Hereditas Antikvárium

Fair Partner ✔
11. Könyvárverés

(New York, 1935. Hermann Jaffe Press.). (2)+43 pair of leaves. Limited (published in 55 copies), luxury edition with 43 signed, original lithographs. 2 plates missing (4., 40).
Hugo Gellert was a communist graphic artist, cartoonist, muralist and painter. He was born in Hungary in 1892 and moved to the U.S. in 1906. He studied at the Cooper Union and the National Academy of Design in New York. Gellert aligned himself with the Communist Party in the 1920s and engaged in radical politics throughout his career. He favoured printmaking, illustration, and murals for their accessibility to the masses, creating works that centre on the tenets of Marxism and celebrate the labour class. He worked for various papers such as The New Yorker, The Liberator, and The New Masses. Probably his most famous works are the illustrations for Marx’s Capital and “Comrade Gulliver”. Gellert wrote in Gulliver’s Foreword: “My own adventures in the United States of America are even more fantastic than the experiences of my forefather. The extraordinary peculiarities of the country, the amazing behaviour of the people and the antics of the government are far more eccentric and unaccountable than anything Lemuel Gulliver recorded – despite his numerous voyages. Nevertheless, in this age of the telephone, the radio and the printing press, it can be easily ascertained, even by the most casually interested, that the contents of this work, the pictures and the words, unbelievable as they may seem, present the truth and nothing but the truth. Comrade Gulliver”.
Gellert is considered one of the most influential political artists of the first half of the 20th century. His works can be found in the most prominent museums, e.g. the British Museum in London and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Despite being a well-known and noted artist worldwide, we could find only one whole copy of the Comrade Gulliver in public collections in the Binghamton University Art Museum.
In modern cloth case.