Marcel Franciscono offers an exhaustive historical and critical study of Klee's artistic personality and thought. Drawing extensively on documentation published since 1940, Franciscono highlights the extraordinary range of artistic, literary, and philosophical speculation Klee brought to his work. The portrait that emerges is one of a great comic artist, an ironist whose most characteristic pictures pit beauty of form and color against the dubious nature of things, yet one whose satiric depictions of everyday life extend to the most rarified evocations of nature.
The 102 magnificently reproduced full-color posters in this book illustrate a little-known and individual body of graphic art, ranging from the richly decorative to the purely abstract, informed by art nouveau and symbolism, de Stijl and art deco, and expressing above all the vital connection between commerce and art. The book accompanies the first exhibition devoted exclusively to the modern Dutch poster, and Marcel Franciscono's text provides a detailed and fascinating history of these neglected works. He considers the posters chronologically within the history of the modern movement, pointing out artists and works of special distinction--including some of the major figures of art nouveau (Jan Toorop, Johan Thorn Prikker, R. N. Roland Holst), some of the artists associated with the de Stijl (Bart van der Leck and Piet Zwart), and Jan Sluyters, whose work is among the few fauve posters anywhere. Building on the relationship between text and image, Franciscono trances the changing styles of the posters and the qualities that distinguish them from those of other countries. Each poster is illustrated in color and fully documented, including, when known, the facts of the poster's commission, execution, and printing. The texts of the posters are printed in translation, and a special section provides brief biographies of the designers.- Back cover
