Herbert List - Die Monographie (BIG SIZE MONOGRAPH) - 2000

PLEASE ENJOY the ONE-SELLER-AUCTION by 5Uhr30.com (Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany) -
with INTERNATIONAL PHOTOBOOKS from my PRIVATE COLLECTION and from RECENT ACQUISITATIONS.

IMPORTANT BIG MONOGRAPH by Herbert List (1903-1975)- with more than 400 (!) pictures.

HERE IN THE ORIGINAL BIG SIZE EDITION (not to mix with the much more smaller format version of the same title, published much more later)

Published on the occasion of the big retrospective exhibitions of Herbert List in Munich, Barcelona, Paris, Cologne, Hamburg, Montreal, Chicago, Florence.
With foreword by Bruce Weber.

FRESH CONDITION.

This is a lot by 5Uhr30.com (Ecki Heuser, Cologne, Germany).
5Uhr30.com guarantees detailed and accurate descriptions, 100% protection,
100% insurance and combined shipping worldwide.

Schirmer and Mosel, Munich. 2000. First edition, first printing.

Paperback. 270 x 310 mm. 328 pages. 420 photos in black and white. Photos: Herbert List. Edited by Max Scheler, Matthias Harder. Foreword: Bruce Weber. Text: Herbert List. Günter Metken, Ulrich Pohlmann, Edmund White, Wilfried Wiegand. Text in German.

Condition:
Book inside excellent, fresh and flawless; clean with no marks and with no foxing. Book outside very fresh with little trace of use; crease on the front (what easily happens) and marginal crease at the spine (what happens from opening the book). Overall fine, better and fresher than usual condition.

Excellent, big Herbert List publication - a must-have for every fan of his work.
Original vintage catalogue book from 2000.

"Herbert List was a classically educated artist who combined a love of photography with a fascination for surrealism and classicism.
Born into a prosperous Hamburg merchant family, List began an apprenticeship at a Heidelberg coffee dealer in 1921 while studying literature and art history at Heidelberg University. During travels for the coffee business between 1924-28, the young List began to take photographs, almost without any pretensions to art.
In 1930, though, his artistic leanings and connections to the European avant-garde brought him together with the photographer Andreas Feininger, who introduced his new friend to the Rolleiflex, a more sophisticated camera that allowed a deliberate composition of images. Under the dual influence of the surrealist movement on the one hand, and of Bauhaus artists on the other, List photographed still life and his friends, developing his style. He has described his images as “composed visions where [my] arrangements try to capture the magical essence inhabiting and animating the world of appearances.”
After leaving Germany in 1936 for political and personal reasons, he turned his hobby into a profession. Working in Paris and London, he met George Hoyningen-Huene, who referred him to “Harper’s Bazaar.” Dissatisfied with the challenges of fashion photography, List instead focused on composing still lifes in his studio. The images produced there would later be compared to the paintings of Max Ernst and Giorgio de Chirico, and paved the way for List’s role as the most prominent photographer of the Fotografia Metafisica style.
Greece became List’s primary interest from 1937 to 1939. After his first visit to the antique temples, sculptures and landscapes, his first solo show opened in Paris in the summer of 1937. Publications in Life, Photographie, Verve and Harper’s Bazaar followed, and List began work on his first book, Licht Ueber Hellas, which wasn’t published until 1953.
Working in Athens, List hoped to escape the war but was forced by invading troops to return to Germany in 1941. Because of his Jewish background, he was forbidden to publish or work officially in Germany. Several works, stored in a hotel in Paris, have been lost.
Portraits of Berard, Cocteau, Honegger and Picasso during a short visit to Paris and a series on the Panoptikum in Vienna had characterized List’s main work before the war ended in 1945. In 1946, he photographed the ruins of post-war Munich and took the job of art editor of Heute, an American magazine for the German public.
In 1951, List met Robert Capa, who convinced him to work as a contributor to Magnum, but he rarely accepted assignments. He turned his interest towards Italy from 1950 to 1961, photographing everything from street scenes to contemplative photo-essays, from architectural views to portraits of international artists living in Italy.
In 1953, he discovered the 35mm camera and the telephoto lens. His work became more spontaneous and was influenced by his Magnum colleague Henri Cartier-Bresson and the Italian Neo-Realism film movement.
Over the next few years, he completed several books, including Rom, Caribia, Nigeria and Napoli, this one in collaboration with Vittorio de Sica.
In the final decade of his life, List’s interest in photography was finally fading out. He followed some publications for his 70th birthday with interest but declined offers for retrospectives of his work. From then on, he focused all his attention to his collection of Old Master drawings.
By the time he died in Munich in 1975, his photographs had been almost forgotten. Interest has revived recently, though, thanks to a fine monograph published by Schirmer Mosel and many exhibitions. His work is represented in the greatest collection of photography, from the MOMA NY to the V&A in London, The Getty Museum in LA to the Pompidou Center in Paris."
(Magnum website)