G: An Avant-Garde Journal of Art, Architecture, Design, and Film, 1923-1926

First published in 1923, the journal G: Material zur Elementaren Gestaltung (G: Materials for Elemental Form-Creation) helped shape a new phase in the history of the European avant-garde. Founded by Hans Richter, a pioneer of abstract animated film, G featured works by some of the important names in the advanced cultures of Europe: Hans Arp, Walter Benjamin, Theo van Doesburg, Viking Eggeling, Naum Gabo, Werner Graeff, George Grosz, Hugo Häring, Raoul Hausmann, Ludwig Hilberseimer, Frederick Kiesler, El Lissitzky, Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, Antoine Pevsner, Man Ray, and Tristan Tzara.

This edition, the first in English translation, preserves the original design by Lissitzky, Richter, and Graeff, and includes essays that explore the role of the journal in its time and in relation to contemporary culture. An introduction analyzes the principles of the journal, situates it in the culture of the early 1920s, and evaluates its achievements.

Detlef Mertins is an architect, historian, and professor at the University of Pennsylvania. He is editor of Walter Curt Behrendt’s The Victory of the New Building Style (Getty Publications, 2000) and The Presence of Mies. Michael W. Jennings is the Class of 1900 Professor of Modern Languages in the Department of German at Princeton University. He is the author of Dialectical Images: Walter Benjamin’s Theory of Literary Criticism and coauthor of The Author as Producer: A Life of Walter Benjamin.