Kassák - Bildarchitektur 1923/1966

Lajos Kassák - Image Architecture

In the auction there is a very rare and excellently preserved linocut by Lajos Kassák from the Panderma folder edition by Carl Laszlo. The single linocut (originally 10 linocuts) is on paper (30 cm x 29.3 cm) and signed below the motif with the artist's stamp. The edition appeared with 100 or 150 copies (GA 120 Ex.) in the Panderma Verlag Carl Laszlo, Basel. The numbering was on the original folder, which is no longer present. This is depicted here exemplarily as an example, but not part of the auction. The linocut was acquired by the seller from the estate of Carl Laszlo. Further individual sheets from the folder are offered in parallel.

It was never framed. There are age-appropriate minor edge defects and occasional light impressions as storage traces on the print, which is over 50 years old.

The motif dates from 1924 and was reissued in 1966 in the only edition signed by Kassák with an “artist's stamp.” It appeared shortly before his death (in Budapest 1967). Currently, two sheets from the folder (including this work) were exhibited at the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. A complete folder is housed in the Kassák Museum in Budapest.

With the support of Vasarely, exhibitions took place in 1960 and 1963 at Galerie René Denise in Paris. Vasarely introduced Kassák there to the art enthusiast and publisher Carl Laszlo, who, with initially illegally smuggled signatures on stickers, published the first folder with 10 linocuts in Switzerland in 1964 in a edition of 100, because the Hungarian socialist government did not permit production. In 1965 the folder appeared once more with a color screen print. And a year before Kassák’s death Laszlo issued the last folder with 10 linocuts, from which the sheet offered in the auction originates.

Kassák signed here for the first time with his artist’s stamp, which presumably happened due to age. Thus these linocuts are actually the last and only (!) sheets of an edition Kassák signed with a stamp. They are regarded as an equivalent signature to his handwritten signatures. This fact is very important for valuation, because after his death the stamp was no longer used.

BIOGRAPHIES
Lajos Kassák (21 March 1887 - 22 July 1967) was a Hungarian poet, writer, painter, typographer, sculptor, essayist, editor, theorist of the avant-garde and occasional translator.
He is regarded as the “primus inter pares” (Carl Laszlo 1966) of major art movements of European modernism (Constructivism, Futurism, Bauhaus, De Stijl, Abstraction-Création).

Carl Laszlo/Edition Panderma: Carl Laszlo (Hungarian László Károly; 16 July 1923 in Pécs; died 8 November 2013 in Basel) was a Hungarian-Swiss art dealer, collector, psychoanalyst and author. He is regarded as one of the most important collectors, connoisseurs and promoters of modern (especially Hungarian) art after 1945.

SOURCES
Kassák Werkverzeichnis Magyar Nemzeti Galéria/Budapest
Kassák Múzeum Budapest,
home is where my art is – a visit to Carl Laszlo and the (Hungarian) avant-garde (Ferenc Kréti 2025),
Hungarian avant-garde, Galerie Kunze, among others