Art books collection, unknown designer (Spain, 1919)

This book belongs to the series called Monografías de Arte Estrella (Estrella –Star- Art Monographics), a collection of Art books first published by Tipografía Artística (C/ Cervantes, 28, Madrid) in 1919. This book in particular is focused on the Spanish painter Eduardo Rosales, one of the most important ones in 19th Century Spain.

The collections consisted of at least 9 volumes published between 1919 and 1923, and all of them are monographics on Spanish artists: the painters Juan Pantoja de la Cruz (1553-1608), Eduardo Rosales (1936-1863), Santiago Rusiñol (1961-1931), Ramón Casas (1886-1932), Joaquín Sorolla (1863-1923), Fernando Álvarez de Sotomayor (1875-1960), Federico Beltrán Masses (1885-1949) and the sculptors Enrique Casanovas (1882-1948) and José Clará (1878-1958). The first book appeared in 1919 and then two new volume were published every year.

Of course, the jacket is wonderful, displaying different motifs on both the cover and the back, but once you open the book you can see the title page is different for each painter, and it always shows a basket and flowers motif. I love the Art Deco look of the book, even if the original cover design comes from 1919 (but now we all know that Arte Déco didn’t started in 1925…).

The edition is a good one. The paper the book is published in is excellent, more suitable for artistic printing than mere books. One can feel that this was no ordinary printing… My guess is that they were made using an older printing technique, something to give the books that arty thing. And finally, the pictures with the artist’s works were first printed on a good quality papel using fotogravure, and then glued on its page, where a simpe frame and the name of the work were already printed.

We’ve got other books and as find I am able to find them I’ll do an extra post displaying the different designs for the different title pages.