first edition Hardcover
1932 · Berlin
by Blossfeldt, Karl
Berlin: Verlag für Kunstwissenschaft, 1932. First edition. Hardcover. g to vg. Folio. XIII, [3]pp (text), 120 loose plates, as issued. Original grey cloth portfolio, with red lettering on spine and front cover. "Wundergarten der Natur" is the follow-up volume to "Urformen der Kunst" (1928). Karl Blossfeldt was a university teacher and used his photographs to teach formal art studies at the Royal School of the Museum of Decorative Arts in Berlin. He photographed plants systematically with a 5 x 7" (13x18cm) view camera of his own construction. Immensely popular and profound in their simplicity, Blossfeldt's typology of plant forms drew parallels between nature and art. They were used as inspiration for jewelers, wrought iron workers, designers, craftsman, and artists worldwide. His vision is as fresh and unforgettable today as one could imagine it to be when this book was first published. As Martin Parr and Gerry Badger point out, while Blossfeldt's work was "a key model for the 'typologies' school of contemporary German photography...it was not a Conceptual work of art. It was, like so much German photography of this period, pedagogical in nature, as much founded on the Arts-and-Crafts ethos as Bauhaus principles." This portfolio is complete with its 120 striking photogravure plates, each numbered 1-120, together with 16 loose text leaves in German containing an essay by the photographer and a list of plates and titles. Some foxing along fore-edge and upper margin of portfolio. Text in German. Portfolio in overall good to good+, interior in very good condition.
(Inventory #: 39042)