Sims Reed Rare Books×

Kleiner Schmetterling. (Small Butterfly)

Gojowczyk, Hubertus

(Düsseldorf). 1970
An early book object / multiple by Hubertus Gojowczyk.

From the edition limited to 10 copies, each signed, dated and numbered by Gojowczyk in black ink.

To create his book object, Gojowcyk has removed pages 85 - 110 from volume III of William Neumann's 'Die Componisten der Neueren Zeit' (Cassel, Ernst Balde, 1856) - the text may or very well may not be of significance - which he has cut into the shape of a butterfly (hence Gojowczyk's title) with outspread wings (the work is signed on the left-hand wing and dated on the right-hand wing), the leaves pasted to a card backing (the work is numbered on this backing) and secured by a screw through the thorax of the insect to the wooden base below.

Hubertus Gojowczyk (born 1943) completed his studies in Düsseldorf (where this work was likely produced) at the Kunstakademie after time at university in Koblenz. At the Kunstakademie Gojowczyk worked with Josef Beuys, Rolf Sackenheim and Dieter Roth; it was Roth, another major book artist, who had a profound effect on Gojowczyk, inspiring his subsequent oeuvre. Since 1968 Gojowczyk has created more than 900 book objects or works that take as their starting point the form or content of a book. The work presented here, a sculptural object constructed from the shaped pages of a nineteenth-century book, represents an early endeavour by Gojowczyk. Gojowczyk exhibited at Documenta 5 and Documenta 6 and the place of printing of Gojowczyk's chosen text, Cassel (or as today, Kassel) suggests a possible link.
(110 x 160 x 120 mm). Book object / multiple using pages excised from a book cut into the shape of a butterfly and mounted via a screw to a wooden base.
#46338