Teige, Karel, editor.

Doba: časopis pro kulturní, sociální i politický život [The times: a journal of cultural, social and political life]. Vol. I, no. 3.

Prague: Odeon, 1934–1935. Octavo (24.5 × 17 cm). Publisher's typographically designed self-wrappers; 34–47, [1] pp. (consecutive pagination). About very good. Item #P4931

Single issue of this Czech journal of art, literature, and social thought, allied with the Czechoslovak Surrealist Group. All covers, title pages, and typo were designed by Karel Teige. The journal was a bimonthly originally created to fill in for the temporarily halted publication of Tvorba. Though short-lived, Doba features first printings of much of Teige’s theoretical writings on surrealism, including his seminal essay “On Surrealism,” in which he argues that Czech surrealism organically evolved from Poetism, and had not been merely adopted from Western models. It is also here that Teige attempts to distance surrealism from spiritualism and insists that it be viewed in a more Freudian and scientific light. In analyzing Andre Breton’s works Communal Vessels, and its inclination toward scientific materialism, and Breton’s later work Nadya, Teige reveals his split with the French surrealist. In Surrealists in Czechoslovakia, Teige explains why he himself did not want to become a member of a surrealist group, but why he continued to work with them. In “An Introduction to Modern Painting,” Teige lays out his principles for understanding modern art in Freudian terms of individual complexes and through a synthesis of dialectic antitheses in which the viewer becomes the co-creator of a work of art. This issue with a reproduction of George Grosz' “Prosit, Noske, das Proletariat ist entwaffnet” and a short legend. Other contributions by Z. Kalanda, K. Teige, J. Krejčí, T. Garell, K. Čapek.

Scarce; KVK, OCLC show holdings at the French National Library, Harvard, Ohio, Northwestern, as well as two German libraries.

Price: €250.00

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