Michail Grobman, листы ["Leaves"], artist's book. Tel-Aviv: Leviathan group, 1984. Signed and dated a second time (on back cover): 2014. Russian, Hebrew and English.
An artist's book by Michail Grobman, comprising a variety of leaves, leaflets and documents, gathered and bound by hand in a fine paper cover illustrated by Grobman. Title page illustration by Grobman.
The book includes Grobman's resume and exhibition list, leaves with color photographs of Grobman's prints (published by jonathan a editions, Tel-Aviv), photographs (from a catalog) of the works "Angel of Death", "Shin" and more, photographs of works by other artists, the manifestos "Leviathan Manifesto no. 1" and "Leviathan Manifesto no. 2", a woodcut by Mordechai Gumpel, and some personal documents: bank receipts, envelopes, various invitations and more.
Michail Grobman (b. 1939), a Russian-Israeli artist and poet, born in Moscow; a prominent artist of the Second Russian Avant-Garde in the USSR. He immigrated to Israel in 1971 and in 1975 founded the Leviathan group with fellow artists Avraham Ofek and Shmuel Ackerman. The group's style combined contemporary art with Judaism, symbolism and metaphysics. In the Leviathan manifesto published in 1976, Grobman formulated the purpose of the group: "an initial attempt to create an all-inclusive national style… our political basis – Zionism. Our spiritual basis – Jewish mysticism. Three foundations define our artistic position: 1. Primitivism; 2. Symbol; 3. Letter".
58 pp., 30 cm. Good condition. Small tears to edges of cover.