1948 Sokol designed by Istler

Věnceslav Havlíček – Le Sokol Tchécoslovaque [The Czechoslovak Sokol] Paris: Executive Committee of the 11th Federal Sokol Festival, issued by the Propaganda Section, 1948. Slim illustrated booklet, 33 pages, 21 × 14 cm. Cover design by Josef Istler. Istler was a major Czech avant-garde artist of the 1940s and a member of Skupina Ra, the wartime group that fused Surrealism with existential and poetic abstraction. Closely connected to the broader Czechoslovak Surrealist milieu around Karel Teige and Jindřich Heisler, Istler worked across painting, collage, photography, and graphic design. In the late 1940s his book and poster designs stand out for their conceptual intensity, symbolic imagery, and modernist typographic clarity, securing his position as one of the most important Czech graphic artists of the period. A striking postwar Sokol publication produced for international presentation, notable for Istler’s modernist photomontage cover and bold typographic design; scarce ephemeral material documenting Czechoslovak physical culture and national representation in the late 1940s. Very good condition. Inv. I1