[CUTTING EDGE JOURNAL OF BOOK CULTURE – ABSTRACT ART AND CONCRETE POETRY] Knižní kultura: měsíčnik pro knižní tvorbu, ediční činnost a otázky knižního trhu [Book culture: a monthly for books arts, editorial activity and questions of the book trade]. Vol. I, nos. 1–12 (1964) and vol. II, nos. 1–12 (1965). All published.
Prague: Československé ústředí knižní kultury v nakl. Orbis, 1964–1965. Small quartos (30 × 21 cm and 26 × 20 cm). Original staple-stitched pictorial wrappers; ca. 33–48 pp. per issue (consecutive pagination). Numerous illustrations, some in color. Summaries in Russian, English, French, and German. A few issues with minor wear to wrappers; overall very good. Item #53071
Complete run in twenty-four issues of this short-lived, but significant journal of book culture. Published by the patronage of the Ministry of Culture, it contained a curious combination of information about book publishing, editing, printing, literature, and the arts, but was in fact a way of devoting considerable attention to artistic and literary phenomena not otherwise covered in Czechoslovak official publications at the time. Individual issues were typically devoted to a single artist or illustrator, such as Albín Brunovský, Oldřich Hlavsa, Ota Janeček, Stanislav Kolíbal, Zdenek Seydl, Zdeněk Sklenář, Josef Šíma, Jaroslav Šváb, Jan Zrzavý, as well as Willi Baumeister, Marc Chagall, and Pablo Picasso. Crucial was the journal's lengthy focus on Karel Teige as a graphic designer (in issue 3, 1964). The editors were also interested in the relationship between literature and the visual art, and the journal's literary editor was a leading figure of Czechoslovak concrete poety, Josef Hiršal, later assisted by Jiří Kolář in the final issues.
The journal was clearly similar to another important cultural periodical of the time, Tvář: kulturní měsíčnik (The face: a cultural monthly), which also resisted the Communist party line in its exploration of aesthetically diverse and politically controversial topics, and was forced to shut down at the same time. In 1966, the Czechoslovak Center of Book Culture replaced the present journal with the more straightforwardly marxist literary journal "Impuls."
Overall graphic design by J. Kotík (1964) and M. Fulín (1965). Published with a print run of 3000 copies.
See the entry in the Dictionary of Czech Literature After 1945 (Slovník české literatury po roce 1945, online, authored by Blahoslav Dokoupil).
As of October 2024, KVK, OCLC show a handful of holdings in North America, though most appear to consist of only a few issues, and in some cases only a single issue.
Price: €1,500.00