Rare books from Michael Fagan Fine Art & Rare Books

Paris: GLM, 1935 Quarto 24.5x18 cm., wrappers, 20(1)pp., loose as issued. No. 791 of 1000 copies on velin of 1220 overall. A very successful collaboration of poet and photographer, with extraordinary sensuous photos of Eluard’s wife Nusch coupled with page design incorporating the poetry cycle therein. It is rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest surrealist publications. This is a fine, crisp copy, in custom clambshell box bearing hand-tooled leather spine.

Belgrade: Izdali Desetodnevo, 1924 Quarto 24x17 cm., wrappers, Numbers 1-8 (all published); illustrated. A surrealist literary journal. The title is roughly equivalent to the French témoignage, a loaded surrealist term for testimony. Svedocanstva emerged as the first surrealist journal in Yugoslavia, and stands with the single-issue Nemoguce (L'Impossible) as the chief outlet and documentary source for surrealist activity in the Balkans. Contributors include Yugoslav authors Marko Ristic, Milan Dedinac, Alksandar Vuco, Mladen Dimitrevic;, Milovoje Stepanovic;, Milan Dedinac, Tin Ujevic, in addition to editors Matic, Vuco and Petrovic; some exchanges with French surrealists Breton, Henri Nouveau inter alia, illustrations by Surrealist artists including Picasso which he contributed specifically for this journal. Issue no. 1 from November 1924 with the article Nadrealizam is considered the starting point of Serbian surrealism. This number also include Breton's first Manifesto and the first news about… Read More

Budapest: Genius, 1929 Quarto 27x19.5 cm, wrappers, 30(2)pp. Tibor Déry was a novelist who aligned with Kassák's MA group in both Budapest and later Vienna, and lived peripatetically until settling in Hungary in 1935. Like Kassák, he was an outsider of leftist vision, eventually becoming a communist and suffering suppression under both fascist and communist régimes. He was imprisoned after the 1956 revolution. He is acknowledged as a 20th-century great writer winning praise from György Lukács as "The greatest depictor of human beings in our time." In this work, Déry creates a surrealist narrative of rebellion against society, the universe, and reality itself. A final statement in it declares, "The truth is a lie!" After this, Déry joined Kassak's Dokumentum group in Budapest and leaned toward constructivist and humanist work in the next decade, in line with the Munka vision. Cover design by Lajos Kassák. OCLC… Read More

Prague: F. Borovy, 1921-44; 1946-48, 1921 Quarto, octavo, various original bindings (boards, cloth and wrappers). Zivot (Life) was an important art journal, various editors, running from 1921 to 1948 except for 1945. In 1922 under the editorship of architect Jaroslav Krejcar and Karel Teige, it became briefly a flagship of the avant-garde and arm of Devetsil, and that annual is much sought-after with important articles and graphics heralding the Devetsil movement. There it announced Czech art and design to be in synch with the leading experiments in international modernism. Some years were released as annuals alone, others came in segments of ten issues. The journal’s subtitle ranges from „Art Review“ to „Review of Art & Literature“ to „Papers on the Fine Arts and Artistic Culture“ with a few further variants. Aside from the 1922 edition, it was generally dedicated to all aspects of art history, with emphasis on more recent developments but as a continuum with… Read More

Published in an edition of 17 copies, this is a highly dramatic work illustrating the eponymous poem by Carducci (1835-1907), noted poet, historian and politician. SATANU is a magnificent work in large format (59 x 34 cm) twenty-one folded leaves with 11 full-page hand-colored woodcuts and 3 smaller linocuts, also in color. Váchal made the paper by hand, created the 1000 printed characters of his own making, and printed it in his studio in the Prague district of Vršovice. The book is signed in the colophon and numbered by three thumbprints and four fingerprints, making this the seventh copy. This copy housed loose in a custom portfolio with embossed title. Váchal presents us with a series of visual meditations that are some of his strongest, including an abstraction with alchemical symbols and possibly one of the most remarkable busts of the Lord of Darkness in the frontispiece. The artist was a lover of fine literature and poetry, and Carducci provides ample catalytic power in his strong… Read More

Two Folios 42 x 31.8 cm, stiff card covers, holding publisher's orange wrappers with descriptive index on rear flap; containing 44 sheets (Blätter) which include numbered fascicules and plates. These are all loose as issued and are complete. This fourth volume of Wagner's works, "Some Sketches, Projects and Completed Buildings," which the architect issued was published in three sections. The first in 1910, the second in 1915, and the third in 1922. The two segments here include the Competition Projects for the Reichsministerium and the Technical Museum, an apartment house, the Palace of Peace in den Haag, extensive elevations and plans with gardens for the Karlsplatz and Kaiser Franz-Josef-Stadt Museum (Wagner's Opus=IV), the reconstruction of the Vienna University Library, the Villa Wagner, the reconstruction of the Royal Art Academy of Vienna, the House of Glory, the Hotel Wien. All these are accompanied by fine full-size plates of photographs and drawings of elevations, details, interiors of… Read More

(Architectural Fantasies. 101 Compositions in Color, 101 Architectural Miniatures, Realized with the Participation of D. Kompanitsyn and E. Pavlova.) Quarto 30.5x21.5 cm., embossed cloth, 102pp., 214 letterpress illustrations, of which 101 are full page color plates hors text, and 113 black and white in text, released in 3000 copies. Iakov Chernikhov (1889-1951) is known for his theoretical works which are encapsulated in the books he published from 1927 to 1933. As an architect, very few of his conceptions were realized and he spent most of his life in teaching positions at design institutes throughout his professional life. The present work is acknowledged to be the last publication of avant-garde design in Stalinist Russia. It is an amazing feat, with 101 color plates of visionary drawings executed by the author and two design assistants. It also contains numerous black & white renderings, equally remarkable in daring and scope. This work, a statement of publishing excellence and daring… Read More

Quarto 23x18 cm, original wrappers, 28 (ii), 6 color lithographs. Unknown edition. "Exodus" refers to leaving Penza, where Mariengof lived as a student. This is a Futurist work, with superb examples of artwork by Mariengof's fellow student Vitalii Usenko (dates and biographical infounknown). It is late Futurism, and traces the link Mariengof used to connect to Imagism, which morphed into Imaginism by 1920 and for which the poet is most renowned. The almanac includes an assortment of work by other poets (Startsev, Stotov, Vigranskii), with the most notable being the first appearance of Osip Mandel'shtam's Dekabristy from 1917---a striking anomaly (it would be first published officially in Tristia in 1922). Copies of this work found in Yale, Getty (260), MOMA 208. A very fine copy, near new.

Octavo 17,8x 12 cm., wrappers, (26) pp. The All-Russian Union of Poets was organized in Moscow in 1918 and continued to 1929 when it was absorbed into All Russian Union of Writers.
In 1922 it came under the scrutiny of the NKVD who forced it to change the charter of its aims This collection consists of exponents of various schools "due to the extreme dubiousness of the goals and revolutionary objectives pursued by the Union, as well as harmful activities to the ranks of youth." This is the second poetry collection issued by the Union. Poets representing various isms are found here with Mandel'shtam (Sestry), Tsvetaeva (Kon'-Khrom), Pasternak (Mne v sumerki ty vse..), Sel'vinskii and Boguslavskii, among others. Rare, Getty 827,MOMA 394. Printed on heavy van Gelder, This copy very crisp, near fine. With very fine cover by Gustav Klutsis, one of his earliest works.

Numbers 1-3. Each is quarto 26x17 cm., wrappers, 80, 80, 83 pp. No. 1 released in 3000 copies, No. 3 notes 2000. Cover design by Mark Chagall, who also provided a statement in No. 1. A literary-artistic journal, Shtrom was an organ of the Kultur-Lige which moved from Kyiv to Moscow in 1921. While not an official state publication, it is the first Yiddish serial to appear in the USSR. Poetry and prose by Peretz Markish, der Nister (Pinchas Kahanowitz), David Hofshtein, Naum Auslander (Nokhem Oyslender), David Bergelson, Itsik Kipnis, N. Daniel, and Shmuel Nisn-Gordiner, inter alia. Shtrom aspired to be international in scope, drawing on Yiddish writers worldwide, but over time it published writers of the Soviet Union. The last 3 numbers came under Party control, and it failed to maintain sufficient financial support to continue. OCLC traces only a holding in microfiche (Harvard), but MOMA has 1-4. Refs: Shneer: Yiddish and the Creation of Soviet Jewish Culture, 2004; Tradition and Revolution, p. 151; MOMA 372)

(Moscow Under Reconstruction, an Album of Diagrams, Topograms, and Photography of the Reconstruction of the City of Moscow)
Square Quarto 33.4x34 cm., embossed cloth, 256pp., profusely illustrated with maps, foldouts, and visual schematics. Text by Viktor Shklovskii, art and book design by Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova. Photography by Georgii Zelma, Georgii Pretrusov, E. Langman, Ia.Khalip, E. Baldyrev. Includes plans and graphs as color lithographs, photogravures in sepia, blue or green, overlays of maps, foldouts, layered pages. This work by Aleksandr Rodchenko and Varvara Stepanova is one of the most wonderful collaborations in the history of Russian photobooks. It was executed by them concurrently with The Red Army, but is much more complex, dynamic, and elaborate than the latter. It was the most ambitious of any of the Soviet photography books that were produced in the 1930s. Every one of the contributors --- verbal, photographic, in design and execution – are significant in their… Read More

Quartos, generally 30x23 cm., bound and in wrappers, various paginations. Editors include Zdeněk Wirth, Otokar Novotný, Pavel Janák, Vilém Dvořák inter alia. All the editorial staff throughout its life were working architects. From its inception, Styl was a major architecture and design journal, engaging the pioneering architects of the Secessionist and Czech Cubist period through Rondo-cubism, experimental trials and into Functionalism. The first years of Styl were based on the Secessionist and early experiments of Cubist design. The first year is a sumptuous production, with metallic color lithographs and tissue guards on all full-page illustrations and photographs printed on heavy paper. As time went on it had to curtail these luxury elements due to financial considerations. Edited and later published by the Společnost architektu v Praze (Society of Architects in Prague), it maintained a superior standard of discourse and analysis of the work presented on its pages. The members of the… Read More

October 1928-July 1930 (all published)
Octavo, wrappers, 19 numbers in 17 issues. From its first issue stating its intent as a Marxist journal of the social sciences and arts, Signals was, like almost all avant-garde activities in Latvia, driven by a social and economic agenda which incorporated the use modernist graphic design of the day. There are, among the more generally Soviet leaning essays and reviews, some interesting original wood- and linocuts and photo-collages, but the most striking aspect is the cover design, unique to each issue, which were highly original constructivist compositions of very high quality. Artists designing these covers were A. Rentovics, V. Leimans, A. Grigels, L. Šneiders, and A. Segelinš, although most were unattributed in many numbers. Signals is very rare and highly collectible. From today's perspective, the original graphic covers of Signals are the some of the most significant visual contributions from Latvia in the 20th century. Fraser, pp.133-135, illustrated.… Read More

Quarto 23.3x15.2 cm., wrappers, 1928-1930, 18 numbers (all published). Cover designs by Ernests Kalis. A bimonthly journal, considered to be one of Laicens' most important publications and the most significant journal of the era along with SIGNALS but esteemed to be of higher literary quality and thought. Striking abstract linocut covers, highly original, in bright colors unique for each issue. As with almost all of the liberal to left wing culture in Latvia, there is a strongly Soviet orientation, and the journal was most likely financed, at the outset, with funds from the USSR. Every issue is illustrated, including some photomontage and graphics. In addition to being a vehicle of contrarian social commentary and promoting open discourse, KREISA FRONTE also was a publishing house which issued poetry and literary books. he editor Linards Laicens (1883-1938) was highly individual, prolific writer in all literary forms, editor and publisher, going against all the conventional currents of the day,… Read More

Quarto 19.8x16 cm. Original illustrated wrappers, with title page and 8 illustrations by Lissitzky. Mild toning, rubber stamp to front wrapper and p. 5. 10, [2] p. Unknown edition size.
"After 1923, Lissitzky ceased illustrating Yiddish books and concentrated his great talents on Constructivism, photomontage and architectural design, making significant contributions in all of them... His illustrated Yiddish books remain unsurpassed to this day." (Tradition and Revolution, p. 66) Although this side of his work was little known until fairly recently, Lissitzky produced several extraordinary Yiddish children's books while living and working in Kiev soon after the Revolution. As a member of IZO Narkompros (People's Commissariat of Enlightenment), he helped set up the Kultur-Lige there. In 1919, he and the writer Ben Zion Raskin signed a contract with Yidisher Folks Farlag Kooperativ for 11 children's books in the "Kinder Gorten" series. Only two titles other than this one were ever published: "The Miller,… Read More