Sketch...book

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Sketch...book

Artist Warja Honegger Lavater Swiss, 1913-2007

Publisher Basilius Presse, Basel, 1968; co-editor for USA, Wittenborn and Company, New York

Printer Gebr. Fretz AG, Zurich

Author Warja Honegger Lavater Swiss, 1913-2007

Date1968

DimensionsBook: H: 8 1/4 in. (209 mm); W: 9 1/8 in. (232 mm); Depth: 11/16 in. (17 mm).
Page: H: 8 in. (203 mm); W: 9 in. (228 mm).

MediumOriginal prints: lithographs in black with orange on white wove paper. Text: photolithography (cover).

ClassificationBooks

Credit LineGift of Molly and Walter Bareiss

Object number

1984.576

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Works on Paper

Label Text“…it is the sign—a thing between word and picture—that transmits the information, making it independent of language and enabling it to communicate either the playful or the earnest message. I should like, quite simply, to let my signs speak.” (Warja Honegger-Lavater, 1962) Warja Honegger-Lavater was born in Switzerland and began her career as a painter, illustrator, and art director for a Swiss youth magazine. Her work took a different route in 1960 after seeing Chinese painted texts in a New York bookstore. These inspired her to present pictographic stories in long strips. This idea evolved into her “Folded Stories” or “imageries”. These are accordion-folded books that open out into a continuous narrative of images. She developed a symbolic language, through which she could “see writing turned back into drawing, and drawing into writing.” She often used fairy tales, fables, and legends. Her simplified symbols allow the viewer to recreate the story according to his or her own memory, language, and experience. “Instead of human figures,” she explained in 1962, “I employed points and lines. I soon found that they are much more flexible… They do not merely copy—they create.”