Graphic Arts Exhibition at The New York Public Library Sheds Light on Aesthetic and Social Ideals of Early 20th-Century Eastern Europe

Related Programs, Films, and Book Planned to Complement First Show of Kind at Library

Cover of Grafika [Graphics], vol. 1, no. 1, designed by Tadeusz Gronowski. Warsaw, 1930. The New York Public Library, Slavic and Baltic Division.

The radical early 20th-century experiments in modern art and design of east-central and eastern Europe are explored in the exhibition Graphic Modernism from the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910-1935, opening October 5, 2007 at The New York Public Library's Humanities and Social Sciences Library. The progressive writers and visual artists of this region relied on abstract compositions based on geometric forms to convey both aesthetic and social ideas. Their work represents a revolutionary attempt to create a new visual vocabulary appropriate for a modern era. The interplay between post-World War I national revivals and the broader European modernist artistic and literary movements of the early 20th century is evident in the approximately 60 works on paper, primarily printed materials (books, book jackets, periodicals, posters, and printed ephemera) in more than a dozen languages of eastern Europe. Drawn from eight departments and collections at The New York Public Library, this exhibition of eastern European modernism is the first of its kind organized by the Library, and many of the individual books and artifacts from the historic foundation collections of the Library are on display for the first time. Graphic Modernism will be on view through January 27, 2008 in the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Admission is free. To complement the exhibition, there will be a free series of public programs at the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, a free series of films at the Donnell Library Center, and a notable companion volume, Graphic Modernism from the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910-1935, published by The New York Public Library (see separate release). For further exhibition and program information, telephone 212.869.8089 or visit www.nypl.org/ .

Artists and writers in this large and diverse region, ranging from Tallinn in Estonia to Ljubljana in Slovenia, and from the Eastern European community in Berlin to Bucharest in Romania, collaborated to forge a new, universal language through which to communicate to both local and international audiences new ideas of social order and aesthetic ideals. Although they concentrated on the sweeping changes in their individual localities, these artists were influenced by the artistic activity abroad, especially in France and Germany. In the first quarter of the twentieth century, these writers and artists were discovering new ways to redefine and reshape modern culture. A featured artist or artists whose vision and oeuvre dominated a given region will anchor each of the five exhibition cases in the Wachenheim Gallery: El Lissitzky from both Germany and Russia; Karel Teige from Czechoslovakia and August Zamoyski from Poland; Sirak Skitnik from Bulgaria and France Kralj from Slovenia; Lajos Kassák from Hungary and Victor Brauner from Romania; and Niklavs Strunke from Latvia and Jaan Vahtra from Estonia.

Section 1 - Germany: International Cultural Crossroads

Thousands of east-central Europeans immigrated to Weimar Germany following World War I to find refuge from the political and social upheaval in their own homelands. In Berlin, 300,000 Russians spent some time living and working. To address this large and politically diverse audience, El Lissitzky, Natan Altman, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Ilya Ehrenburg carried out avant-garde experiments to present new systems of seeing and reading. Their integration of abstract forms, radical typographical layout, and photography can be seen in books and periodicals in this section. In 1923, a Russian-language publisher in Berlin printed the book Dlia golosa [For the voice] on which Lissitzky collaborated with the Russian radical poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. The page layouts, original typography, and imaginative illustrations demonstrate the new vision of these artists. One of the pages on display features an enormous capital T in red dissecting the word INTERNATIONAL, written on the diagonal in Cyrillic.

Section 2 - New Nations: Poland and Czechoslovakia

At the conclusion of World War I and after many years of being subsumed by large neighboring empires, Poland and Czechoslovakia became independent nations, and both were multi-ethnic. In these countries, artists and writers were challenged to create a unifying national self-image. The new vocabularies of Expressionism, Constructivism, and Surrealism gave them a way to promote their visions of political, social, and aesthetic development. Karel Teige of Czechoslovakia, a writer, artist, amateur architect, and critic, argued for an aesthetics of revolutionary commitment. Inspired by developments in modern technology and industrial civilization, he created works that combined functionality and lyricism as can be seen in a page from Konstantin Biebl's S lodí jez dovází caj a kávu [Serving tea and coffee aboard ship], designed by Teige in Constructivist style with geometric shapes and intersecting lines.

Section 3 - Modernism in the Southern Balkans

The diverse nations of Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, and Slovenia, each with its own language, religion, and traditions, were united by their artists' and writers' belief in modern design. These artists used native folklore, national symbolism, and international Constructivism to further a future of social integration and cultural freedom. In Bulgaria, artists developed a creative blend of figuration and abstraction, which can be seen in the cover design by artist Sirak Skitnik for Teodor Traianov's Bulgarski baladi [Bulgarian ballads], featuring elongated shapes of nuns with heads bowed, the stark figures contrasting with the rich pattern of abstract striations that border the scene.

Section 4 - Progressive Forces in Hungary and Romania

Although both Hungary and Romania emerged from World War I with conservative royalist governments opposed to radicalism, each nation had a youthful cadre of progressive artists and authors. Through journals, book design, advertising, and manifestoes, these idealistic writers and artists created a revolutionary language, content, and educational philosophy. Lajos Kassák, a poet, short story writer, artist, and designer, believed that "the poet and artist should stand in the tempest" of current events and was censured by both rightist and leftist regimes. Drawing at first on Expressionist models in Berlin, he later turned to Constructivism. He consistently championed the most progressive idioms, primarily geometric abstraction, which he practiced in photography, posters, and collage. For the cover of the book 35 vers [35 poems], designed with Árpád Szépál, Kassák used bold, diagonal red numerals and sans-serif characters with a pensive photographic image of himself.

Section 5 - Modernism in the Baltic

The Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania relied on their progressive artists and writers to bolster their newly won independence and affirm their national character. The Latvian artist Niklavs Strunke employed both abstract and figurative elements for the cover to Rudolfs Akers book of politicized poetry Dur cert sit [Stab, cut, hit], which describes the horrors of war in Expressionist verse and concludes with optimistic stanzas celebrating the newly independent Latvian nation.

Provenance

The New York Public Library is internationally renowned for the scope and depth of its holdings and rare materials in the realm of this exhibition: its Slavic and East European Collections. The artifacts for the exhibition have been drawn primarily from the Humanities and Social Sciences Library's Slavic and Baltic Division, with additional materials from The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs; the Spencer Collection; the George Arents Collection; the Dorot Jewish Division; and the General Research Division. The exhibition's ambient sound program draws from recordings in the Rodgers & Hammerstein Archives of Recorded Sound, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts.

Graphic Modernism from the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910-1935 is co-curated by Steven Mansbach and Wojciech Jan Siemaszkiewicz. Steven Mansbach is Professor of the History of Twentieth-century Art at the University of Maryland at College Park. His specific area of scholarly publication is the modern art of central and eastern Europe from the Baltic north to the Adriatic south. Wojciech Jan Siemaszkiewicz is a librarian in the Slavic and Baltic Division of The New York Public Library, a specialist in its West Slavic collections, and principal cataloger of the division.  

Graphic Modernism from the Baltic to the Balkans, 1910-1935 is on view from October 5, 2007 through January 27, 2008 in the Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III Gallery, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street. Exhibition hours are: Monday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.; Tuesday and Wednesday from 11 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.; and Sunday from 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. The library is closed on public holidays and will also be closed on November 5, November 11, November 12, December 9, and December 10. Admission is free. For exhibition information, telephone 212.593.7730 or visit the Library's website at www.nypl.org.

About the Slavic and Baltic Division
The Slavic and Baltic Division is the locus for the Library's single largest concentration of Slavic and Baltic vernacular language monographic and serial materials, with approximately 500,000 volumes. The Reference Room (Rm. 217) collection, comprising many rare small print-run titles and encyclopedias, is a unique "gateway" to collections in the West, as well as in eastern and central Europe and the former Soviet Union. The division has the largest and most wide-ranging collection of early Slavic imprints in the United States, including two illuminated manuscripts dating from the 14th century, and one of only two cataloged Cyrillic incunabula in the country. The collection of manuscripts, books, and ephemera from the period before 1860 is one of the finest in North America. The division also has one of the world's premier collections of resources for the study of the Baltic and Slavic emigrations to North America and Europe between 1918 and 1950 generally, with particularly rich holdings relating to New York metropolitan area settlements, including nationally significant collections relating to the Russian, Polish, Belarusian, and Latvian communities. Thousands of original photographs, illustrated and plate books, including many from the personal and palace libraries of the Russian Imperial family, are among the treasures of this division. In addition, the division has an outstanding collection of books designed by artists of the East European Futurist and Constructivist movements, some of whom actually visited the library and donated copies.

About the Humanities and Social Sciences Library
Housed in the magnificent Beaux-Arts landmark building on Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street, the Humanities and Social Sciences Library is renowned for collecting, preserving and making freely accessible to the public an astounding range of documents charting human history and cultural expression. Counted among its literary treasures, for example, are the first Gutenberg Bible to come to the New World; Shakespeare's first folio; a copy of the first printed book in America, the so-called Bay Psalm Book; the manuscripts of George Washington's Farewell Address; and Thomas Jefferson's handwritten copy of the Declaration of Independence.

About The New York Public Library
The New York Public Library was created in 1895 with the consolidation of the private libraries of John Jacob Astor and James Lenox with the Samuel Jones Tilden Trust. The Library provides free and open access to its physical and electronic collections and information, as well as to its services. It comprises four research centers - the Humanities and Social Sciences Library; The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts; the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; and the Science, Industry and Business Library - and 87 Branch Libraries in Manhattan, Staten Island, and the Bronx. Research and circulating collections combined total more than 50 million items. In addition, each year the Library presents thousands of exhibitions and public programs, which include classes in technology, literacy, and English as a second language. The New York Public Library serves over 16 million patrons who come through its doors annually and another 25 million users internationally, who access collections and services through its website, www.nypl.org .

Support for this exhibition has been provided by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Latvia, The Orentreich Family Foundation, the Estate of Alexander Raydon, the Consulate General of the Republic of Poland, and the Consulate General of the Republic of Slovenia. Additional in-kind support has been provided by Moët Hennessy USA and Krug Champagne.

Support for The New York Public Library's Exhibitions Program has been provided by Celeste Bartos, Mahnaz I. and Adam Bartos, Jonathan Altman, and Sue and Edgar Wachenheim III.

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Contact :             Rima Corben at 212.592.7700 or rcorben@nypl.org

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