Lot 49: NEZVAL, V¡tezslav (1900-1958), Karel TEIGE (1900-1951, typographer), Milca MAYEROVA (choreographer) and Karel PASPA (photographer). Abeceda. Prague: J. Otto, 1926.

4o (299 x 230mm). 25 full-page half-tone typo-photographic montage illustrations after Teige. (Title slightly marked, minor ink marks on p.4, short marginal tears on last 2 leaves.) Original brown and cream printed wrappers over stapled gatherings, the upper wrapper with a design after Teige (wrappers lightly marked and creased, a few short tears on lower wrapper, one neatly repaired, spine chipped). Provenance : Ladislav Srbov (presentation inscription on title, 'Pani Ladislav Srbov, Vitezslav, 15.XII.30' ['For Mr Ladislav Srbov Vitezslav 15.XII.30']). FIRST EDITION, ONE OF 2,000 COPIES. INSCRIBED PRESENTATION COPY OF A SEMINAL AVANT-GARDE WORK. Nezval's poem Abeceda was written in 1922, and assigns a four- or two-line stanza to each letter of the alphabet (including one 'double-letter' stanza on J and Q). The text was staged as a performance composed of choreographic compositions by the dancer Milca Mayerov . These physical articulations of the stanzas were photographed by Paspa, and Teige, in turn, used Paspa's images as the basis of his typo-photographic montages which illustrate the poem. 'Perhaps the most elaborate and ambitious Poetist project [ Abeceda ] was a unique synthesis of literature, dance, theater, graphic design, typography, and photography. Poetry was expressed both as choreography and typography. A letter of the alphabet was simultaneously presented as a poem, a graphic sign, and a human being. Teige used the term ''Typofoto'', which had been invented by the Hungarian artist Lazslo Moholy-Nagy for graphic techniques that combined typography and photography, to explain the work: ''I tried to create a Typofoto of purely abstract and poetic nature, setting into graphic poetry what Nezval set into verbal poetry in his verse, both being poems evoking the magic signs of the alphabet''. In Abeceda, the ''high'' art of poetry joined the ''low'' arts of the cabaret, the dance hall, and the cheap illustrated journal. Rejecting the traditional fine arts, the Poetists insisted that no creative expression remained elite. They challenged class distinctions with a new art form they declared could be equally embraced by a professor or a street cleaner, both of whom were in need of a life transformed by Poetism' ('Dreams and Disillusion: Karel Teige and the Czech Avant-Garde', exhibition 2000-2001, The Wolfsonian Florida International University, online catalogue: Only two copies of Abeceda are recorded at auction since 1975 by ABPC ; neither were presentation copies.