SEFER AMOS: HA-KETAV, HA-ITUR ??? ????: ????, ?????

Alvail, Aryeh

Published by Tel-Aviv: Gutenberg, 1940

About this Item

1st edition. Original illustrated Cloth in dust jacket, 4to (large), [64] pages. Includes 34 full-page linocut illustrations, each one signed in pencil by the artist. Also signed and dated by the artist in pen on the title page. Calligraphic typeface, initials, double-sided dust jacket, and text illustrations, all in linocut, also by the artist. "sheloshim ve-arba'ah ha-tsiyurim me-et Aryeh Alv'ail." Text in Hebrew. Beautiful accordion-style (double page) binding. In our research, we have come across no other copies with signed linocuts, so this may represent a special sub-edition, given that Allweil bound all published copies of the book himself. Published in the midst of the Holocaust, the ancient themes in Amos of abuse of the marginalized are everpresent in Allweil s production. As Scott Ponemone notes, "In his autobiographical essay in the book Allweil (Arieh Allweil, Max Brod and I.M. Lask, Sinai Publishing, Tel Aviv, Israel, 1955), Allweil again used the quote The prophet spoke to all generations… that served as his motto. He then said: One of the writers advised me to quote these words as a motto in my illustrations to the book of Amos [this work]. This text I wrote with my personal lettering [i.e. his own Hebrew font], and opposite every written page I printed a Lino-cut. I similarly made three megillahs [scrolls, or more loosely translated, narratives]: Ruth, Esther and Lamentations. I put figures into our home, the people are our brothers, our parents and our children. I believe that what Allweil meant by the last sentence ( I put figures into our home,…) is that his linocuts would reflect not only the Old Testament days of the Prophet Amos but the agonies of the Holocaust that began in the 1930s. In his essay, he then quoted from the biblical text of Amos and then indicated how he used contemporary events to illustrate that text: Shall a trumpet be blown in the city. This is a siren for an air-raid. On the day when I finished the book Amos, the first Italian bombs fell; they fell on our house, and we were saved. Though they climb up to heaven, thence will I bring them down. This mean[s] aeroplanes. With threshing instruments of iron. I know what this means tanks."" Indeed, several of the full-page linocuts show modern soldiers, a tank, an airplane, and German-style grenades, in addition to general scenes of death, destruction, and public torture, interspersed with the biblical-era characters and settings. Ponemone also notes that for Amos, Allweil "printed, cut and bound the pages himself. This herculean effort, while notable, would not have been sufficient had his illustrations not exhibited tremendous energy and imagination. If his Amos had been an isolated accomplishment, Allweil would deserve lasting renown."Biographer and curator Galia Bar Or notes that Allweil (1901-1967) "made a distinctive contribution to Israeli art in two very different and contrasting fields: a new visual interpretation of biblical texts by means of black-and-white prints and calligraphy, in works that in a unique and topical way express his suppressed anguish at the horrors of the Holocaust period, and an original development of richly colorful and pictorial landscape painting…. The dialectical relations between these two orientations in Allweil s oeuvre, nightmare and utopia, hints its complex character….In 1939 Allweil established an independent publishing firm named Hillel [after his father], and in the course of the war years and the Holocaust he published books that he produced with his own hands, among them The Anonymous Jew, Lamentations, Amos and Esther. He hand-gouged the texts on linoleum, interspersed the illustrations with allusions to events of the period, printed the sheets, cut, folded and bound the books all by himself."Galia Gavish, the author of two books on Allweil writes that he "produced his illustrated books in a German expressionist style and in a Jewish spirit. Similarly to European artists, who use. Seller Inventory # 41540

Bibliographic Details

Title: SEFER AMOS: HA-KETAV, HA-ITUR ??? ????: ????...

Publisher: Tel-Aviv: Gutenberg

Publication Date: 1940

Binding: hardback

Dust Jacket Condition: Dust Jacket Included

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition