Földvári Books

Bortnyik’s Children’s Book, Produced in Very Few Copies

Bortnyik, Sándor

Potty és Pötty. [(Children’s Book). Proof copy.]

Budapest: Ifjuság, 1932. Illustrated by the artist. First edition. Printed in a very small number of copies. Original cloth. 12 p. In fine condition.

Extremely rare proof copy of Bortnyik’s only known children’s book, produced in very few copies and long regarded as a legendary work within Hungarian modernism.

A substantial section is devoted to Potty és Pötty in Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde, edited by Elina Druker and Bettina Kümmerling-Meibauer, which examines the origins and variants of the book. The authors note that it is the only children’s book attributed to Bortnyik and place it within his broader engagement with the German ideal of the Gebrauchsgraphiker—the graphic artist who reconciles artistic and commercial aims—an approach that shaped his work throughout the 1920s. They emphasize that the book functions visually, transmitting its concept without reliance on text, in a manner comparable to an advertising poster.

In Children’s Literature and the Avant-Garde (John Benjamins, 2015), Samuel D. Albert describes “a fourth, intriguing version” of Potty és Pötty held by the Cotsen Children’s Library at Princeton University, characterizing it as a second, different, and unique Hungarian version, apparently an artist’s copy. The present proof copy closely corresponds to that described example.

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Price: €7,000.00