Josef Koudelka, a nomad at heart has wandered around Europe with his 35mm Leica and little else. He was born in the Czech Republic, and made his first photographs there while a student in the 1950s. In the 196os he lived with and photographed the Gypsies of Slovakia, and later Romania, photographing them with an intimacy only gained through their total acceptance of him as one of their own. He returned to Czechoslovakia just two days before the Soviet invasion in August of 1968. He witnessed and recorded the military forces as they invaded Prague. Koudelka’s negatives were smuggled out of Prague into the hands of the Magnum agency, and were published anonymously under the initials P. P. (Prague Photographer) for fear of reprisal to him and his family. His pictures of the events became dramatic international symbols, and in 1969 the “anonymous Czech photographer” was awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal for photographs requiring exceptional courage. Koudelka left Czechoslovakia for political asylum in 1970 and shortly thereafter joined The Magnum Agency. He remains an ever elusive figure who rarely attends events or signings, preferring to remain as he has always been… perpetually in motion.

Description: INSCRIBED & SIGNED BY JOSEF KOUDELKA on the title page ” to Jonas from Josef Koudelka”. Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. Koudelka’s first book, the work that sealed Koudelka’s reputation featuring 60 powerful black-and-white photogravure plates. This is the French edition of the book published simultaneously by Aperture under the title “Gypsies “. Foreword by Robert Delpire, and text by Willy Guy. Translated to French by Diane de Margerie. Some wear to corners and edges of dust jacket, and one small closed tear, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 25015

$1500

Gitans La Fin Du Voyage (Gypsies)
Koudelka, Josef

English Title: Gypsies; The Journey’s End
Publisher: Delpire Editeur
Publication Date: 1975
Edition: First French edition
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition:   Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Author(s)

· Category: Featured ·

Internationally recognized photographer Peter Beard first visited Africa in 1955. After graduating from Yale, he returned to Africa and worked at Kenya’s Tsavo Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5000 Black Rhinos. The work done there led to the publication of The End of the Game books.

“When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. Kenya’s population was roughly five million, with about 100 tribes scattered throughout the endless ‘wild—deer—ness’ – it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game – so enormous it appeared inexhaustible. Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.” -Peter Beard

Description: INSCRIBED BY PETER BEARD WITH DRAWING. No Jacket, as issued. First printing of the 1977 revised edition published on the occasion of the I.C.P. exhibition in New York.Very good hardback as issued without dust jacket. The gray boards have some sunning and wear. This is a lovely edition of this rare Beard classic & the most difficult Beard title to find SIGNED & INSCRIBED!

Bookseller Inventory #19114

The End of the Game
Beard, Peter H.

SOLD

· Category: Sold ·

New York’s Greenwich Village was to become the backdrop for Dawn Powell’s “New York cycle” of books which feature her biting wit mixed with an unflinching, and some times comical look at urban life. From the 1930’s until the 1960’s Powell continued to document New York literary scene as she saw it. The novels in her “cycle” include: Turn Magic Wheel, The Locusts Have No King, The Wicked Pavilion, A Cage for Lovers, and The Golden Spur. The Golden Spur was nominated for the National Book Award, but it failed to win. On March 8, 1963, Dawn wrote in her diary:

“Was told yesterday I had not won the National Book Award. I felt some relief as I have no equipment for prize-winning—no small talk, no time for idle graciousness and required public show, no clothes either or desire for front. I realize I have no yen for any experience (even a triumph) that blocks observation, when I am the observed instead of the observer. Time is too short to miss so many sights.”

Some critics believe that her distaste for pretension associated with self-promotion contributed to Dawn Powell’s lack of commercial success during her lifetime. She avoided the spotlight, preferring to let her work do the speaking for her.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Some wear to edges of boards . Rubbing to dust jacket. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 15769

SOLD

A Cage for Lovers
Powell, Dawn

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin
Publication Date: 1957
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

David Hockney is considered one of the most influential British artists of the twentieth century. A painter, photographer, designer, he was also an important contributor to the Pop art movement of the 1960s. In the early 1980s, Hockney began to produce photo-collages, which he called “joiners”, first of Polaroid prints and later 35mm. His subject matter ranges from portraiture to still life, his style from representation to abstraction.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Stated first American edition. White cloth-covered boards with title stamped in black on spine; with photographically illustrated dust jacket. Photo-collages by David Hockney. Text by Lawrence Weschler. 288 pages with 122 four-color plates. Very minor edge wear, otherwise fine.

Bookseller Inventory # 46302

SOLD

Cameraworks
Hockney, David

Publisher: Alfred A Knopf
Publication Date: 1984
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First US Edition

· Category: Sold ·

August Sander was one of the most important German portrait photographers of the early twentieth century. In 1904 he opened his own studio in Linz, Austria, where he met with success. He began to photograph the rural farmers nearby, and soon abandoned his urban studio in favor of photographing in the field, finding subjects along the roads he traveled by bicycle. Sander photographed subjects from all walks of life and created a typological catalog of the German people. Although the Nazis banned the portraits in the 1930s and destroyed many of his negatives, Sander continued to make his photographs. His efforts grew into an ambitious social-documentary project he entitled People of the 20th Century, eventually encompassing more than 600 photographs divided into 45 portfolios.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Introduction by H. Lutzeler. 80 plates with facing captions. Some wear to dust jacket and a few closed tears, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 25653

SOLD

Deutschenspiegel
Menschen des 20. Jahrhunderts Einleitung von H. Lutzeler
Sander, August

Publisher: Sigbert Mohn
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Bookseller Inventory # 16074

SOLD

Ukiyoe Kuzushi
Hoshino, Komaro and Fujimoto, Giichi

Publisher: Nippon Geijutsu Shuppansha
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Kenro Izu has been photographing the world’s holy places for over four decades. He shoots with a large-format camera custom fitted to make 14 x 20 inch negatives, which he prints on watercolor paper hand-coated with platinum/palladium emulsion, a painstaking, three-day process. For this book he carried over 200 pounds of gear on foot deep into the still-treacherous Cambodian jungle. The reproductions in this book are themselves rich, the blacks saturated and gradation of grays without limit. Profusely illustrated with the beautifuly printed photographs of the architecture of Angkor.

Of the many sacred sites that Kenro Izu has photographed, Angkor Wat has undoubtedly become his most significant spiritual and psychological subject. During a series of photography trips to Cambodia’s Angkor monuments, Izu became deeply moved by his encounters with children disfigured by landmines and desperate need of medical care. As a way of returning something to Cambodia he founded a not-for profit organization, Friends Without A Border and built Angkor Hospital for Children in 1999. He has been responsible for its operation since.

Description: Signed and dated by Kenro Izu. Paperback copy with some tanning to the edges white wrappers. Previous owners name to front fee end page, otherwise fine. Interior clean and binding tight. A very scarce signed edition.

Bookseller Inventory # 17073

SOLD

Light Over Ancient Angkor
Izu, Kenro

Publisher: Friends Without a Border
Publication Date: 1996
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good
Signed: Signed

· Category: Sold ·

New York based photographer Bruce Davidson began his career as a freelance contributor for Life Magazine in the 1950’s. In Paris met Henri Cartier-Bresson, and later would join him as a member of Magnum Photos. Throughout the 1960’s he helped document the civil rights movement, and in 1963 he was awarded the first grant from the National Endowment for the Arts. He spent the next several years documenting the human struggle within one city block in Manhattan; East 100th in Harlem.

Description: Hard bound first printing in dust jacket. This copy was inscribed by Davidson to the photographer Paul Ickovic for his help and oversight in the publication process. Inscribed on the half title page “To Paul Thank you for making this book reproduction possible Bruce Davidson 79′ “. Very minor tanning to spine edge of white dust jacket, otherwise very good.  A rare photographic association copy.

Bookseller Inventory # 13746

SOLD

Bruce Davidson Photographs
Davidson, Bruce

Publisher: Agrinde
Publication Date: 1978
Binding: Hardcover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Signed: Inscribed by Photographer
Edition: 1st Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Sarah Moon, who was born in Britain has worked as a model, film-maker, and lastly a fashion photographer. Her carefully staged images are mysterious, nostalgic, and surreal. Her photographs often utilize sepia tones or muted color, diffused by heavy grain. Her work evokes a fairy tale, encapsulated within a dream like softness.

Description: Hard bound first printing inscribed on the half title page by Sarah Moon to the photographer Paul Ickovic and his wife “To Paul and Sarah These IMPROBABLE MEMORIES as a souvonier. with love Sarah Moon”. Some very minor wear to dust jacket, otherwise very good. A nice association copy!

Bookseller Inventory # 13777

SOLD

Improbable Memories
Moon, Sarah

Publisher: Matrix
Publication Date: 1981
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First U.S. Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Antoni Tàpies gained worldwide fame in the 1950s for his “matter” paintings: relief-like works composed of dry pigments, sand and marble dust, and paint, which he scrapes, incises, and pierces. Tàpies helped co-found the first Post-War Movement in Spain known as Dau-al-Set which was connected to the Surrealist and Dadaist Movements. Tàpies early works were influenced by Paul Klee and Joan Miró; but statrted working in a style known as “Arte Povera”, in which non artistic materials are incorporated into the paintings such as clay, dust, paper, and string. Fundació Antoni Tàpies, a museum dedicated to the artist’s work, that he founded in Barcelona in 1984, has gone on to become one of that city’s most vital cultural institutions. In 2010, he was given the title of Marquess de Tàpies in the Spanish nobility. That same year, Fundació Antoni Tàpies reopened after a huge remodeling. In New York, Mr. Tàpies had one-person shows at Dia:Beacon in 2009 and at the Museum of Modern Art in 1992. Antoni Tàpies, the painter from Catalan who straddled both modernist and postmodernist aesthetics, has died this week according to Pace, the artist’s gallery in New York. He was 88.

Description: Hard bound art exhibition catalog published on the occasion of the landmark Jan. 27, 1999 exhibition organized by the Guggenheim Museum. Presents the essence of Tàpies’ monumental achievement “an original and extraordinary use of texture and materials coupled with an expression of strongly felt intellectual, political, and artistic beliefs.” This volume also includes an overview of the artist’s life by the famed art historian Dore Ashton, as well as translations of four of the artist’s principal writings on art.

Bookseller Inventory # 16509

SOLD

Tapies
Gimenez, Carmen

Publisher: Abrams, Boston, Massachusetts, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1995
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Richard Avedon revolutionized fashion photography starting in the post-World War II era and redefined the role of the fashion photographer. He became internationally recognized for his photography during his long career at Harper’s Bazaar, Vogue, The New Yorker, and beyond. Although Avedon first earned his reputation as a fashion photographer, his greatest achievement has been his reinvention of the genre of photographic portraiture.  Avedon’s pictures continue to bring us a closer, more intimate view of the great and the famous. the portraits are often well lit and in front of white backdrops, with no props or extraneous details to distract from their person.

Description: Hard bound limited edition with pictoral boards, no dust jacket as issued. Published on the occasion of the November – December, 2001 exhibition. Folio measuring 12 x 15 inches. The Avedon images presented here, many for the first time, were made in Paris for Harper’s Bazaar during the 1950s. What is particularly special about this presentation is that the images are being reproduced to the exact scale of the engraver’s prints made for Avedon by the master printer Andre Gremola, and are uncropped, on their original mounts, with all of the artist’s notations on both front and back. Thus, they provide a remarkable portrait of the working methods of one of the most influential fashion photographers in history. OUT OF PRINT AND SOUGHT AFTER!

Bookseller Inventory # 26905

SOLD

Made in France
Thurman, Judith and Avedon, Richard

Publisher: Fraenkel Gallery, San Francisco, California, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 2001
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Near Fine
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket, As Issued
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Walker Evans was one of the 20th century’s most influential photographers. For three years beginning in the winter 1938 he rode the Lexington Avenue Local along with the photographer Helen Levitt, Evans with his 35mm camera hidden between the buttons of his coat. He surreptitiously photographed the subway passengers in his quest to document the “real”. Evans had developed his unique style of photography while working for the Farm Security Administration, photographing the rural poor of the deep south. Like Dorothea Lang and Margaret Bourke White, Walker Evans created some of the most iconic images of the depression era. He attempted to show his subjects without their “mask on”, in the still moments of quiet introspection when their guard was left down. The photographs lay unpublished for 25 years. In 1966 ninety were chosen from over six hundred and paired with an essay written by James Agee in 1941. Evan’s body of work went on to inspire a generation of photographers. Each portrait captures a real person within a singular moment, as unique as a thumb print or a snowflake.

Description: Hard bound first printing, no dust jacket. Black cloth boards with titles in white. 178 pages. Text by James Agee. Some minor rubbing to boards, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. One of the most iconic photography books of the 20th century!

Bookseller Inventory # 17149

· Category: Sold ·

Cy Twombly will probably be best remembered for blurring the line between drawing and painting. His paintings have achieved auction prices well into the millions. He was one of the first American artists to interest himself in graffiti. Many of his best-known paintings of the late 1960s are reminiscent of a school blackboard, filled with scrawled gestures, as if Twombly was covering them with hundreds of years of graffiti. Twombly had at this point discarded painting figurative, representational subject-matter, citing the line or smudge–each mark with its own history. He studied with other pioneers of the postwar American avant-garde at Black Mountain College, including Rauschenberg, Johns, Cage, Cunningham, Shaun, Chamberlain and others. Twombly’s work is at the same time both representive of the classical, and the post modern. He is intimately interested in the classical gesture, the Roman period, the painterly. He is, at times, as much a ‘painter’ as David or Renoir, but at the same time he is fascinated with the minimal, the excluded and most importantly: the scrawled. Many of his paintings and works on paper moved into “romantic symbolism”, and their titles can be interpreted visually through shapes and forms and words. Twombly often quoted the poet Stéphane Mallarmé, as well as many classical myths and allegories in his works. In the late nineteen fifties Twombly moved to Rome and has lived and worked somewhat quietly there until his death on July 5, 2011.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Published on the occasion of the September 25, 1994 exhibition. 180 pages with 187 illustrations. A nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 20125

SOLD

Cy Twombly: A Retrospective
Varnedoe, Kirk

ISBN: 0870706209
Publisher: Museum of Modern Art, New York
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Before her suicide in 1971 Diane Arbus was pioneering a new documentary approach to photography. Her subject was to come from the fringes of society; transvestites, giants, midgets, nudists, and others who have been marginalized by the larger society as a whole. Her portraits have the power to both provoke and disturb. The viewer is drawn in and soon realizes that no matter how freakish her subjects might seem, they are in fact uniquely perfect in their own way.

Description: True first edition. Hard bound in dust jacket.  Meets the point of issue – ” 2 girls with identical raincoats “. Published in 1972 one year after the photographers death, in conjunction with a major retrospective exhibition held by the MoMA in New York. The only edition with the complete photographs,  lacking in later editions. One of the Seminal photography books of the 20th century. White boards show some faint foxing near edges and corners. Minor damp staining to lower edge of rear board, otherwise fine. An important monograph on a photographer who is still gaining in popularity. Rare first printing of the true first edition!

Inventory # 25442

SOLD

Diane Arbus: An Aperture Monograph

Publisher: Aperture
Publication Date: 1972
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Ellsworth Kelly studied at Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, from 1941 to 1943. After military service from 1943 to 1945, he attended the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, from 1946 to 1947. The following year, Kelly went to France and enrolled at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris under the G.I. Bill. In France, he discovered Romanesque art and architecture and Byzantine art. He was also introduced to Surrealism which led him to experiment with automatic drawing and geometric abstraction.

Kelly abstracts the forms in his paintings from observations of the real world, such as shadows cast by trees or the spaces between architectural elements. In 1950, Kelly met Jean Arp and that same year began to make shaped-wood reliefs and collages in which elements were arranged according to the laws of chance. He soon began to make paintings in separate panels that can be recombined to produce alternate compositions, as well as multipanel paintings in which each canvas is painted a single color. During the 1950s, he traveled throughout France, where he met Constantin Brancusi, Alexander Calder, Alberto Magnelli, Francis Picabia, and Georges Vantongerloo, among other artists. His first solo show took place at the Galerie Arnaud, Paris, in 1951.

Kelly returned to the United States in 1954, living first in a studio apartment on Broad Street, and then at Coenties Slip in lower Manhattan, where his neighbors would through the years include Robert Indiana, Agnes Martin, Fred Mitchell, James Rosenquist, Lenore Tawney, and Jack Youngerman. Kelly continued to develop and expand the vocabulary of painting, exploring issues of form and ground with his flatly painted canvases. His first solo show in New York was held at the Betty Parsons Gallery in 1956, and three years later he was included in Sixteen Americans at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1958, he also began to make freestanding sculptures. He moved out of Manhattan in 1970, set up a studio in Chatham, and a home in nearby Spencertown, New York. Kelly’s first retrospective was held at the Museum of Modern Art, New York, in 1973.

Description: Paperback catalogue raisonne 1949 – 1985. Published on the occasion of the 1987 touring exhibition. 201 pages, profusely illustrated. Includes lithographs, leaves, curve series, concord, plant, flower litho images, paper images with an appendix on printmaking. Chronology, glossary, bibliography, and index. Scarce!

Bookseller Inventory # 17354

SOLD

The Prints of Ellsworth Kelly: A Catalogue Raisonne, 1949-1985
Axsom, Richard H.

Publisher: Hudson Hills Press, Manchester, Vermont, U.S.A.
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Paperback
Book Condition: Very Good

· Category: Sold ·

Gerhard Richter began working with artists such as Sigmar Polke and Georg Baselitz. Their work, and Richter’s in particular, began to have an impact in Germany, and eventually international art circles. Richter’s beliefs are credited with refreshing art and rejuvenating painting as a medium during a period when many artists chose performance and ready-made media. Together with Polke and Fischer-Lueg, Richter formed a group called the Capitalist Realists. The Capitalist Realists were satirical, often deriving subject matter from print media. Richter began to see art as something that had to be separated from art history; he believed that paintings should focus on the image rather than the reference, the visual rather than the statement.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. Published on the occasion of the April 22, 1991 exhibition. 91 pages. Mirror Paintings, Sculpture,  Glass panels, and Abstract paintings. Catalog, exhibition checklist, and bibliography 1965 – 1991.  A very nice copy of a scarce Richter title.

Bookseller Inventory # 17021

SOLD

Gerhard Richter: Mirrors

Publisher: Anthony d’Offay Gallery, London
Publication Date: 1991
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good

· Category: Sold ·

With the Bauhaus in Dessau, Walter Gropius created one of the most influential architecture and design schools of the 20th century. During the few years of its use as a school, until it was closed down by the Nazis in 1932, it had also become a center for the creative forces of its time. Born and educated in Germany, Walter Gropius worked under the German architect Peter Behrens from 1907 untill 1910, his fellow employees at this time included Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier. As the founding director of the Bauhaus, Gropius made inestimable contributions to his field, to the point that knowing his work is crucial to understanding Modernism. The Bauhaus revolutionized art training by combining the teaching of the pure arts with the study of crafts. Gropius aimed to unite art with technology, and he educated a new generation of designers and architects to reject historical precedents and adopt the ideology of modern industry. For the Bauhaus, Gropius wrote the curriculum, designed the building, and he assembled its faculty: an extraordinary group that included Paul Klee, Lyonel Feininger, Wassily Kandinsky, László Moholy-Nagy, and Marcel Breuer.

Description: Hard bound first printing bound in yellow cloth with red lettering. No dust jacket. Text in German. 221 pages, profusely illustrated. #12 in the series -bauhausbucher. Very progressive architecture for the time, showing the most early ideas of modernism in architecture. The most sought after title in the series. Some wear and minor soiling to cloth boards. Interior clean and binding tight. RARE hardbound copy!.

Bookseller Inventory # 16908

SOLD

Walter Gropius : Bauhaus Bauten Dessau
Gropius, Walter

Publisher: Albert Langen Verlag
Publication Date: 1930
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition:Good
Dust Jacket Condition: No Jacket
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Internationally recognized photographer Peter Beard first visited Africa in 1955. After graduating from Yale, he returned to Africa and worked at Kenya’s Tsavo Park, during which time he photographed and documented the demise of over 35,000 elephants and 5000 Black Rhinos. The work done there led to the publication of The End of the Game books.

During this same time period, he became close to Karen Blixen, well know as the author of Out of Africa. He also acquired Hog Ranch, the property adjacent to Karen Blixen’s, near the Ngong Hills and made it his home base in East Africa. Beard has written further works on his African experience: Eyelids of the Morning: The Mingeled Destines of Crocodiles and Men, and Longing for Darkness: Kamante’s Tales From Out of Africa.

“When I first went to Kenya in August 1955, I could never have guessed what was going to happen. Kenya’s population was roughly five million, with about 100 tribes scattered throughout the endless ‘wild—deer—ness’ – it was authentic, unspoiled, teeming with big game – so enormous it appeared inexhaustible. Everyone agreed it was too big to be destroyed. Now Kenya’s population of over 30 million drains the country’s limited and diminishing resources at an amazing rate: surrounding, isolating, and relentlessly pressuring the last pockets of wildlife in denatured Africa.” —Peter Beard

Description: Hard bound FIRST JAPANESE EDITION with dust jacket. Wrap around band and inserts present. Text in Japanese. Some minor wear to dust jacket edges and sunning to spine edge, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight. RARE!.

Bookseller Inventory # 16623

SOLD

The End of the Game
Beard, Peter H.

Publisher: Shueisha
Publication Date: 1979
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition:Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Andre Masson (1896–1987) studied art in Brussels and Paris. His early works display an interest in cubism. He later became associated with surrealism, and he was one of the most enthusiastic employers of automatic drawing, making a number of automatic works in pen and ink. Masson would often force himself to work under strict conditions, for example, after long periods of time without food or sleep, or under the influence of drugs. He believed forcing himself into a reduced state of consciousness would help his art be free from rational control, and hence get closer to the workings of his subconscious mind. From around 1926 he experimented by throwing sand and glue onto canvas and making oil paintings based around the shapes that formed. By the end of the 1920s, however, he was finding automatism rather restricting, and he left the surrealist movement and turned instead to a more structured style, often producing works with a violent or erotic theme, and making a number of paintings in reaction to the Spanish Civil War

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket in publishers slipcase, as issued. Signed by the publisher Patrick Cramer. 300 pages profusely illustrated. Catalogue raisonne of the illustrated books, albums and catalogues of Andre Masson. Very detailed descriptions of 120 works with full color reproductions of the original artwork. an exhaustive survey. A very nice copy with almost no visible wear.

Inventory # 16824

SOLD

Andre Masson the Illustrated Books : Catalogue Raisonne
Cramer, Patrick  &  Saphire, Lawrence

Publisher: Patrick Cramer
Publication Date: 1994
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: As New

· Category: Sold ·

Danny Lyon’s documented the large-scale demolition of several Manhattan neighborhoods in 1967 in order to make way for construction of the World Trade Center. Included are photographs of soon to be demolished streets and buildings, portraits of the neighborhood’s last remaining stragglers and pictures from within the demolition sites themselves. Thirty-eight years after these photographs were made, many of them are the only record that survives of entire blocks of mainly nineteenth century buildings that once lined Fulton Street, and West Street along the Hudson. Because of the disaster that would strike the city a generation later, New Yorkers have taken on a renewed and fervent interest in the architecture of their city.

It was a huge story in New York City at the time . . . and this was the most historic part of Manhattan. The oldest part of Manhattan was vanishing… and it was an ignored story at the time, or I wouldn’t have done it. Part of how I saw myself, as a journalist, was finding the truth and delivering it to the American people.
-Danny Lyon

Description: Hard bound first printing in dust jacket. Some wear to edges of dust jacket that shows a few small chips to edges. Interior clean and free of marks. VERY RARE first printing of this sought after monograph!

Bookseller Inventory # 18233

SOLD

The Destruction of Lower Manhattan
Lyon, Danny

Publisher: Macmilan
Publication Date: 1969
Binding: Hard Bound
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Alberto Giacometti was a Swiss sculptor, painter, draftsman and printmaker. In 1922 he moved to Paris to study under Auguste Rodin’s associate, the sculptor Antoine Bourdelle. It was there that Giacometti experimented with the cubist method. In 1927 his brother, Diego Giacometti, joined him as his assistant. Drawn to the surrealist movement, Alberto displayed his first surrealist sculptures at Salon des Tuileries, Paris, later that year. Before long, he was regarded as one of the leading surrealist sculptors of the day. Living in the creative community of Montparnasse, he associated with artists Joan Miro, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Balthus, plus writers Samuel Beckett, Jean-Paul Sartre, Paul Eluard and Andre Breton. From 1935 to 1940 Giacometti concentrated his sculpting on the human head, focusing on the model’s gaze, followed by a unique artistic phase in which his statues became stretched out — their limbs elongated. Obsessed with creating his sculptures exactly as he envisioned through his unique view of reality, he often carved until they were as thin as nails and reduced to the size of a pack of cigarettes, much to his consternation. A friend of his once said that if Giacometti decided to sculpt you, he would make your head look like the blade of a knife. After his marriage his tiny sculptures became larger, but the larger they grew, the thinner they became. Giacometti was a key player in the Existentialist movement, but his work resists easy categorization. Some describe it as Formalist, others argue it is Expressionist. The intention of his sculpting was usually imitation, the end products were an expression of his emotional response to the subject. He attempted to create renditions of his models the way he saw them, and the way he thought they ought to be seen. Giacometti’s figures reflect the view of 20th century modernism and existentialism. Alberto Giacometti’s 1960 sculpture of a spindly man, “Walking Man I,” sold for £65 million ($104.3 million) in a Sotheby’s auction, shattering the record price for a work of art at auction to date!

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket. 328 pages profusely illustrated.4 full color tipped in plates. An exhaustive monograph on the artist. Giacometti: A Biography In Pictures narrates an informal exploration of one of the twentieth century’s greatest sculptors. The text is interspersed with wonderful snapshots of the artist at work in the studio with reproductions of individual works. Some minor wear to dust jacket and some minor tanning to spine edge of dust jacket, otherwise very good. Interior clean and binding tight.

Bookseller Inventory # 17538
SOLD

Alberto Giacometti
Hohl, Reinhold

Bibliographic Details:

Publisher: H. N. Abrams, New York
Publication Date: 1972
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Description: Paperback art exhibition catalogue published in association with the University of Washington, and on the occasion of the opening of the June 8, 1997 exhibition. 143 pages.

Bookseller Inventory # 11072

SOLD

The Tenth Street Studio Building: Artist-Entrepreneur from the Hudson River School to the American Impressionists
Blaugrund, Annette

Publisher: The Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York
Publication Date: 1997
Binding: Soft Cover
Book Condition: Very Good

· Category: Sold ·

What is most memorable about the austere, white-walled villas that he built after World War I in and around Paris is their cool beauty and their airy sense of space.
-Witold Rybczynski

Le Corbusier was a visionary. He believed that architecture had lost its way. Art Nouveau, all curves and sinuous decorations, had burned itself out in a brilliant burst of exuberance; the seductive Art Deco style promised to do the same. The Arts and Crafts movement had adherents all over Europe, but as the name implies, it was hardly representative of an industrial age. Le Corbusier maintained that this new age deserved a brand-new architecture. It was to become known as the International Style : raise the building on stilts, mix in a free-flowing floor plan, make the walls independent of the structure, add horizontal strip windows and top it off with a roof garden.

In 1907, he traveled to Paris, where he found work in the office of Auguste Perret, the French pioneer of Reinforced concrete. Between October 1910 and March 1911, he worked near Berlin for the renowned architect Peter Behrens where he met Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and Walter Gropius. He was a pioneer in studies of modern high design and was dedicated to providing better living conditions for the residents of crowded cities. His career spanned 8 decades, with his buildings constructed throughout central Europe, India, Russia, and one each in North and South America. He was also an “Urban planner, painter, sculptor, writer, modern furniture designer.

Description: Hard bound first printing with dust jacket. A very nice copy, bright and clean.

Bookseller Inventory # 13600

SOLD

The Villas of Le Corbusier, 1920-1930: With Photographs in the Lucien Herve Collection
Benton, Tim

Publisher: Yale
Publication Date: 1987
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: Very Good
Dust Jacket Condition: Very Good
Edition: First Edition

· Category: Sold ·

Joan Miró was among the first artists to develop automatic drawing as a way to undo previous established techniques in painting, and thus, with Andre Masson represented the beginning of Surrealism as an art movement. However, Miró chose not to become an official member of the Surrealists in order to be free to experiment with other artistic styles without compromising his position within the group. He pursued his own interests in the art world, ranging from automatic drawing and surrealism, to expressionism and color field painting.

Description: Hard bound catalogue raisonne of the illustrated books, with dust jacket in publishers red slipcase, as issued. 675 pages profusely illustrated with reproductions of the lithographs and engravings of Miro help create this definitive and indispensable reference work on his books. 1540 plates with 1300 in full color. An exhaustive work with 262 works each described in detail. A very nice copy in almost perfect condition.

Bookseller Inventory # 16821

SOLD

Joan Miro The Illustrated Books : Catalogue Raisonne
Miro, Joan and Mlet, Rosamaria

Publisher: Patrick Cramer, Geneva
Publication Date: 1989
Binding: Hard Cover
Book Condition: As New
Dust Jacket Condition: As New

· Category: Sold ·

Truman Capote reached a pinnacle that many writer’s dream of but few ever ascend. No one quite climbed to that summit like Capote did. The extravagant and outrageous lifestyle of flamboyance may be dim among today’s own breed of celebrity, but 50 years ago it was a beacon in the bight life of high society and American Letters. He was a mainstay of the New York social scene, an a noted Hampton’s regular. To celebrate his rise to the top of high society in 1966 Capote hosted what would become known as the famous Black and White Ball, a virtual “who’s who” of the day. Capote’s natural talent for weaving truth with fiction and his unflinching descriptions of his friends soon led to his rapid descent in popularity within the very social circles he had worked so hard to adopt. This rejection led to his increased drinking and drug use. His lack of continued sobriety in later years was matched only by his lack of work. Capote became more of a recluse and his last work, Answered Prayers (where he offended many of his friends) was published only after his death. Truman Capote died on August 25, 1984, but his presence remains alive in the 21st century, even among today’s celebrated caricatures.

Description: Hard bound with dust jacket in custom 1/4 leather & cloth clamshell box. SIGNED ON THE FRONT FREE ENDPAGE BY TRUMAN CAPOTE. Stated first printing. Some minor wear to unclipped dust jacket edges, otherwise very good. The first of Truman Capote’s own “favorites” from among his works. Mustard cloth boards. Mylar-covered dust jacket (which shows $5.95 price and 2/63 date at bottom of front fold) Beautiful 1/4 leather clam shell box with gilt title on spine edge, shows only the most minoer edge wear. A rare signed copy!.

Bookseller Inventory # 19093

SOLD

Selected Writings of Truman Capote
Capote, Truman

· Category: Sold ·