1291 - Uecker, G.

Uecker, G. GRAPHEIN. Edited by Dorothea van der Koelen, Mainz, and Eduoard Weiss, Paris. Weiss, Paris. 2002. 70 x 50 cm. Includes 12 signed and numbered original embossed prints by Uecker. 32 leaves (2 of which are blank) featuring examples of scripts from various periods and cultures. Printed on white Eskulan handmade paper. Loose in a half-leather binding with a tiny brown spot; another copy has wood fibers in the paper. One of 120 copies (GA 140), signed and numbered by the artist in the colophon. - Van der Koelen, Uecker, Opus Liber, L 0203. - Typographic design by Hans Peter Willberg and with a foreword by Christoph Brockhaus. - In Greek, “graphein” means not only “to write,” but also “to paint” and “to draw.” For this work, Uecker created 12 embossed prints and juxtaposed them with the oldest scripts in human history. The focus here is on the visual manifestations of written characters as carriers of culture, not on their semantic meaning. “It is a picture-format, portfolio-style book featuring carefully selected scripts with particularly distinctive calligraphic qualities from many cultures around the world, ranging from cuneiform and hieroglyphs to our own alphabet [...] Letterpress and fine art printing complement each other perfectly in this portfolio-style work; they form a dynamic whole” (Brockhaus). — The copy offered here is fresh off the press.