10 Buchzeichen. by VOGENAUER, ERNST RUDOLF

Muenchen Pfingsten (Heinr. Graf), 1924.. (4)pp. (single sheet folding), set in letterpress with title, dedication, poem by Vogenauer, and table/colophon (signed in ink by Heinrich Graf); 10 original drypoint etchings by Vogenauer, all signed in full and numbered I/X in pencil and tipped onto Bütten paper mounts blindstamped with the printers initials; 1 additional trial proof of the first etching, annotated and initialled in pencil. Image size varies, from 55 x 48 mm. to 130 x 70 mm. (2 1/8 x 1 7/8 inches to 5 1/4 x 2 3/4 inches). Mount size: 263 x 197 mm. (10 3/8 x 7 3/4 inches). 4to. Publishers original portfolio (red boards, 1/4 vellum, with asymmetrical blue paper supralibros printed in black with title and artists name). Vorzugsausgabe: copy no. I of X deluxe copies, from the edition of 50 in all (of which 25 were sold). The Heinrich Stinnes copy, with his ownership inscription in ink, dated July 1924, on title and on the inside cover of the portfolio, and with his collectors mark in red at the lower left corner of the prints (as well as his discreet pencilled annotation at foot of the mounts). In his collectors note, Stinnes records that only these first ten copies were printed before the plates were steel-faced. This extremely rare portfolio was published by Ernst Rudolf Vogenauer (1897-1969) in the year of his participation in the Bucharest avant-garde exhibition Contimporanul, organized by the co-editors of the eponymous review, Marcel Janco and Max Hermann Maxy. Here Vogenauers work was shown together with the work of some fifteen other East- and West-European artists (Maxy was in charge of the West-), including Arp, Schwitters, Klee and Viking Eggeling, among others. As Jürgen Holstein and others have pointed out, Vogenauers drypoint etchings---proposed as an imaginary series of ex-libris designs for celebrated leftist political and cultural figures--are conceived in an ideologized Constructivist style reminiscent of the work of the Cologne Gruppe progressiver Kunst, and at the same time are marked by a graphic delicacy quite close to that of Paul Klee. The subjects of the prints are titled as follows: 1. An Lenin. 2. Klara Zetkin. 3. Toller. 4. Szemere. 5. Lebedour. 6. Guilbeaux. 7. Nexö. 8. Holst. 9. Whitehead. 10. Siegrist. This copy includes an extra trial proof of the first drypoint--which incorporates Lenins famous appeal, Workers of the World, Unite!--annotated in pencil in the margins mit diesem Papier nicht drucken and signed with initials. Particularly compelling is the massively geometrical typography, rather in the spirit of Paul Renner and the later Weimar Bauhaus (Moholy-Nagy), which sets off the spidery elegance of the drypoints with quite unusual effectiveness. Vogenauer had studied with F.H. Ehmcke in Munich, and worked at various small presses throughout his career, running afoul of the East German state after the War for his excessive formalism. Very fresh condition. OCLC records one copy only, at the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek.