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Calab Rare Books

Gaston Burssens

Gaston Burssens

Piano.  32 pp.  Illustrated with linocut lettering in different colours on each page.  Square 8vo., 255 × 195 mm, loose in the original printed wrappers preserved within the original slipcase.  Mechelen: Holemans, 1924. 

One of 225 copies.  An exceptionally fine copy of this classic example of Dutch avant-garde bookmaking. 

 ‘One of the most interesting examples of experimental lettering can be found in Piano (1924) by the Belgian poet Gaston Burssens (1896-1965), in which each page is designated by a different word overprinting the text in different colors and type styles.  In his linocuts Burssens imitated stencil lettering, and evoked the Cubist idiom by tilting the letters onto different planes.’ (Andel, p 95).

Rare in this condition and institutionally.  OCLC finds just 5 copies in the US; Yale, The Getty, NYPL, The Wolfsonian and Art Institute of Chicago. 

 PROVENANCE: Paul Destribats (1926-2017) sold at Christies July 2019.

 The Avant-Garde Applied, n. L384.  Andel, Avant-Garde Page Design, p 95.

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