Livres d'artiste have an enduring appeal which has triumphantly survived the twentieth century despite the many advances in book production. As Donna Stein explains in this magnificently crafted survey, these limited edition books are handmade and combine the written word with original graphic art, executed and printed under the artist's supervision. As almost every well-known painter and sculptor has created at least one book with original illustrations since the late nineteenth century, they have also come to be known as livres de peintre.
Publishers such as Ambroise Vollard, Henri Kahnweiler, Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevitch), Albert Skira, Tériade, Gérald Cramer and Tatyana Grosman have engaged the imagination of the finest artists, writers, designer and printers - among them Picasso, Malevich, Kandinsky, Kokoschka and Matisse - to collaborate on the creation of the vibrant publications celebrated here.
Sections cover:
- the evolution of the modern book in the decades before and after 1900
-the momentum provided by Modernism in the twenties
-the key role of Picasso
-the influences of Dada, Surrealism, the Second World War and its aftermath
-the shift of cultural power to the United States
-new trends publiarq.com
The Logan Collection, the best of which is presented here, surveys late nineteenth- and twentieth-century developments in the genre of artists' books. Notable for its masterpieces and the superb quality of its more than four hundred artists' books, it provides the most comprehensive historical overview of the genre available today.publiarq.com