BASKIN, LEONARD. 1922-2000.


Ars Anatomica: A Medical Fantasia. New York: Editions Medecina Rara, 1972. Folio. A double suit of 13 loose plates (26 in total). Publisher's quarter morocco and linen box, wood edges. LIMITED EDITION, number 43 of 300 copies, signed by Baskin on the limitation page. WITH: Figures of Dead Men. Cambridge, MA: University of Massachusetts Press, 1968. 4to. Publisher's quarter cloth and boards, pictorial dust jacket. Photographs by Hyman Edelstein. SIGNED by Baskin and Edelstein.WITH: BASKIN, ESTHER. 1925-1973. The Poppy and Other Deadly Plants. New York: Delacorte Press, 1967. 4to. Publisher's black cloth, pictorial dust jacket. Illustrated by Leonard Baskin. SINGED AND INSCRIBED ("Esther & Leonard Baskin") in Esther's hand. Baskin was one of the foremost illustrators of the mid 20th century, elected to the Society of Illustrators' Hall of Fame in 1969. "Anatomical illustrations and their assemblages from the Fabrica of Vesalius in 1543 through their dwindling output in the last half of the nineteenth century were essentially created and reproduced to serve as tools of learning and a reference resource in the development of diagnostic and therapeutic medical skills. Many of these works which have endured by virtue of their beauty, scholarly import, or artistic merit seem to have qualities which transcend the illustrations of the human figure as a craft important as craftsmanship may be per se. These contemporary drawings, however, were created by the artist without the necessity of concern for scientific accuracy and logical sequence. Conscious and measured distortion of the figure, organs, muscles, bones, digits, and sensory elements, in these drawings compounds a directness and ambiguity that provokes the beholder to interpret a condition probably beyond comprehension. They proclaim the mortality of man without screaming a conclusion" (John E. Marqusee in the introduction to Ars Anatomica).