Heinrich Kley: two new Lost Art Books cover his life, color illustrations

Lost Art of Heinrich Kley

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: September 25, 2012
Contact: Joe Procopio, joseph.procopio@lostartbooks.com

Renowned artist Heinrich Kley's life and work celebrated in new two-volume set
Lost Art Books publishes first U.S. collection of German master's work in 50 years

SILVER SPRING, MARYLAND--Picture This Press, a publishing house devoted to the graphic arts, has released two volumes on German cartoonist and illustrator Heinrich Kley as part of its ongoing series, Lost Art Books. Although Kley has long been considered one of the world's great draftsman and a noted influence on Walt Disney's films, these are the first books of his work to appear in the United States in 50 years and are by far the most comprehensive overview to date, including a large number of his seldom-seen color works.

"There'll be a lot of excitement throughout the world once these books are available to the throng," said artist Michael Wm. Kaluta, who also contributed the foreword to Volume One.

The Lost Art of Heinrich Kley Volumes One & Two collect over 450 drawings and paintings from a wide array of sources. Neither volume significantly overlaps with past books on Kley, as nearly none of these drawings have been collected and reprinted since their original publication a century or more ago. Both volumes also provide groundbreaking scholarship on Kley's life and work by German art historian Alexander Kunkel--whose recent research is presented in these volumes for the first time in English--along with incisive appreciations by contemporary artists Michael Wm. Kaluta and Jesse Hamm.

Volume One focuses on Kley's ink drawings and reprints for the first time a substantial selection of his illustration work for children's books and adult genre fiction, a side of Kley's career previously unexplored in other collections. This volume also includes a wide sampling of Kley's cartoons and magazine work, with newly collected examples taken directly from a variety of rare sources, such as Jugend, Simplicissimus, and the historic Der Orchideengarten (the world's first fantasy fiction magazine). In all, over 300 Kley illustrations and cartoons fill this first volume.

Volume Two also breaks new ground by being the first book to present a large number of Kley's paintings and preparatory drawings, some reproduced directly from the original art. These color works reveal a heretofore rarely glimpsed side to Kley's talents and expand on the subject matter traditionally associated with the artist by including examples of his landscapes and industrial paintings. This volume's preparatory drawings are culled from the untapped Kley archive of the Library of Congress and show the artist working out concepts for book illustrations, reworking ink drawings into color paintings, and doodling for his own amusement. Approximately 150 drawings, many in color, appear in this volume.

Both of these volumes represent an important advancement to the English-language scholarship on Heinrich Kley, and the abundance of art within should delight his admirers, new and old alike.

Copies can be ordered exclusively from the publisher at www.LostArtBooks.com.

About
Picture This Press is dedicated to broadening the appreciation and awareness of artists who work in the fields of illustration, cartooning, graphic arts, photography, and poster design. Picture This Press founder Joseph Procopio and co-publisher Ellen Levy have a combined 40 years of publishing experience as writers, managing editors, and publications directors for a variety of organizations in the New York City and Washington, D.C. areas.

Lost Art Books, the flagship series from Picture This Press, collects and preserves the works of illustrators and cartoonists from the first half of the 20th century. Too many of these artists have gone underappreciated for too long, with much of their work uncollected or unexamined for decades, if at all. The Lost Art Books series aims to preserve this cultural heritage by re-introducing these artists to new generations of working illustrators, historians, and admirers of things beautiful.

Links
Home page: http://www.lostartbooks.com/
Facebook group: http://tiny.cc/2uw2i
Interview in the Washington City Paper: http://tiny.cc/47nl4

Kley video book trailer on YouTube: http://youtu.be/-DPdI1F5MoM

Cover images: (.jpg) (for larger cover images, email your request or go to URL below, right click on image, and select 'copy')

The Lost Art Heinrich Kley -- Volume 1: Drawings. (larger image available at http://tinyurl.com/ck4h5xn)
224pages, black & white, perfect bound, ISBN: 978-098292765-6

The Lost Art of Heinrich Kley -- Volume 2: Paintings & Sketches. (larger image available at http://tinyurl.com/cneuvcn)
148 pages, color, perfect bound, ISBN: 978-098292767-0