Karel Teige was a major figure in the Czech avant-garde; a writer, designer, typographer and collagist.
He was a member of
Devětsil and later joined the Prague Surrealist group with
Toyen and
Jindrich Styrsky.
Here are some of his
Book Covers of the 1920- and 1930's and 1926 he made
ABECEDA with each letter posed by the dancer Milca Mayerová.
Here is a
video reconstruction of the dance moves.
Teige died in 1951 of a heart attack, said to be a result of a ferocious Soviet press campaign against him as a 'Trotskyite degenerate,' his papers were destroyed by the secret police, and his published work was suppressed for decades.
The
Central European Review has some articles on his work.
posted by adamvasco
on May 9, 2012 -
5 comments
MOMA has around 400 images from its collection of illustrated books available online. It's heavy on the works of the early 20th Century European avant-garde, especially the Russian Futurists, though it extends into the present day. Here are a few of the images that I liked:
Aleksei Krucenykh and Kirill Zdanevich,
Vladimir Mayakovsky,
Filippo Tommaso Marinetti,
Olga Rozanova,
Ekaterina Turova,
El Lissitzky,
Max Ernst,
Raymond Pettibon,
Vasily Kandinsky and
Natalia Goncharova.
[more inside]
posted by Kattullus
on Dec 13, 2007 -
11 comments
Kiki de Montparnasse aka
Alice Ernestine Prin was a French country girl down on her luck in early 20th century Paris. She would however become a great muse of the avant-garde art scene of the
Années Folles, posing for and befriending the likes of
Chaim Soutine,
Moise Kisling,
Amedeo Modigliani,
Utrillo,
Foujita,
Calder,
Per Krogh,
Pascin, and, most famously,
Man Ray, with whom he entertained a steady (if not particularly monogamous) relationship before
Lee Miller. During their tumultuous eight-year romance, Kiki was the model for several of his
most famous works (with some
Surrealist art films thrown in for good measure).
She also competed with
Jean Cocteau for the affections of sailors in Southern France, was a good friend of
Tristan Tzara and received letters of support of
Aragon and
Desnos when she was jailed for public disorder.
A life of excess that ultimately led to her early death in destitution in 1953 also provided stuff for
several biographies (the latest one, appropriately enough, a graphic novel), as well as a
Hemingway-prefaced
autobiography which was banned for obscenity in the US until the '70s, and the odd
art exhibition...
posted by Skeptic
on Mar 30, 2007 -
14 comments
