Angelus Novus: Über den Begriff der Geschichte. An Artist Book by Heribert Ottersbach

Poestenkill, NY: Kaldewey Press, 1993. Printed on handmade paper with artist's watermark; housed in plain slipcase with matching chemise. A fine copy. With only 6 OCLC records located in North America.. Artist's book. Folio. One of 50 copies bound in paperboard, after 10 deluxe copies in leather; SIGNED by Heribert Ottersbach to colophon. For the twentieth number in Gunnar Kaldewey's series of collaborative book-works with artists, the German painter Heribert Ottersbach was gifted the text of Thesis IX from Walter Benjamin's On the Concept of History, reflecting upon Paul Klee's enigmatic drawing Angelus Novus. "Where we see the appearance of a (truncated) chain of events, [the Angel] sees one single Catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before his feet." Over the course of his summer residency in rural Poestenkill, Ottersbach illustrated Benjamin's prose with an arresting series of metal-cut photographic collages and overlapping color woodcuts. (Inventory #: 29427)