MODERNE PLASTIK
Elemente der Wirklichkeit Masse und Auflockerung
C. Giedion-Welcker
Herbert Bayer [Designer/Typographer]
[Elements of Reality, Volume and Disintegration]. Zürich: Dr. H. Girsberger, 1937. First Edition. Text in German. Quarto. Tan cloth covered flexible boards stamped in black. Photo illustrated dust jacket. 166 pp. 109 black and white plates. Jacket worn and chipped along front spine juncture, edges worn and front panel scratched. Textblock clean and unmarked, so a very good copy in a nearly very good dust jacket.
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. Exceptional study of Constructivist tendencies in sculpture and one of the better snapshots of plastic arts of the Interwar years. Herbert Bayer designed the typofoto dust jacket utilizing a photo by Brancusi.
- 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
Herbert Bayer (Austria, 1900 – 1985) is one of the individuals most closely identified with the famous Bauhaus program in Weimar, Germany. Together with Walter Gropius, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Wassily Kandinsky, Bayer helped shape a philosophy of functional design that extended across disciplines ranging from architecture to typography and graphic design. Endowed with enormous talent and energy, Bayer went on to produce an impressive body of work, including freelance graphics commissions, Modernist exhibition design, corporate identity programs, and architecture and environmental design.
He was born in Haag, Austria, and apprenticed in a local architectural design and graphic arts studio. By 1920 he was in Germany and a year later enrolled in a recently established, state-funded school of design called the Bauhaus. Then located in Weimar, the Bauhaus came to represent an almost utopian ideal that "modern art and architecture must be responsive to the needs and influence of the modern industrial world and that good designs must pass the test of both aesthetic standards and sound engineering."
Though Bayer came to the Bauhaus as a student, he stayed on to become one of its most prominent faculty members. His design for a new Sans-serif type called Universal helped to define the Bauhaus aesthetic.
He left in 1928 and moved to Berlin where he opened a graphic design firm whose clients included the trend-setting magazine Vogue. During this period, he also created or art-directed a number of memorable exhibitions. As with other designers of his generation, Bayer became alarmed over the increasingly repressive political situation in Germany and finally left in 1938 for New York. Within a short period of time, he was well-established as a designer and, among other achievements, had organized a comprehensive exhibition at MoMA on the early Bauhaus years. He also formed important connections with the publishers of Life and Fortune magazines, General Electric, and Container Corporation of America. CCA's chief executive, Walter Paepcke, became an important patron of Bayer's in the years to come, beginning with an invitation to move to Aspen, Colorado, to become a design consultant for the company. Bayer also supervised the architectural design of the new Aspen Institute, and then many of its program graphics. Bayer remained in Aspen until 1974, when he moved to California. There he worked on various environmental projects until his death in 1985.