Dieter Roth | Quick

Dieter Roth

Quick

Koln/Amsterdam: Rudolf Rieser/Bookie Wookie, 1965/1994

[150] pp., 1 x 3 x 1.8 cm., softcover

Edition of 150 signed and numbered copies

Quick was a German-language news magazine active for forty-four years, between 1948 and 1992. It was the first periodical published in Germany after World War Two1. By 1960 the magazine had reached peak circulation, with 1.7 million copies printed weekly. 

After previously turning its pages into sausage, Dieter Roth used the periodical to produce approximately 150 copies of a small hand-bound book to distribute for free at an exhibition in Koln, in 1965. They were published by Rudolf Reiser, a bookbinder who helped fabricate, finance and promote many of Roth’s works of this era. Fewer than fifty were taken by visitors to the exhibition, leaving behind just over a hundred copies. 

Decades later, in 1994, gallerist Rudolf Zwirner discovered a shoe box containing 105 copies of the miniature books. He contacted Walter Koenig, who suggested that Boekie Woekie in Amsterdam might help revive the project. 

A ‘re-issue’ was released with the copies signed “1965/1994” by Roth and housed in a clear plastic box with a blue adhesive hinge and the addition of a wrap-around information sheet. Printed in Dutch, English, German, and Icelandic, the info sheet explains the work’s provenance in the artist’s own handwriting. 

The books - reportedly the smallest Roth had made - feature approximately 150 sheets cut from Quick Magazine, bound by glue and a cotton string spine. Other magazines that received similar treatment include Dagblegt Bul, Der Spiegel and Icelandic Leather.

Quick is currently valued at over a thousand dollars. 

1. The magazine’s chief editor for many years was Traudl Junge, the former secretary to Adolf Hitler, who typed out his Last Will and Testament immediately before the dictator's suicide.