East European Ex Libris

Getting borrowed books back has been a problem since the beginning of the written word. The Egyptians used to label their valuable papyri with enamel tablets to keep them from going astray, and medieval owners of priceless vellum manuscripts made sure to mark them with their names and heraldic crests. With the advent of the printing press and the mass circulation of books, worried bibliophiles turned to artists to make special name tags in multiple copies to paste in the front of their treasured possessions in print.

The first known book plates or ex libris --a Latin phrase meaning “from the library of”--are woodcuts from the 15th Century, displaying the owner’s name and coat of arms. Down through the ages, ex libris makers came up with ever more artful and imaginative designs for their clients’ home libraries, inspiring a mania for collecting book plates, lasting from the final quarter of the 19th Century until the 1920s. Ex libris are once again in demand, eagerly sought by specialized collectors. Many plates are now produced as signed and numbered small format fine art prints, known as "free" ex libris, never to be glued on to book covers.

Erotica seems to be the subject of choice for contemporary ex libris makers, but to my great surprise sacred subjects occasionally turn up on book plates, coming out of the former Soviet Bloc countries. Ukrainian artists like David Bekker and Sergey Kirnitskiy produce small format prints, evoking the works of the Old Masters. Ex libris rendered in less conventional ways from Czechia are Juri Salamoun's satiric Golgotha and Golgotha II and Jan Kavan’s the Crucified Christ with branches like a Tree of Life. In Slovak Artist Leo Bednarik's visionary print, We Have a Pope a Christ-like figure explodes out of the dome of St. Peter's Basilica in the Vatican.

Many of the small format prints in the gallery were made as Christmas cards with the calendar year and the letters PF, shorthand for the French phrase,pour feliciter (to congratulate), used as a holiday greeting in parts of Eastern Europe. The Christmas images on these prints ranges from traditional portraits of the Madonna and Child to whimsical interpretations like Czech Artist Jiri Bouda's color lithograph of the Three Wise Men traveling by boat across Lake Como in Italy and the historically rustic Bohemian manger scene from his fellow Czech Printmaker Karel Oberthor.

Czech graphic artists have long excelled in this arcane art form with over thirty book plate makers in my listings. The two most senior ex libris artists in my collection are both Czechs born in the 1880s in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, active in the independent Czechoslovakia of the interwar period. Jan Konupek was steeped in turn of the 19th century Symbolism and Surrealism, creating curiously mystical and mundane prints like his 1939 book plate of Christ working at a printing press and casting a fishing line. A school teacher from Moravia, Antonin Kamenik worked on a series of ex libris with religious motifs in the 1940s for a single book plate collector, including two thorn-crowned, reversed image portraits of Christ in the gallery.

More Czech artists to be found in the Collection are Gena Alexandrov, Alena Antonova, Karel Benes, Borivoj Borovsky, Frantisek Burant, Nadezda Cancikova, Vojtech Cinybulk, Antonin Dolezal, Milan Entler, Michael Florian,Pavel Hlavaty, Ludmila Jandova, Ludmila Jirincova, Vlastimir Kacirek, Bohuslav Knobloch, Emil Kotrba, Karel Musil,  Zuzana Oberthorova, Antonin Odenhal, Raimund Ondracek, Ladislav Rusek, Rea Simlikova, Vladimir Suchanek, Emilie Tomanova, and Josef Weiser.

Ex libris makers from other parts of Eastern Europe include Ivan Rusachek, Roman Sustov, and Yuri Yakovenko from Belarus; Robert Baramov, Julian Jordanov, Jeni Katelieva,  Pencho Koulekov, Jan Krejci, Petr Lazarov, Hristo Naidenov, and Nikolai Yanakiev from Bulgaria;  Antal Fery, Hermina Horvath and Andrea Vertel from Hungary; Natalija Cernetsova and Alexey Yupatov from Latvia; Andrzej Buchaniec, Henryk Grajek and Jan Szmatloch from Poland.

Completing my directory of Slavic book plate artists are Budimir Dimitrijevic from Serbia; Petr Augustovic, Viktor Chrenko, Marcos Komachek, Karol Ondreicka and Katarina Smetanova from Slovakia; Konstantin Kalynovych, Petro Prokopiv, and Vladimir Strutinskij from Ukraine, and Evgeny Blumkin, Anatoli Kalashnikov, Nina Kazimova, Yuri Ljukshin, Denis Reutow, Leonid Stroganov, Oleg Yakhnin, and Vladimir Zuev from Russia.

Decades of officially-sponsored atheistic propaganda seem to have made religion as fascinating a topic as pornography for ex libris artistsfrom the old Soviet Empire!