ISMAR DAVID’S GRAPHIC CAREER spanned more than six decades and two or three continents (depending on your continental drift.) In other words, he trained in Berlin in the ’20s and early ’30s, emigrated to Palestine in 1932 and then lived and worked in New York from 1952 until his death in 1996.
The aim of this catablog is to create a searchable online archive of Ismar’s work. You, too, can help, with your comments and with information and anecdotes about the artist and his graphic times.
A book jacket every day or so, that’s the plan.
2007 To begin with, we will concentrate on Ismar’s work in the book field. The Archive in the Cary Collection at RIT has almost all the known titles, and the jackets are a fine way to follow the development of Ismar’s distinctive style. It will be hard, however, not to post some additional material from time to time.
2009 UPDATE: Time races by and some book work, including Ismar’s great The Psalms, remains to be posted. However quite a few photos of architectural work at Pinelawn are now up, as well as early (from his time in Jerusalem) and other graphics. Still more to come.
2010 UPDATE: A somewhat slow start to the year, but IDEA has migrated to a new server with an upgrade to WordPress and the InterCity Express is back on track. A very few of the book jackets are simply missing. Alot of the architectural work is online and a good amount of the extant early work. Still more to come.
2014 UPDATE: A total responsive renovation of the site is in progress, accordingly compatible with mobile and non-mobile devices. It will take some time to upgrade all the old images, but I’ve been able to add some new material up front.
The publication information for each book entry comes from the bibliography in The Work of Ismar David, RIT Cary Graphic Arts Press, 2005. Much of Ismar David’s graphic work now resides in the Cary Graphic Arts Collection at RIT. Much of his Judaic work is in the collection of Yeshiva University Museum, New York, while his architectural drawings are in Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia University, New York.
