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Promotional Pamphlet for Haggadah for Passover, Copied and Illustrated by Ben Shahn, 1966

Limited special edition for collectors and museums, signed by the artist on the frontispiece and introduction page.

Would make a wonderful wall art, if you frame these precious lithographs.

Note: this is not the full Haggadah book. Please look at the photos.

Inspired by the tradition of medieval illuminated Hebrew manuscripts, Lithuanian-born American graphic artist Ben Shahn (1898-1969) originally created eleven of the twelve full-page color plates for this Haggadah over the course of six months circa 1930. The illustrations, like those executed for his secular works, highlight the struggle against oppression, a theme central to the Passover story. The figures depicted were modeled after the Jews of Djerba, whom Shahn had encountered during a year-long journey through North Africa.

After an unsuccessful attempt to print the Haggadah in color, Shahn sold the completed plates to Frieda Warburg, from whose son Edward they passed in 1947 into the permanent collection of The Jewish Museum (New York). In 1958, however, Shahn serendipitously met Arnold Fawcus, a publisher of art books and facsimiles, in a small country inn in Burgundy, and the two later agreed to partner in seeing the Haggadah project through. Shahn completed the twelfth illustration, added drawings of the scenes of the Had gadya (An Only Kid) song, and designed a beautiful frontispiece and title page, while Fawcus commissioned British scholar Cecil Roth to compose an introduction and notes (and to reuse his 1934 translation of the Haggadah text). Touted at the time as “perhaps the most beautiful book ever designed and illustrated by an American artist” and considered to be among Shahn’s “finest and most original work[s],” this deluxe edition of the Haggadah is a monument to the skill of one of the twentieth century’s most famous Jewish cultural figures.

Printed on Auvergne handmade pure rag paper; Hebrew and English, Hebrew section titles and select other texts printed in Shahn’s distinctive Hebrew typeface; unsewn sheets, as issued, folded into original stiff wrappers in the grand luxe style, with the deckle-edges of the paper left untrimmed. Lithographed multicolor frontispiece and decorated title; a full-page collotype and pochoir plate after Shahn’s original watercolors;l.

Ben Shahn’s Haggadah Prospectus 9” by 12”

$54.00Price
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