Troughful of Pearls / Behold the Protong!!!

Sylmar, CA: Glenn Bray, 1980. First Edition of 1200, 100 of which were signed, numbered hardcovers (this is one of 1100 in softcover). Softcover [oblong quarto - 11 in x 12-1/4 in], yellow illustrated glossy wraps, bound tete-beche. Unpaginated [176 pp]. Laid in material includes a flexi record of Szukalski speaking, an advertisement for a signed Copernicus print, a publisher's sheet (double-sided) with bibliographic information and Ben Hecht autobriographical writings on the artist, and a bookmark of PROTONG vocabulary. Collated complete. SIGNED by Szukalski in year of publication. Very Good or better, mild edgewear including shallow creasing, toning, rubbing, with sound binding and all contents within bright and clean.. Signed First Trade Ediiton of the first published book of legendary sculptor and artist Stanislaw Szukalski's work since the 1920s, after his rediscovery in Burbank, CA by a small group of collectors and underground cartoonists including the publisher of this volume, Glenn Bray.

The first book, Troughful of Pearls, consists of reproductions of his life's body of work, largely bombed by the Nazis during their invasion of Poland, his National Museum in Warsaw turned to rubble.

The second volume consists of new work on Szukalski's "newly discovered science" of ZERMATISM, which draws heavily on many Pre-Colombian cultures such as Zimbabwean, Sumerian, etc.

Szukalski, an artist with more lives behind him at the time of this publication than most museums represent, remains a fascinating, influential, and controversial figure - recently the subject of the 2018 documentary "Struggle".

Original editions of this book, which began a grassroots rediscovery of the artist, are highly scarce, though it can be found in reprinted editions from 1988 and 2000. This copy signed on the seventh page of Troughful of Pearls by Szukalski in black ink and dated in year of publication (1980).