first edition Stapled wrappers
by Alberto Avanzati
Self-published. Stapled wrappers. Very Good +. A wonderful, very inventive handmade artist's book, circa 1955. Created by the Italian architect Alberto Avanzati, who visited the United Sates in the early '50s and, in the tradition of European intellectuals such as de Tocqueville, Le Corbusier and Humbert Humbert, soon hit the road to tour the country. Along with his love of the open road, Avanzati shared another interest with at least one of his predecessors -- a fascination with the true American phenomenon of the roadside motel. Avanzati documented his trip and the motels he visited in this handmade book with ink and waterecolor plans and sketches of motels on the East and West coasts. His interest was not in the decor or how convenient the ice machine was but rather in the relationship between the motel and the car. Featured are: "Tourinns" (Allentown, PA); Rickey's of Palo Alto; Capitol Inn (Sacramento); The Guest Ranch (Tucson); The Tucson Biltmore; Gaffney's Lake Wilderness Lodge ((Maple Valley, WA); Whitehall Hotel (Daytona Beach); and the Neutra-designed Holiday House of Malibu. In the last few leaves Avanzati has included some printed material showing Italian student projects for motels. A solid, well-preserved copy of a fragile artist's book. Clean and VG in its stapled red wrappers, with mounted collages and hand-drawn titling to the front panel. A bit of light offsetting at the fore-edges, one small closed tear along the lower front hinge. Oblong quarto, lovely tipped-in, hand-done sketches --with their accompanying typed, pasted-on captions-- along each recto. Probabvly one-of-a-kind and very impressive.
(Inventory #: 21939)