Gyula zilzer biography

Portfolio of 24 lithographs(including frontispiece), all signed and dated in the plate " 32"

23 lithographs are numbered I-XXIII (Frontispiece is No. 24, with smaller measurements of approximately 8 x 6 3/8 inches, laid down on a sheet measuring 12 1/2 x 9 1/2 inches)

Published by Edition Du Phare, Grande Librairie Universelle Paris 1932

Signed and numbered verso in ink by the artist "No. 10 G. Zizler"

Avant-Propos de Romain Rolland:

"Gyula Zilzer's portfolio, Gaz, depicts with satire, fantasy and realism preparation for future war in council chamber, laboratory and printing-plant, pictures whole armies in gas masks, whole city populations being destroyed. Romain Rolland, in the introduction to the volume, offers little comfort to peace-lovers. "Chemical warfare," he maintains, "will carry with it greater destruction than did the black plague of the fourteenth will consume certain forms of European civilization (and of American civilization as well), notably urban culture. . . .No way exists of escaping war. I believe human insanity irremediable. But this in no way exempts the handful of rational men from standing firm if not for safety at least for self-respect....I can reassure those who fear the end of the human race. The life of the beast is bound to its body. It has already been wasted a hundred times. It will survive this pestilence as it has survived others, but it will be subdued and once more driven back many centuries. This is its manner of progress. Its tenacity to live again counterbalances its frenzy to die." 

Condition:

This very rare portfolio, printed on pulp-like paper, has even toning throughout and losses on a number of the works, primarily in the outer extremeties of the paper. The central images themselves are all in good shape. The frontispiece is in poor condition. This is a complete portfolio and an important work in the social realist style depicting the atrocities of War.

Gyula Zilzer (Hungarian-American 1893-1969)

Gyula Zilzer studied at the Royal Academy of Arts in Budapest and at the Hans Hofmann School of Art in Munich in addition to the Royal Polytechnic University in Budapest and the Academie Colorossi in Paris. He came to the United States in 1932 and in 1935 exhibited his work at the Mello ...

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