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Nesos

Item date(s): 1968

Walter Whall Battiss (1906-1982)

Size: 337 x 495mm (page size). 345mm, oblong.
Technique: Screenprint
Inscription: Signed and dated
Edition: #8/25

Category: Found

ART 0524

Additional notes:
Island: a compilation of images from sixteen Greek Islands.

Each plate inscribed with the title on a separate title page and signed in the margin. Seriqraphy printed in colours. 54 interleaved plates, each numbered, inscribed (apart from 1) and signed (apart from the text pages: 1, 2, 3, 12) by the artist.

Plates: 1. (unitled); 2 . Xenio; 3. Sappho; 4. Cicada; 5. Sappho; 6. Hydra; 7. Hydra; 8. Aegean; 9. Mykonos; 10.Sappho; 11. Crete; 12. The Nubile Girl; 13. The Nubile Girl; 14. An Empty Landscape; 15. Eros; 16. Cos; 17. Ilithyia Priapus; 18. Sport; 19. Flies; 20. Rain; 21. Female Cyclops; 22. Weeping Dancer; 23. Father and Son; 24. Dancers and Head of a Statue; 25. Warrior; 26. Sea; 27. Female; 28. Man pointing to a tree he planted when a boy; 29. White Dancer; 30. Boy in a Tree; 31. Girl and Bird; 32. Girl and Bird; 33. Greek Sea; 34. Acrobats; 35. Rhodes; 36. Marathon; 37. Boy with Birds; 38. Sons of Helios; 39. Wild Honey; 40. Cardimera, Cos; 41. Graffiti; 42. Water and Open Air; 43. Aegina; 44. Aerchaic Firstborn; 45. Lindus Cat, Rhodes; 46. Skiathos; 47. Girl Kicking a Black Stone; 48. Broken Statue; 49. Homo Ludens; 50. Delphi; 51. Nothing thinking of Nothing; 52. Phalli; 53. Legends [Missing Boeotian Girl - Theseus - Diana - Actaeon - Herakles - Wanted Cretan - Orestes - Clytemnestra]; 54. Under the Sea.

The title page is hand written by the artist in a decorative boarder: NESOS. Nesos is the Greek word for "island". The contents of this book are images from sixteen Greek islands that I know. All the serigraphs have been made by me and no printer has touched the pages. There are 25 numbered copies. This one is Number Eight. Walter Battiss. Athens 1968.

Extract from "The Re-invention of Spring" by Andrew Verster from Battiss edited by Karin Skawran & Michael Macnamara, Ad Donker, 1985 at page 176: Greece is the inspiration for Nesos. 'I wonder whether it is possible to make a book by hand?' he asked. 'I want to do itall, the printing, the pictures and the type.' H pioneered serigraphing here and made the book. We had several conversations on Salisbury Island about how it could be done, and about the quality of inks available and whether they would be permanent, when he came down as examiner. The book contains some remarkable images, but the fact of its making is more important than its content. There are 54 pages, some printed in two or three colours, and there are 25 numbered copies. It is, by an standard, a feat to have made it. 'No printer has touched the pages', he writes. This, of course, is what it is all about. To experience things for yourself as if you are the first to have tasted them: that [italic] is important. It may have been possible to obtain boxwood here in the forties for wood-engraving purposes. Maybe it was not. It did not matter to Battiss. He determined to find out whether it was possible to prepare a block himself. More important, to do it her at the very end of Africa.

Reference note:
See also: GB/30627 for an essay on Nesos by A. J. Werth.

Ref: GB/50003