Avant-Garde Art 1914–1939 (Editions d’Art Albert Skira & Rizzoli, 1980) by Jean-Luc Daval is a comprehensive, richly illustrated survey of history and relevance of avant-garde art and architecture.
The period between the two World Wars was one of unprecedented ferment. An art explosion occurred all over Europe, not leastin Russia, and it had profound repercussions in the United States. The established masters (Matisse, Picasso, Bonnard, Chagall, Duchamp). Photography came into its own, especially in the United States (Stieglitz, Sheeler, Strand, Weston, Man Ray). The avant-garde cinema became a fruitful field of creative innovation (Léger, Man Ray, Duchamp, Dali). The theatre became experimental as never before (Moscow, Paris, Berlin).
A new sensibility found expression in abstract art (Suprematism and Constructivism in Russia, Mondrian and De Stijl movement in Holland), while the Expressionists carried out an unsparing critique of contemporary society (Beckmann, Grosz, Otto Dix and Schad in Germany, Rouault and Soutine in France). The anti-art revolt of Dada (in New York, Zurich, Berlin, Cologne and Paris) and the brililiant adepts of Surrealism (Max Ernst, Miró, Masson, Dali, Tanguy, Magritte) created a fascinating welter of forms rooted in the subconscious and denounced the incoherence and absurdity of a world again drifting towards war.
The great builders and designers, on the other hand, believed in the future and expressed their confidence in a long series of epoch-amking works (the Bauhaus, Gropius, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Frank Lloyd Wright).
– Jean-Luc Daval, Avant-Garde Art 1914–1939 (Editions d’Art Albert Skira & Rizzoli, 1980), text in the dust jacket flap
The text is in English.
Our copy in stock is in very good condition. The cardboard casing shows signs of exposure to light, but the actual book is in mint condition.
