Blaue Reiter Almanac: 2 (The Documents of 20th-century art)

The Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider)--art movement was founded in 1911 by the young painters Wassily Kandinsky and Franz Marc, and was active in Europe until 1914. Originally published in Munich in 1912 and edited by Kandinsky and Marc-- the movements's almanac presented their synthesis of international culture to the European avant-garde at large. In both the selection of essays and its innovative interplay of word and image, The Blaue Reiter Almanac remains one of our most critically important works of literature on the art theory and culture of the 20th century. This edition, long unavailable in English and indispensable to any student of modernism, simulates the original German format, and includes documents, and musical notations, as well as seminal essays by Kandinsky, Schoenberg, Marc, and others. Nearly 150 illustrations, from ancient and contemporary sources, capture the wide-ranging interests and passions that inspired Kandinsky's and Marc's programmatic attempt to make modernism accessible across national and chronological boundaries. Also included is Klaus Lankheit's extensive critical introduction, which places the Blaue Reiter in context for contemporary readers."The almanac remains unique among European writings on art; no other country produced a comparable work capturing the excitement and tension of the years before World War I." (Will Grohmann)