Printed Matter \ Drukwerk : Hyphen Press, 1st Ed., 1996; Reprinted 1997 [Karel Martens]

Printed Matter \ Drukwerk by Karel Martens, 1st ed., 1996; reprinted 1997. Edited by Robin Kinross, Jaap van Triest and Karel Martens. Hyphen Press, London, UK. 6.75 x 9, pp. 144 plus flapped paperback illustrated covers. Design: Jaap van Triest with Karel Martens. Typesetting and page make-up: Jaap van Triest. This book was written and produced almost entirely within one desktop system in July and August 1996. Set in Monotype Grotesque 216 bold extended. English and Dutch text. 

From Hyphen Press: The first edition of Printed matter was published on the occasion of the award to Karel Martens of the Dr A.H. Heineken Prize for Art: it rapidly sold out and was reprinted. A second edition was published in 2001, with similar success. After that edition had gone out of print, copies became rare commodities. The third edition brought the survey of Martens’s work to 2010, and added an interview with him. We do not intend to reprint or make further editions of the book.

The work of Karel Martens occupies an intriguing place in the present European art-and-design landscape. Martens can be placed in the tradition of Dutch modernism – in the line of figures such as Piet Zwart, H.N. Werkman, Willem Sandberg. Yet he maintains some distance from the main developments of our time: from both the practices of routinized modernism and of the facile reactions against this. His work is both personal and experimental. At the same time, it is publicly answerable.

A good softcover with handling, light wear and soiling to the flapped pictorial wrappers and the original ISBN barcode label adhered to the back. The top of the front cover and first page is starting to pull from the binding and noticeable when opened. The last page has a large vertical wrinkle. Despite any of this, a still hard-to-find original edition offered at a reduced price.