Albert Skira
Albert Skira ( born August 10, 1904 in Geneva, † 14 September 1973 in Dully ) was a Swiss- French publisher. Skira published numerous lavish art books and artist's books. He founded and moved from 1933 to 1939 the art graphic style- magazine Minotaur, which has become a leading forum of the Surrealist movement with André Breton.
Life and work
Skira began his career as a bank clerk and as an entertainer in luxury hotels. Mid-1920s, he worked as a bookseller. In 1928 he founded his own publishing house Editions d'Art Albert Skira, Lausanne, specializing in art books. In 1931 he moved with his publisher to Geneva, where he hung volumes of poetry, which were designed by contemporary artists, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses, with illustrations by Pablo Picasso, poems by Stéphane Mallarmé of drawings by Henri Matisse or Lautréamont's The Songs of Maldoror (Les Chants de Maldoror ), designed by Salvador Dalí. Skira experimented with the possibilities of colored fine art printing, this went to the limits of technical feasibility and published limited editions of the highest quality.
With the French Matisse a special friendship was born. As early as 1930 was Skira on the Fauves approached and asked him if he wanted to illustrate the poems of Mallarmé. The artist's book appeared in 1932 under the title Poésies.
Minotaur
Accompanying his books he invented in 1933 with the Greeks Tériade the artists' magazine Minotaur, which sought to unite the fine arts with the insights of science, and should present the work of renowned artist in an editorial context. To this end, he contacted the writer André Breton, who was just looking for a new media for his surrealist ideas.
Skiras magazine was designed costly and time-consuming and had by the novel combination of text and image a hitherto unknown guise for a magazine. The magazine showed original work: in addition to Dalí, Matisse, Picasso had artists from the surrealist environment such as Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Diego Rivera or photographers such as Hans Bellmer and Man Ray with. André Breton, meanwhile, acted as chief editor. Although Skira himself was a member of the Communist Party, he made it the also sympathized with communism Breton a condition not to abuse the magazine for political ambitions. However, Breton did not last long at Skiras available and built the magazine at the latest before the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War, a political forum that was directed ultimately against the " publisher's " artists Dalí and Paul Éluard, and led to their exclusion from the circle of the Surrealists. Minotaur appeared to 1939 thirteen times at irregular intervals. Skira discontinued the magazine with the outbreak of the Second World War. 1941 left Skira occupied Paris and went back to Geneva.
Mazes, Postwar, later years
In 1944 he founded the Art Newspaper mazes, Journal des Arts et des Lettres mensuel a legitimate successor of the Minotaur, the spectrum is now extended with the connotation of surrealism to modern art in general. 1946 Alberto Giacometti wrote the autobiographical text Le rêve, le sphinx et la mort de T. for the magazine.
In the postwar years Skira continued to successfully operate as a publisher, he published self-published numerous profound art books and let continue to select works of art by famous artists to illustrate, such as Nourritures of Jean -Paul Sartre, with illustrations by wolf (1949 ). Skiras name, however, is mostly unison brought to the Minotaur and the artists of surrealism in conjunction, although his attention was also paid other art forms: in 1943 he laid example, the complete works of Swiss artist and novelist Rodolphe Töpffer on, which is considered a precursor to the comics. Moreover, have appeared in the Editions d'Art Albert Skira over the years numerous art books and monographs of earlier eras and styles.
Skira was married to Rosa Bianca Venturi. Her son is the painter Pierre Skira (* 1938).
The publishing house Editions d'Art Albert Skira has today its headquarters in Geneva.
Importance
Albert Skira was perceived as an innovative publisher who broke with traditional reading habits and unconventional new perspectives introduced in its publications and thus became an advocate for subsequent fine intellectual culture publications and Verlegerepigonen. He led with the book format of a quart a hitherto unfamiliar type of art book and published the ten-volume series The Great centuries of painting a profound collection of art history, which leads from the first paintings of the Stone Age to the modern day. He experimented - not without controversy - in the range of color reproduction, trying antique paintings reproduced in their original color value. However, the unusual colors of his reproductions of old masters aroused the ire of critics, one spoke disparagingly of "Sweet packs " and so Skira reduced the color saturation of his later art books once again on a gewohnteres measure.