Bookvica

[CZECH MODERNISM] Sharzhi [i.e. Caricatures]

Hoffmeister, A.

Item #2725

Moscow: Krokodil, 1935. [8] pp., 19 ills. 31,5x21 cm. In original illustrated wrappers and protective case with title pasted down on a red label. Label missing a piece at the edge. Folder with a tear along the spine. Otherwise good.

Edited by Mikhail Koltsov, design by L. Kublanovsky.

The collection includes satirical drawings created by Adolf Hoffmeister (1902–1973). Beyond his role in Czech intellectual circles, Hoffmeister was a self-taught artist known for many satirical portraits of contemporaries.

Hoffmeister’s creative career unfolded in Paris among the modernists in the 1920s and 1930s. He was closely acquainted with Man Ray, Jean Cocteau, Samuel Beckett, Salvador Dalí, James Joyce, and others. His first solo exhibition of caricatures was held in Paris in 1928 and made him famous. His drawings are considered a historical document of the 1920s and 30s. The artist was associated with surrealism and participated in exhibitions alongside Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Alberto Giacometti, Paul Klee, and others. His caricatures became important milestones for the genre. Politically, he was a fervent supporter of socialist construction in the USSR. A. Hoffmeister visited the Soviet Union more than twenty times, witnessing firsthand the country's economic leap during the first five-year plan. In 1933, he founded a satirical magazine in Prague aimed at combating fascism. This book features 19 caricatures of European and Soviet writers, artists, journalists, scientists, and political figures. Among those portrayed are Edvard Beneš, James Joyce, Vítězslav Nezval, Karel Čapek, George Bernard Shaw, Gilbert Keith Chesterton, André Gide, André Breton, Louis Aragon, Maxim Gorky, Otto Schmidt, Nikolai Tikhonov, Isaac Babel, Ilya Ehrenburg, Karl Radek, and others. Several of the Soviet people featured in these pages soon fell victim to the purges, branded “enemies of the people”. This automatically placed a ban on the distribution of their images. The editor Mikhail Koltsov was also executed. Following this, Hoffmeister’s work was banned in the USSR until the Khrushchev Thaw.

Worldcat shows copies located in LoC, California Irvine and Florida International Universities, MoMA and NYPL.

Price: $2,500.00