MODERN PLASTIC ART
C. Giedion-Welcker
Herbert Bayer [Designer/Typographer]
C. Giedion-Welcker, Herbert Bayer [Designer/Typographer]: MODERN PLASTIC ART [Elements of Reality, Volume and Disintegration]. Zurich: Girsberger, 1937. First Edition. Text in English. Quarto. Tan cloth covered flexible boards stamped in black. 166 pp. 109 black and white plates. Cloth lightly spotted. Flexible boards slsightly bowed from improper storage. Former owner bookplate to front pastedown. Front hinge starting. Textblock clean and unmarked, so a nearly very good copy.
7.5 x 10.25 hardcover book with 166 pages and 109 black and white plates highlighting the finest modern sculpture and plastic art, circa 1937. English translation by P. Morton Shand. Exceptional study of Constructivist tendencies in sculpture. One of the best snapshots of the plastic arts before World War II. Highly recommended.
- Introductory Text
- Illustrations
- Biographical Appendix
- Bibliographical Sources
- Index To Illustrations
Includes work by Alexander Archipenko, Hans Arp, Max Bill, Umberto Boccioni, Constantin Brancusi, Sergee Brignoni, Alexander Calder, Honore Daumier, Edgar Degas, Marcel Duchamp, Raymond Duchamp-Villon, Max Ernst, Lucio Fontana, Naum Gabo, Alberto Giacometti, Julio Gonzales, Juan Gris, Raoul Hausmann, Barbara Hepworth, Catherine Kobro, Henri Laurens, Jacques Lipchitz, Aristide Maillol, Kasimir Malevich, Henri Matisee, Fausto Melotti, Joan Miro, Amedeo Modigliani, László Moholy-Nagy, Henry Moore, Anton Pesvner, Pablo Picasso, Auguste Rodin, Alexander Rodchenko, Oscar Schlemmer, Kurt Schwitters Vladimir Tatlin, and Georges Vanongerloo.
Here is an original review of MODERN PLASTIC, ART By C. Giedion-Welcker: “Ten years ago, we were allowed to accept abstract art as something which, if it appealed to us at all, appealed to a purely aesthetic faculty, the working, of which were independent of any other form of activity in which we indulged. Now Marxism as a mode of thought has spread, at any rate on the Continent, to such an extent that even those intellectuals who are in theory strongly opposed to it find themselves inevitably thinking in terms of the Marxist idiom. So we have the strange phenomenon of a writer justifying abstract art on the grounds that it is the most complete possible expression of a ' particular social development, and that it perform, a function of value in the general life of society. For this is really the main thesis of Frau Giedion Welckers Modern Plastic Art (Zurich.: Girsberger. Verlag, 12S. 6d.). - She maintains, for instance, that the various forms of abstract art which she discusses are - dominated by " the rehabilitation of everyday themes and their reassimilation to the broad stream of life," a tendency which she also finds in other fields of culture, in philosophy and science. It is, however, very hard to see how this tendency is shown in the sculpture of Arp or Moore. However, this book serves a useful purpose in containing the dearest direct exposition of the doctrines on which the various artists in question work, supported by quotations from their own writings on art. Further, the plates illustrate the various forms of abstract sculpture exceptionally well.” — The Spectator, 30 April, 1937
Carola Giedion-Welcker (Germany, 1893 – 1979) was a collector and historian of art and literature. She wrote one of the first serious studies of twentieth-century sculpture. Titled Modern Plastic Art (1937), the book stressed the central importance of Cubism for the development of modern art.
Giedion-Welcker earned her doctorate in 1922 after studying with the eminent German art historian Heinrich Wölfflin. She would go on to produce several important works on modern culture, including the first monograph on the Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi, a book on the painter Paul Klee, a study of the French poet Alfred Jarry, and an influential defense of James Joyce’s Ulysses.
Giedion-Welcker lived in Zurich with her husband, the architectural historian Sigfried Giedion. The couple were close friends with Hans Arp, Brancusi, Le Corbusier, Max Ernst, Joyce, and Kurt Schwitters. The majority of Giedion-Welcker’s personal collection was acquired directly from artists, frequently in the form of gifts. Early on, she embraced the work of European abstract painters, including Piet Mondrian, Theo van Doesburg, and Lászlo Moholy-Nagy. With those artists, Giedion-Welcker and her husband shared an interest in the architectural possibilities of abstraction, a concern that also linked them to Fernand Léger, whom the couple met at the fourth Congrès Internationale d’Architecture Moderne in 1933.— Trevor Stark
Of all the artists to pass through the Bauhaus, none lived the Bauhaus ideal of total integration of the arts into life like Herbert Bayer (1900 - 1985). He was a graphic designer, typographer, photographer, painter, environmental designer, sculptor and exhibition designer. He entered the Bauhaus in 1921 and was greatly influenced by Kandinsky, Moholy-Nagy and El Lissitzky. He left in 1923, but returned in 1925 to become a master in the school. During his tenure as a Bauhaus master he produced many designs that became standards of a Bauhaus "style." Bayer was instrumental in moving the Bauhaus to purely sans serif usage in all its work. In 1928 he left the Bauhaus to work in Berlin. He primarily worked as a designer and art director for the Dorland Agency, an international firm. During his years at Dorland a Bayer style was established. Bayer emigrated to the United States in 1938 and set up practice in New York. His US design included work for NW Ayers, consultant art director for J. Walter Thompson and design work for GE. [bayer_2019]