Kopfe und Hinterkopfe [Heads and Numbskulls]

Zurich: Arche, 1967. First Edition. Association copy, playfully INSCRIBED by the author on the front endpaper: "Den professionellen Nichtschreibern / Hans." ("To the professional non-writer Ursiestan from the writer Hans.") Ursie, the recipient of the inscription (and here identified as a sort of portmanteau, "Ursiestan"), was Richter's daughter—whom he evidently hoped would write him more often. Text and titles in German.

With a note of provenance on the stationery of filmmaker Standish Lawder, Ursie's husband.

German-born artist Hans Richter enjoyed a long career as a painter, avant-gardist, political radical, and filmmaker, co-founding the Association of Revolutionary Artists in Zurich, and regularly contributing to the Dutch periodical De Stijl. After moving to the United States in 1940, Richter directed two feature films, "Dreams That Money Can Buy" (1947) and "8 x 8: A Chess Sonata in 8 Movements" (1957), made in collaboration with Max Ernst, Jean Cocteau, Hans Arp, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, and others. Richter has been dubbed the "father of abstract film," and is considered one of the foremost historians of the Dada movement and early experimental film.

"Kopfe und Hinterkopfe" was Richter's fourth book, and described the birth of the international avant-garde in 1920s Berlin.

Fine in an about Near Fine dust jacket. Jacket lightly worn to the corners, with a short closed tear on the left corner of the top edge of the front panel.

[Book #154893]