VACHAL, Josef: CUKROVARSKY FAUST A JEHO MEFISTO, ANEB PISEN NEKONECNA. Tiskem M. Chocholky [around 1940]. Approximate size: 145 x 100 mm. Loose double sheet with 4 smaller wood engravings. Original cover with engraved title and 1 smaller wood engraving on back. Nearly intact. Collector's condition. - Language: Czech. Price: 16.000,- CZK Sold

Josef Vachal (September 23, 1884, Milavcice near Domazlice, Austria-Hungary - May 10, 1969, Studenany, Czechoslovakia) Czech painter, graphic artist, carver, typographer, writer, poet, ... ... In books, spontaneously developing from his earliest beginnings he found at the end of his first decade the ideal medium, which gave him the opportunity to integrate drawings, texts, graphics, paintings, photography, sculptures along with his communicativeness allowed Vachal's emphasis on the contents of his communication, his confrontation of thoughts and ideas and the interconnection between him and his work. His work on books as a form of art also brought problems, which had to be solved and so Vachal enters the world of typography, print, binding, paper. He made up a number of his own letterings, which have their history in the views of his books. He deals with the problem of print and manages to put his graphical views into books and at the same time twists books under his expressive sensitivity. The entire book has its meaning from the paper, sewing, leather binding, to the shape and size of the book along with the books "own" meaning in the classical frame of view, which Vachal manages to overcome in his conception... ... The work of Josef Vachal is visionary in complexity and shows the problems of his generation in such detail that it seems to be the most authentic value in Czech modern art. The other side of this gesture is the tension of expression in the collisions of various forms of work and the penetration of activities, the overlapping of ideas and artistic formulations. His being is expression along with revaluing and deforming old visions, typical for other members of the symbolist generation, which are led to changes in image structure. His primitive expression was from the beginning joined with internal strains, presented fully in paintings through ambivalent images, where visions are the same as caricature, ... ... The tendencies of expressively joining visions can be fully seen in Vachal's work through the size of his entire work and is noticeable in his multi field solutions, in the relation to materials, most deeply in books. The book becomes his object of complete artistic intention and the medium joining various means into a whole, thanks to which he leaps past contemporary comprehension of the beautiful book ideal with a completely new conception, ... .... Vachal's work that at it's beginning comes into contact with the struggle of the second generation of Czech graphic symbolism is also the conclusion of the secession revolt in expression and in pointing out exceeding certain limits, where language interpretation is hardly understandable and punishable from the position of classic comprehension of art. Thus the author gets into conflicts with society, but also with his own bases, when he does not care about the form of his expression or the means of expression, but only to become one with his work, ... In: Introduction Prof. PhDr. Milos Sejn. Josef Vachal. Dilo. Roudnice nad Labem, GVU, 1984.