42 original caricatures in vivid watercolor, ink, and pencil. 1933.
[Papp, Bilhei?]
Price: $10,000.00
Book Id: 25501
Description
FREE domestic or international shipping with direct order. **[Budapest?],1933. 42 brilliant caricatures on stiff white paper, rectos only, and interleaved with textured glassine protective sheets. Elegantly signed by the artist on the final blank, but the signature is hard to read and may be a pseudonym. Bound in a black cloth folder with faded green satin cord with tassels and beads. 29.5 x 21.2 cm. A few of the glassine sheets are creased, and one lacks a large corner. The subjects appear to be the staff of a financial firm, Penzintezet. Központ. The artist has captured near-photographic likenesses of the faces (all in left profile, the bodies in miniature). More importantly he has seized upon foibles and fantasies and quirks to turn a doubtless normal group of middle-class Hungarians—even a bit dull?—into a troupe of comic actors. Some names are written on the pages in a different, later hand in the spellings used here. Komár Béla likes his beer and bowling. Dr. Kéhuly Gzula is a pensive Caesar. A princess dangles male puppets before her. Her opposite is a monk holding Cupid at bay. Margit Laszlauer sits at a desk with dragons for arms and razors for the dragons' tongues. Other people are, variously, cold, late, gluttonous, stingy. One woman cuts stamps off envelopes, while another gaily glides down a slope with her table and typewriter mounted on the front of her skis. One can speculate that Jozsef Szemes, depicted as an architect or designer in the sympathetic last portrait, was honored by this tour de force—perhaps as a retirement gift. Of the artist, I have found nothing so far. He (?) gives every appearance of being professional but could be an extraordinarily talented amateur. The amusingly perceptive treatment of the subjects suggests that it either is an inside job or that the artist had a wonderful informant. This album is worthy of intense study followed by exhibition and publication.
