1953-64. Probably the most significant document recording Swiss art - especially abstract and Concrete art - in the 1950s and early ’60s, Spirale was the handiwork of Dieter Roth and edited by him with artist Marcel Wyss and Concrete poet Eugen Gomringer (who became recognized for his ‘constellations’ and one-word poems). Their objective recalled the best intentions of magazines from 20 and 30 years earlier to publish a magazine that would ‘embrace poetry, the plastic arts, graphics, architecture and industrial design’. Conceived in 1951, the magazine did not start publishing until 1953. At the same time, and over the course of the life of the magazine, Roth was involved in up to six other independent publishing projects. Although the design and illustrations for the magazine indicate Roth’s committed Constructivist phase, when it folded after nine issues in 1964, he shifted gears from the ‘universal aesthetic language’ to the more ephemeral, personal works for which he may be best known, but Spirale set in motion his obsession with self-publishing, which was a source of the enormously popular trend for photocopied books and early ’zines in the 1970s. Roth’s contributions to the ‘conventions of the page [as] subject-matter [where] a turning page becomes a physical, sculptural element rather than an incidental activity’, set the precedent for future experiments in art magazine publishing that questioned and deconstructed the form of the ‘book’ and presaged a great era in self-publishing. Rare to find a complete set in such fine condition.. ()
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