Barcelona: Graficos Alfa, 1934. Quarto (28 x 22 cm). Original two-color illustrated side-stapled wrappers; unpagined (approximately 23 leaves, most printed recto only). Toning and slight warping to wrappers, minor soiling, abrasions and minor chipping along spine, small loss to lower right corner of front corner, creasing along right side of volume, images bright and clear throughout.

This volume dating to the Spanish Civil War comprises a single-page introduction by Jean Cassou, a brief two-page introduction to the Republican movement in Spain, and a series of 20 bold and graphic black-and-white woodcut illustrations by Helios Gómez, each image captioned in Catalan, the images depicting agricultural workers, families, armed civilians, protests, and some violent imagery of civilians being tortured or killed.

Helios Gómez was an important Spanish graphic artist, painter, revolutionary, anarchist-communist, and poet. His politically charged avant-garde black-and-white works were highly appreciated early in his career, prior to his exile from Spain in 1926 for his political views and activity. He returned to Spain in 1930 and was subsequently arrested multiple times for his involvement in and affiliation with Republican politics as both an artist and a politician. He was finally imprisoned in Barcelona for sedition in 1948 and was held until 1954. In 2005, the images from this volume were the subject of a brief exhibition at the Museum de Granollers in Barcelona.

Extremely scarce; as of August 2023, OCLC locates only two holdings of this work in a North American institution.

Book ID: 52994

Price: $4,500.00