Place publication: Paris, New-York, Milano, Berlin Publisher: Edizione Italiana Dinamo Azari Cat. 034 - MM2 Exhibition 2017
Additional notes: The famous "Bolted Book". See item 2843 in this collection.
Housed in a green drop-back box: 265 x 342 x 58mm with the title on the spine. The box provides an indentation to house the bolts.
Rilegature Dinamo. Binding Dinamo.
Creazione Azari. Creation Azari.
From the bookseller's description:
118ff., printed on various paper stocks, of which some are coloured; most versos blank. Illustrated with 28 halftone plates in text, 2 in colour. Line-block illustrations and typographic designs throughout, many printed in red and black. Oblong 4to., 320 x 245mm, bound in flexible blue boards, printed in black and white, secured with massive metal bolts, as issued. Preserved in a new custom box.
One of the most striking books to come out of the futurist movement, most of whose publications were pamphlets or broadsides. Depero's famous "Futurist bolted book", from his own design, is an anthology of this theatrical and commercial designs from 1913 to 1927", one of the avant-garde masterpieces in the history of the book-object.
Depero Futurista exemplifies many of the Futurist innovations: witty typographical effects, the use of colored inks and decorated paper and the brilliant idea of dynamo binding, making the book seem like a machine (Jentsch - The Artist and the Book in twentieth Century Italy p. 177)
"[This] book Is Mechanical, bolted like a motor, Dangerous, can constitute a projectile weapon. Unclassifiable, cannot fit into a library with other volumes. And therefore it is in its exterior form Original, Invasive, and Assaulting, like Depero and his art" (from the preface to the work).
Stated limitation of 1000 numbered copies (never completed). A fine copy, with just the slightest bumping to the spince.
Designers & Books have just launched a website devoted to Fortunato Depero's 1927 masterpiece of book-making "Depero Futurista," also known as The Bolted Book: www.boltedbook.com. The site features every page spread of the book, including a page-by-page analysis of the content. We invite everyone to stop by and have a look at this fantastic new book arts resource.
See: p174. Type Tells Tales by Steven Heller and Gail Anderson.
Exhibition notes: ;Item 034 - MM2 on Booknesses: Artists' books from the Jack Ginsberg Collection.