Albert Skira

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Albert Skira (born August 10, 1904 in Geneva , † September 14, 1973 in Dully ) was a Swiss-French publisher . Skira published numerous elaborately designed art volumes and artist books . From 1933 to 1939 he founded and published the graphic and style-defining magazine Minotaure , which under André Breton became a key forum for the surrealist movement .

Live and act

Skira began his career as a bank clerk and as an entertainer in luxury hotels. In the mid-1920s he worked as a bookseller. In 1928 he founded his own publishing house, Editions d'Art Albert Skira, in Lausanne , specializing in art books. In 1931 he moved with his publishing house to Geneva, where he published volumes of poetry designed by contemporary artists, such as Ovid's Metamorphoses with illustrations by Pablo Picasso , poems by Stéphane Mallarmé with drawings by Henri Matisse or Lautréamont's Die Gesänge des Maldoror ( Les Chants de Maldoror ), designed by Salvador Dalí . Skira experimented with the possibilities of colored art prints , pushed to the limits of what was technically feasible and published limited editions of the highest quality.

A special friendship developed with the Frenchman Matisse. As early as 1930 Skira approached the Fauvist and asked him if he wanted to illustrate Mallarmé's poems. The artist's book was published in 1932 under the title Poésies .

Minotaure

In addition to his books, in 1933 he and the Greek Tériade devised the artist magazine Minotaure , which sought to combine the fine arts with the knowledge of science and was supposed to present works by renowned artists in an editorial context. To this end, he contacted the writer André Breton , who was currently looking for a new medium for his surrealist ideas.

Skira's magazine was expensive and lavishly designed and, thanks to the novel combination of text and images, had a previously unknown format for a magazine. The magazine showed original works: in addition to Dalí, Matisse, Picasso, artists from the surrealist environment such as Giorgio de Chirico , Max Ernst , Joan Miró , Diego Rivera and photographers such as Hans Bellmer and Man Ray also participated . André Breton meanwhile acted as editor-in-chief. Although Skira himself was a member of the communist party , he made it a condition of Breton, who also sympathized with communism , not to misuse the magazine for political ambitions. However, Breton did not stick to Skiras for long and expanded the magazine into a political forum against the backdrop of the Spanish Civil War , which was ultimately directed against the “publisher's” artists Dalí and Paul Éluard and led to their exclusion from the circle of Surrealists . Minotaure appeared thirteen times at irregular intervals by 1939. Skira discontinued the magazine with the outbreak of World War II . In 1941 Skira left occupied Paris and went back to Geneva.

Labyrinths , post-war, later years

In 1944 he founded the art newspaper Labyrinthe , Journal mensuel des Lettres et des Arts, a legitimate successor to Minotaure , which with the connotation of Surrealism now expanded the spectrum to include modern art in general. In 1946 Alberto Giacometti wrote the autobiographical text Le rêve, le sphinx et la mort de T. for the magazine.

In the post-war years, Skira continued to work successfully as a publisher, self-publishing numerous profound art books and still having selected works illustrated by well-known artists, such as Nourritures by Jean-Paul Sartre with illustrations by Wols (1949). Skira's name, however, is mostly associated in unison with the Minotaur and the artists of Surrealism, although his focus was also on other art movements: in 1943, for example, he published the complete works of the Swiss draftsman and novelist Rodolphe Töpffer , who is considered a forerunner of the comic . In addition, the Editions d'Art Albert Skira has published numerous art volumes and monographs from earlier eras and styles over the years.

Skira was married to Rosabianca Venturi. Her son is the painter Pierre Skira (* 1938).

The publisher Editions d'Art Albert Skira has its headquarters in Geneva today.

meaning

Albert Skira was perceived as an innovative publisher who broke with traditional reading habits and introduced unconventional new perspectives into his publications and thus became an advocate for subsequent fine-minded cultural publications and publisher pigons. With the book format des Quart, he introduced a previously unfamiliar type of art book and published the ten-volume series The Great Centuries of Painting, a profound collection of art history, ranging from the first paintings of the Stone Age to the modern age. He experimented - not without controversy - in the field of color reproduction , trying to reproduce ancient paintings in their original color quality. The unusual colors of his reproductions of old masters , however, aroused the displeasure of the critics, one spoke disrespectfully of "candy packs" and so Skira soon reduced the color saturation of his later art books to a more usual level.

Publications (selection)

  • 1932: Poésie's poems by Stéphane Mallarmé with illustrations by Henri Matisse
  • 1933: The Chants of Maldoror ( Les Chants de Maldoror ) with illustrations by Salvador Dalí
  • 1933-1939: Minotaure
  • 1944: Labyrinths: Journal Mensuel De Lettres Et Des Arts , No. 1–23, facsimile from Arno Press, ISBN 0-405-00705-1
  • 1943: Rodolphe Toepffer: Œuvres complètes.
  • 1948: Ceramiques de Picasso with texts by Suzanne and Georges Ramie
  • 1949: Nourritures by Jean-Paul Sartre with illustrations by Wols
  • 1950: History of Modern Painting
  • 1953: Gauguin
  • 1954: Rembrandt
  • 1955: Goya . The frescoes in San Antonio de la Florida in Madrid. Critical historical study
  • 1956: Dutch painting with texts by Jean Leymarie
  • 1957: Botticelli
  • 1957: Paris of the New Age Painting from Impressionism to 1950
  • 1958: Flemish painting from Hieronymus Bosch to Rubens - painting - color - history
  • 1959: Pieter Brueghel
  • 1961: Romantic painting
  • 1964: Kandinsky
  • 1966: Modern painting with texts by Maurice Raynal
  • 1971: Daumier drawings
  • 1972: Marc Chagall

literature

Web links

swell

  1. ^ Véronique Yersin: Minotaure, Albert Skira's Art Review (1933-1939). Ville de Genève, 2007, accessed June 6, 2008 .
  2. ^ Alfred Betschart: Sartre and Switzerland. August 4, 2007, accessed June 6, 2008 .
  3. ↑ Caroline Kesser: A permanent place for Giacometti. In: Neue Zürcher Zeitung. nextroom architecture database, June 1, 2002, accessed June 4, 2008 .
  4. ↑ Le Monde , December 10, 2009
  5. ↑ Werner Hellwig: Painting as a story of our soul - on Albert Skira's art books in: Die Zeit , August 2, 1956
personal data
SURNAME Skira, Albert
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss publisher
DATE OF BIRTH August 10, 1904
PLACE OF BIRTH Geneva
DATE OF DEATH September 14, 1973
Place of death Dully