Pedagogical Sketch Book

New York: The Nierendorf Gallery. Fair. 1944. First American Edition. Hardcover. (paper-covered boards; no dust jacket) [both covers still attached, but otherwise in pretty rough shape, with the spine completely gone, some exposure of the boards at the corners, and numerous pencil notations throughout the text (erasable with a little diligence); basically a reference copy]. (line drawings, diagrams) This book, "first published under the title Paedagogisches Skizzenbuch in 1925 as the second of the fourteen Bauhaus books, edited by Walter Gropius and L. Moholy-Nagy," was the first (and only) book-length exegesis of the Swiss-born German artist's artistic principles published during his lifetime. Originally issued several years after he had begun teaching at the Bauhaus in 1921, it was subtitled (in this English translation, anyway) as part of the "Basic Plan for Part of the Theoretical Instruction at the State Bauhaus in Weimar," and is divided into four sections: (I) Line, Structure, Movement; (II) Dimensions; (III) Earth, Water, Air; (IIII) Symbols of Movement. (Yes, IIII -- apparently the Bauhaus aesthetic did not embrace the proper use of Roman numerals.) This edition was issued four years after Klee's death, in connection with a group exhibition at the Nierendorf Gallery that also included works by Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian. (Fun fact: the translator of this edition -- whose name was probably "Americanized" for this publication from its actual, possibly-too-Germanic-for-wartime "Pietzsch" -- was the second wife of Klee's Bauhaus colleague László Moholy-Nagy.) .