Rombouts & Droste - L'abc 1993

Artist book published for the exhibition in Charleroi 1993 in an edition of 600.

Guy Rombouts grew up as the only son in a family of printers. His father had a printing business and was the publisher of the Nieuwsblad van Geel. In his younger years he was trained as a typographer because he wanted to further develop his fascination for language and writing. In his later life he discovered the more visual side of the alphabet and was bitten by it. He would carry this fascination with shapes with him for the rest of his life. In his art he interweaves drawing systems, language and writing. In the end, he did not have to choose between printing and artistry, he intertwined both. At the beginning of his artistic production, Guy Rombouts collected objects whose names consist of three letters, each starting with a different letter. These 24 objects – he found no equivalent for the letters Q and X – were arranged alphabetically and displayed in a gallery. This resulted in pictograms that formed the basis for the final AZART alphabet. The letters are based on shapes whose name starts with the same letter. For example, the h has the shape of a hairpin, the k has the shape of tilt and the l is lanceolate. Guy Rombouts and his wife Monica Droste started from the Latin alphabet (our abc) and linked each letter with a name or concept, a certain type of line, a color and a sound. AZART is not a language, but an alphabet: with consecutive letters Guy Rombouts forms word images that an AZART connoisseur can decipher, but which also appeal to the imagination as an image.

66p - FR/EN - 21x14cm - softcover - perfect condition