Tihanyi peintures 1908-1922

Paris: Editions Ars, 1936 Quarto 28.5 x23 cm., wrappers, 8 (iv) 23 plates, total edition of 415 plus the additional original lithograph (Self-Portrait, 1923) as called for issued in the first 115 copies. Lajos Tihanyi (1885-1938), one of the most important Hungarian modernist painters, was a deaf mute from a childhood illness. Despite his handicap and largely self-taught, he was recognized quite early on as a formidable talent and played an important role in the modernist (Nagybánya, Nyolcák) and avant-garde (Aktivizmus) movements up to his departure from Hungary in 1919. Living in Paris from 1922 he developed into nonobjective abstraction and was part of the Abstraction-creation group. At the same time he continued executing expressionist portraits of a wide international circle of friends and associates. These included Gyula Halász (Brassai), Ivan Goll, George Antheil, Hungarian émigrés and surrealist poet Robert Desnos who authored this book. Desnos gave the valedictory at Tihanyi's funeral, accompanied by Count Mihály Károlyi. This copy is warmly inscribed by Tihanyi to the Swiss painter Hans Schiess, and the self portrait lithograph is also included with his personal dedication. This copy very good; litho has light foxing.