Art Now by Herbert Read (1933 first edition)

In July 1933 Herbert Read with Faber and Faber published  the major manifesto of European Modern Art, Art Now - An Introduction to the Theory of Modern Painting and Sculpture.
 
Set in ‘modern’ Gill Sans type, it deals with the Psychology of Art, the significance of Primitive Art and the break-up of the Academic Tradition.
 
Art Now describes Symbolism and the significance of Cézanne and Matisse before going on to devote a whole chapter to the German Expressionist School, another to the theory of Abstract Form, before finishing off with Picasso, Surrealism and the art of Paul Klee.
 
This reare book features among its monochrome illustrations work by Matisse, Picasso, Braque and Léger, Ernst and Masson and a large selection of German and Belgian Expressionists long before these artists became the worldwide estblshed artists that they would become post-WWII.
 
But most importantly – and here we recognise the Herbert Read known to later generations – it included illustrations of work by Henry Moore, Ben Nicholson and Barbara Hepworth as well as William Roberts, Wyndham Lewis, Roy Le Maistre and an early Francis Bacon. It thus integrated British modernist artists of that moment with their European confrères.
 
20.0 x 13.5cms, 128pp + 64 b/w illusts
 
Good condition, with some foxing to first pages, original cloth cover, no dust jacket.