Oct 24, 2013 - Sale 2327

Sale 2327 - Lot 35

Price Realized: $ 3,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
(BORTNYIK, SÁNDOR.) 4 scrapbooks from the estate of Bortnyik. Folio, plain cloth portfolios filled with advertisements, cards, clipped designs, pamphlets, brochures, letterheads, envelopes and forms (personal and business) and more, both Bornyik's own designs and mainly items that influenced or interested him, tipped-in or mounted, in a number of different sizes. IO. [Budapest? circa 1920s-30s]

Additional Details

Not much background information is known about how the contents were collected but they are full of diverse and excellent examples of design of the era for businesses primarily in Hungary, Germany, and Austria.
Bortnyik was a major figure in the Hungarian Avant-Garde, was a contributor to Lajos Kassák's journal MA, went to Weimar and was active in the Bauhaus and Constructivists activities. Later, he was involved with the De Stijl and the Dutch and German art movements and was influenced by Avant-Garde theater artists such as van Doesburg and Oskar Schlemmer. He returned to Budapest in the late 1920s, opened his own artists workshop (where Victor Vasarely was among his students) and there became an active poster and advertising designer. In addition to this, he taught at and directed the Budapest Academy of Fine Arts. After the Second World War, Bortnyik taught at the Hungarian Academy of Applied Arts and was active as the chief editor of the journal Free Art.