Lot Essay
Including: Wassily Kandinsky, The Archer (Roethel 79); and Franz Marc, Fabeltier (Lankheit 826)
Reinhard Piper secured the financial support from the Berlin-based collector Bernhard Koehler in 1912 to publish Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc's seminal almanac Der Blaue Reiter. The artists and publisher originally planned the almanac as a yearly publication chronicling the development of Expressionist art forms; however, the present 1912 volume was the only almanac to be realized (there was a second printing in 1914). According to Kandinsky and Marc, the goal of all art is to express spiritual values and emotional states not apparent in nature or the material world. The scope of the almanac was not limited to visual art and includes music, drama, children's drawings, and art of medieval and non-western cultures. The almanac is comprised of essays on art theory by Kandinsky, Marc, and Auguste Macke, musical scores by Schönberg, Berg, and Von Webern, and reproductions of work by other avant-garde contemporaries. The standard edition of 1200 copies was bound in paper, while the present work is part of the deluxe edition of 50 copies bound in leather that includes original color woodcuts by Marc and Kandinsky. Several records also call for a museum edition of 10 bound in blue leather and including an original drawing on paper; however, none of this purported museum edition has ever been located and was possibly never issued.
Reinhard Piper secured the financial support from the Berlin-based collector Bernhard Koehler in 1912 to publish Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc's seminal almanac Der Blaue Reiter. The artists and publisher originally planned the almanac as a yearly publication chronicling the development of Expressionist art forms; however, the present 1912 volume was the only almanac to be realized (there was a second printing in 1914). According to Kandinsky and Marc, the goal of all art is to express spiritual values and emotional states not apparent in nature or the material world. The scope of the almanac was not limited to visual art and includes music, drama, children's drawings, and art of medieval and non-western cultures. The almanac is comprised of essays on art theory by Kandinsky, Marc, and Auguste Macke, musical scores by Schönberg, Berg, and Von Webern, and reproductions of work by other avant-garde contemporaries. The standard edition of 1200 copies was bound in paper, while the present work is part of the deluxe edition of 50 copies bound in leather that includes original color woodcuts by Marc and Kandinsky. Several records also call for a museum edition of 10 bound in blue leather and including an original drawing on paper; however, none of this purported museum edition has ever been located and was possibly never issued.