posthumously a few months after Oppenheim's death in 1986.
2017, English
Softcover, 295 pages, 18.6 x 25 cm
Published by
New Museum / New York
$58.00 - Out of stock
While Carol Rama (1918-2015) has been largely overlooked in contemporary art discourses, her work has proven prescient and influential for many artists working today, attaining cult status and attracting renewed interest. Rama's exhibition at the New Museum brings together over 150 of her paintings, objects and works on paper, highlighting her consistent fascination with the representation of the body. This book celebrates the independence and eccentricity of this legendary artist whose work spanned half a century of contemporary art history and anticipated debates on sexuality, gender and representation. Encompassing her entire career, it traces the development from her early erotic, harrowing depictions of "bodies without organs" through later works that invoke innards, fluids and limbs.
This catalog accompanying her New Museum exhibition features an interview with the artist by Lea Vergine, a new text by writer Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer, and a contribution by artist Danh Vo.
1977, Japanese
Softcover, 56 pages, 26 x 18.5 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Gallery 8 / Tokyo
$100.00 - Out of 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.
Very Good copy with some tanning to cover edges.
1988, English
Softcover, 32 pages, 23 x 30 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / as new
Published by
The Renaissance Society / Chicago
$70.00 - In stock -
"For me the word Flesh means above all apprehension, hair standing on end, flesh laid bare with all the intellectual profundity of this spectacle of pure flesh and all its consequences for the senses, that is, for the sentiments." – Antonin Artaud
For twenty years, Christina Ramberg sustained an investigation of the human condition via the body, as it is made opaque and inscrutable by the apparel and adornment in which it is dressed. Shrunk, frayed, patched, torn, wrinkled-Ramberg pushes the problem of the garment well beyond metaphor. Her paintings are among the most personal work to emerge out of Chicago's Imagist group. In her late abstractions, attire falls away completely, revealing a raw spiritual mechanism that is decidedly impure.
Rare, long out-of-print 1988 catalogue published on the occasion of a major retrospective exhibition at The Renaissence Society, Chicago. In their catalogue essays, Dennis Adrian and Carol Becker each trace the course of Ramberg's continuous meditations on the body through her art - Adrian on the paintings formal and symbolic significance, and Becker on their psychological explorations of female embodiment and subjectivity.
As New copies.
2005, English / Japanese
1st edition, Out of print title, As New,
Published by
APT International / Tokyo
$65.00 - Out of stock
Major Japanese hard-cover monograph published on the occasion of a travelling exhibition of James Ensor's work, hosted at 5 different museums across Japan in 2005. Mie Prefectural Art Museum June 18, 2005 - July 24, Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum April 23 - June 12, Fukushima Prefectural Museum of Art July 30 - September 4, Kitakyushu Municipal Museum of Art September 10 - October 16, Takamatsu City Museum of Art October 21 - December 4.
Includes countless reproductions of Ensor's paintings, prints and drawings, photographs, essays, descriptions of works, bibliography, biography, and much more, all in English and Japanese.
James Sidney Edouard, Baron Ensor (13 April 1860 – 19 November 1949) was a Belgian painter and printmaker, an important influence on expressionism and surrealism who lived in Ostend for almost his entire life. He was associated with the artistic group Les XX. While Ensor's early works, such as Russian Music (1881) and The Drunkards (1883), depict realistic scenes in a somber style, his palette subsequently brightened and he favored increasingly bizarre subject matter. Such paintings as The Scandalized Masks (1883) and Skeletons Fighting over a Hanged Man (1891) feature figures in grotesque masks inspired by the ones sold in his mother's gift shop for Ostend's annual Carnival. Subjects such as carnivals, masks, puppetry, skeletons, and fantastic allegories are dominant in Ensor's mature work. Ensor dressed skeletons up in his studio and arranged them in colorful, enigmatic tableaux on the canvas, and used masks as a theatrical aspect in his still lifes. Attracted by masks' plastic forms, bright colors, and potential for psychological impact, he created a format in which he could paint with complete freedom. James Ensor is considered to be an innovator in 19th-century art. Although he stood apart from other artists of his time, he significantly influenced such 20th-century artists as Paul Klee, George Grosz, Wols, and many expressionist and surrealist painters of the 20th century.
1968, English
Colour offset lithographic poster (46 x 46 cm)
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Ace / Los Angeles
$650.00 - Out of stock
Very rare vintage Sol LeWitt poster published in conjunction with the preview of his solo exhibition at Ace, Los Angeles, December 3, 1968 - January 11, 1969. Beautiful colour offset lithographic poster featuring blue and black ink on white paper with image of LeWitt's Lines in Four Directions: vertical lines, horizontal lines, diagonal left to right, and diagonal right to left. A real collector's item.
Dimensions : 46 x 46 cm
Good-Very Good copy. Very small puncture marks to corners/edges, otherwise perfect and unmarked. Folded in four, as issued.
1963, English
Hardcover (w. dust jacket), 28 x 21 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Arted / Paris
$65.00 - Out of stock
Wonderful first edition of this important 1963 monograph on Constantin Brancusi by Ionel Jianou, published in Paris by Arted. Long out of print, this authoritative English-language book on Brancusi includes a beautifully illustrated catalogue of his works (over 100 images of sculptures, paintings and drawings), introduction by Jean Cassou, and an in-depth essay written by Jianou, "The Brancusi Mystery", exploring the life and work of Brancusi. Also includes full chronology, exhibition history, and bibliography. Beautifully illustrated.
Constantin Brâncuși (1876 - 1957) was a Romanian sculptor, painter and photographer who made his career in France. Brâncuși is considered a pioneer of modernism and one of the most influential sculptors of the 20th-century.
Good copy with good dust jacket. Very Good throughout apart from the ex-library markings to cover and first blank pages.
2019, English
Softcover, 56 pages, 23 x 22 cm
Published by
Robert Heald Gallery / Wellington
$30.00 - Out of stock
Double-catalogue published on the occasion of two solo exhibitions at Robert Heald Gallery, Wellington, in 2019. The exhibitions were Susan Te Kahurangi King 'In Colour' and Saskia Leek 'The Sun is A Circular Song', and this double-sided catalogue presents the drawings of King (dating 1966-2017) and Leek (dating 2019), respectively illustrated throughout in colour, along with a full work list for each exhibit.
Susan Te Kahurangi King (b. 1951, Te Aroha) is a New Zealand artist self-taught artist whose ability to speak declined by the age of four, and by the age of eight stopped speaking altogether. She has methodically created an entire analogous world through extraordinary drawings using pen, graphite, coloured pencil, crayon and ink.
Saskia Leek (b. 1970, Christchurch) is a New Zealand artist whose work playful questions the conventions of representation and notions of what constitutes “good” painting. The shifting meanings that one encounters from Saskia Leek’s paintings can range from the clichéd to the fantastic and the eerie, sourcing subject matter from amateur found art works and unfashionable outdated second-hand prints, creating a sense of both kitsch sentimentality and nostalgic melancholy.
Designed by Rose Miller, Kraftwork.
1990, English
Softcover, 100 pages, 28 x 21 cm
Out of print title / used / good
Published by
Berkely Books / New York
$120.00 - Out of stock
Super collectible 1990 edition of "The Art of Moebius", published by Berkely Books, New York. Edited by Byron Preiss with an introduction by George Lucas and afterword by Jean Giraud Mœbius, this is one of the first books in English showcasing the entire breadth of Jean Giraud Mœbius' extraordinary artistic work in rich colour and b/w, including his work for Arzach, Metal Hurlant/Heavy Metal, Starwatcher, The Incal, Little Nemo, Blueberry, and much more. Each illustration throughout the entire book is captioned by Moebius himself, giving an intimate introduction into his visionary universe.
Jean Henri Gaston Giraud (1938 – 2012) was a French artist, cartoonist and writer who worked in the Franco-Belgian bandes dessinées (BD) tradition. Giraud garnered worldwide acclaim under the pseudonym Moebius, esteemed by Federico Fellini, Stan Lee and Hayao Miyazaki among others, he has been described as the most influential bandes dessinées artist after Hergé. His most famous works include the series Blueberry, created with writer Jean-Michel Charlier, featuring one of the first anti-heroes in Western comics. As Mœbius he created a wide range of science fiction and fantasy comics in a highly imaginative, surreal, almost abstract style. These works include Arzach and the Airtight Garage of Jerry Cornelius. He also collaborated with avant-garde filmmaker Alejandro Jodorowsky for an unproduced adaptation of Dune and the comic book series The Incal. Mœbius also contributed storyboards and concept designs to numerous science fiction and fantasy films, such as Alien, Tron, The Fifth Element and The Abyss.
"In all his drawings, Moebius demonstrates a command of many disciplines in art. He is a master draftsman, a superb artist, and more: his vision is original and strong. Since first seeing the Moebius illustrations in "Heavy Metal" years ago, I have been impressed and affected by his keen and unusual sense of design, and the distinctive way in which he depicts the fantastic. Perhaps what strikes me most of all about his work is it's sheer beauty—a beauty that has always given me great pleasure." - George Lucas
Good copy, clean and tight throughout but with considerable shelf wear to cover and spine.
1996, Japanese
Softcover, 144 pages, 25.9 x 24.9 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / fine
Published by
Asahi Shimbun / Japan
$80.00 - Out of stock
Scarce, first and only edition of this wonderful out-of-print Japanese Leo Lionni Retrospective catalogue, published on the occasion of a major survey exhibition of Lionni's work, curated by Paola Vassalli in 1996 in Japan. Famous for his "Frederick" and "Swimmy" books, this extensive and profusely illustrated book, edited by Kiyoko Matsuoka, showcases Lionni's innovative and diverse career as an artist, draftsman and designer. In addition to many illustrations from his award-winning picture books, presented here are his incredible Parallel Botany prints, illustrations, paintings, and sculptures, along with many other drawings, paintings, photographs, collages, mosaics, print graphics, along with a detailed biography and bibliography, and more. Also includes poetry by Shuntarō Tanikawa. A must for any fan.
Leo Lionni (May 5, 1910 – October 11, 1999) was an author and illustrator of children's books. Born in the Netherlands, he moved to Italy and lived there before moving to the United States in 1939, where he worked as an art director for several advertising agencies, and then for Fortune magazine. He returned to Italy in 1962 and started writing and illustrating children's books. Leo Lionni wrote and illustrated more than 40 highly acclaimed children’s books. He received the 1984 American Institute of Graphic Arts Gold Medal and was a four-time Caldecott Honor Winner.
Fine copy!
1989, English
Softcover, 96 pages, 31 x 28 cm
1st Edition, Out of print title / used / very good
Published by
Archives Szukalski / California
$500.00 - In stock -
Extremely scarce first edition of the mighty "Behold!!! The Protong" by Stanislaw Szukalski, privately published in 1989 in this over-sized format by Archives Szukalski and edited by publisher Glenn Bray and Lena Zwalve.
Stanisław Szukalski (1893–1987) was a Polish-born sculptor, writer, graphic artist, and heretic. Highly regarded in both Poland and the US between the World Wars, becoming part of the Chicago Renaissance, he lapsed into obscurity, living and working in “America’s Cultural Siberia” (Southern California) until comic art collector Glenn Bray rediscovered him in 1973. For forty years, Szukalski had developed his all-encompassing science “Zermatism” about the origin of Man, laid down in 39 heavily illustrated volumes with subjects such as “Universal Pictography,” “The Flood Scumline,” and “Anthropolitical Motivations.” The work sets out to prove, among much else, that “Man-apes” make bad politicians, and that all Humanity stemmed from Easter Island, sharing a common protolanguage, “Protong” (bearing a striking resemblance to present-day Polish).
A classic and collectable Szukalski title (re-printed multiple times since this first edition), Behold!!! The Protong presents a selection from over 40,000 drawings in the Zermatism oeuvre, partially reprinted from "Troughful of Pearls; Behold!!! the Protong" which was first published in 1980 and now also highly collectible.
Good-Very Good copy.