despalles overcomes the distance that still exists between the German and French language areas. Thus the artist's books of the edition are mostly conceived from the outset as bilingual, French and German, or even trilingual. As a rule, they appear as first publications, always with unpublished translations. In them, artists and poets from different aesthetic categories meet.
Paul Stein
Spreu
The need to write does not let go of Paul Stein, and if nothing - or everything at once - is, written down is to simulate writing, for the sake of gesture: pseudo-writing. With archaic signs and forms, which are sometimes reminiscent of Australian aboriginal art, with graffiti and body figures it is part of the central Motif inventory of the book artist, painter and drawer Paul Stein. Spreu sees itself as a kind of Compilation. The structure of the book is full of tension, alternating between texts and images that reflect the vary the entire vocabulary of signs.
Stein experimented here for the first time with the colour woodcut, to which he transferred the writing gesture, frequently on two plates, partly working the printing blocks with the milling machine.
A woodcut book with eight texts (German) by Paul Stein.
First publication, (Library of Labilism, Volume 1).
Hand-set and printed by the artist in the Edition's workshop.
38 pages, 34,5 x 20,8 cm, 12 double-page woodcuts, block book binding, from the woodblock and typographical printed paperback. Binding Vitus Münch.
31 copies, numbered and signed. Mainz, 1994.
