Bidspirit auction | Art Spiegelman – Maus: A

Art Spiegelman – Maus: A Survivor's Tale – Presentation Copy, Inscribed, Illustrated, and Signed by the Author - Maus: A Survivor's Tale by the American comics artist Art Spiegelman. One of the most important, influential, and acclaimed works in the history of modern literature and of the graphic narrative medium as a whole. New York, 1986 edition. Presentation copy inscribed and signed by the author, with an original mouse sketch drawn by Spiegelman on the title page. A graphic autobiographical work recounting the story of Vladek Spiegelman, the author's father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor who endured the Częstochowa Ghetto and Auschwitz Extermination Camp. The most celebrated visual and conceptual feature of Maus is its use of anthropomorphism, representing different national and ethnic groups as animals: Jews are depicted as mice, Nazi Germans as predatory cats, Poles as pigs, and Americans as dogs. This artistic choice was intended both to satirize Nazi propaganda, which portrayed Jews as subhuman vermin to be exterminated, and to create an artistic distance that enables readers to confront the otherwise incomprehensible horrors of the Holocaust. The book achieved extraordinary international success. It opened the door to academic and literary recognition of comics as a legitimate and powerful artistic medium for historical documentation, remembrance, and the exploration of trauma. ”Maus takes Spiegelman's parents to the gates of Auschwitz and himself to the brink of despair (with more to come). Put aside all your preconceptions. These cats and mice are not Tom and Jerry, but something entirely different. This is a new kind of literature.” (From the introduction.).  Art Spiegelman is one of the world's most influential and important comics creators, the artist who demonstrated that ink drawings could bear the weight of humanity's greatest tragedies. He was born in Stockholm in 1948 to Polish-Jewish parents who survived the horrors of Auschwitz and grew up in New York under the shadow of a profound family trauma that would later become the foundation of his creative work. As a pioneer of the underground comics movement of the 1960s and 1970s, Spiegelman expanded the boundaries of the medium, challenged its conventions, and endowed it with an unprecedented level of psychological, artistic, and literary depth. With remarkable sensitivity and insight, he transformed both personal and collective memory into enduring documentary art. In recognition of this achievement, Maus became the first graphic novel to receive a Pulitzer Prize, a distinction that permanently changed the way the world views the power of the illustrated narrative. 159, [1] pages. Very good condition.