Nijinsky Marjan-The Story of the Bellringer of the Port of Jaffa [autolithograph](Polish avant-garde)

Warsaw 1925/ Printed by"Głos Narodu'', Cracow/ first edition/12x17cm/s.55/ seven color lithographs/ publisher's binding, booklet/ good condition, losses of cover edges and spine veneer, piece partly uncut. Infrequent

The author's avant-garde lithographs in his debut volume of poetry, which Nijinsky published at his own expense

"An artist organizationally unconnected with the Formist grouping, creating in the same spirit as Tytus Czyzewski and the artists he befriended, was undoubtedly the poet, painter and graphic artist, Marian Nijinski, who died tragically in 1943, a native of Krakow. He self-published two collections of poems: The Story of the Bellringer of the Port of Jaffa and Sketches, both decorated with very interesting autolithographs.'' [source: Now Cover Volume II, Jan Straus, p.169].

Marian Ludwik Nijinsky (1910 - 1943) - poet, playwright, painter, graphic artist. He graduated from the Fourth Middle School of Krakow in 1928. In 1928-32 he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Cracow. He was a pupil of Wojciech Weiss. He painted oil paintings, portraits, landscapes, and also did lithography and woodcuts. During his studies he became involved with the Academic Circle of Classical Drama Enthusiasts active at Jagiellonian University. As a poet, he debuted in 1929 in the pages of the "Literary and Scientific Courier", where he published poems using the pseudonyms M. Strum and M. Strumilowski. He published two volumes of poems The Story of the Bellringer from the Port of Jaffa and Sketches. In 1930 he founded the experimental theater "Studio 30" in Krakow, where he prepared the premiere of his own play Dolmino, which was deemed harmful by the censors. In this situation, the theater was closed. In 1932 he settled in Warsaw, where he was employed as a teacher of drawing at the Władysław IV Gymnasium in Warsaw. In 1933 he was called up for military service. From 1935 he worked at the Library of the Polish Academy of Literature. In 1937-39 he cooperated with the Warsaw-based magazine "Polish Thought." At the end of 1939 he returned to Cracow, where he made a living as a painter. In 1940-43 he wrote the stage works Spinka, Desant, One Such on Stilts and the autobiographical novel Podszepty św. Zofii. His best-known stage play is The Moon Knight, a musical comedy about Mr. Twardowski, which was written for the Cracow Theater Confraternity headed by Tadeusz Kudlinski. One of the roles in this play was played by Karol Wojtyla, among others. He died in a tragic accident, run over by a German car, on April 10, 1943.He is buried in Krakow's Salvatore cemetery