Search Results: Poland from Michael Fagan Fine Art & Rare Books

Quarto 28x23 cm., decorated cloth, 192 pp., errata sheet, in original dust wrapper; copiously illustrated throughout. Polish language text.
The first full monograph and memoir on Mieczyslaw Szczuka, (1890-1927), visual genius and lodestar of the avant-garde in Poland, edited by two of his closest friends who worked with Szczuka and were leaders of the avant-garde in Warsaw. Stern was a author of the poem Europa, Szczuka'a last, great unfinished work, and Berman continued to be a leading figure in fine art and commercial design; both of them continued to actively work into the 1960s.. An important reference work.

Small octavo 17x11.5 cm., wrappers, 166pp. In the original dust wrapper from F. Hoesick, Warsaw. Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz aka Witkacy (1885-1939) was an extraordinary gifted artist, photographer, dramatist, novelist and philosopher. He developed a fantastic expressionism and participated in the Formist group in Kraków from 1917 to 1919. Here he outlines his differences with all of the art theories and movements of modernism in general and breaks with Formist movement and its proponents. With his usual brilliance, he deconstructs all the foundations of modernism, in addition to throwing doubt on the validity of art in the current age altogether. For him, this ultimately led to an abandonment of conventional painting in 1924, when Witkacy opened his portrait shop with its peculiar set of terms for prospective clients, and experimented with various drugs and alcohol to explore unusual psychic states with his subjects, all meticulously noted on the works. His cynical attitude was foreshadowed in the… Read More

(Tytus Czyzewski & the Crisis of Formism) Octavo 21.8x17.3 cm., original wrappers, 4pp, 13 plates. Tytus Czyzewski (1880-1945) was a painter and art theorist who was greatly influenced by Cezanne. Together with the Pronaszko brothers he put together a group of expressionist and cubist artists based in Krakow. The Formisci expanded their dimensions to include members with widely differing esthetic programs, including Futurism and the singular Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz. Czyzewski was also the author of experimental poetry and plays, and issued books with experimental typefaces and design..
Leon Chwistek (1884-1944) was a mathematician and logician who also was a talented painter; he joined the Formists in Kraków in 1917. He wrote this as the group was on the verge of disbanding, exploring Czyżewski's work to date. Like Chwistek, Czyżewski was multi-talented, and was probably had the most consistent body of work among his fellow artists when the Formist group initially emerged.. OCLC locates… Read More