Robert Breer | Flix

Robert Breer

Flix

Montreal, Canada: La Cinémathèque Canadienne, 1967

90 pp., 10.5 x 6.5 cm., staple-bound

Edition size unknown

In May of 2005, the Kunsthalle Düsseldorf hosted what they billed as "the world’s first comprehensive exhibition on the subject of the convergence of art, animation and film in the 20th Century”. Titled 

Daumenkino (or The Flip Book Show), the exhibition featured flip books from more than 170 artists and filmmakers, including John Baldessari, Tacita Dean, Julia Featheringill, Jårg Geismar, Volker Gerling, Gilbert & George, Douglas Gordon, Keith Haring, Sabine Hecher, William Kentridge, Sigrun Köhler, Jonathan Monk, Bruce Nauman, Stephanie Ognar, Tony Oursler, Dieter Roth, Miguel Rothschild, Jack Smith, Beat Streuli, Andy Warhol, Janet Zweig and Robert Breer.

Breer’s Flix was published by the Cinémathèque Canadienne in Montreal as part of a series of thirteen animated flip books commissioned on the occasion of the World Retrospective of Animation Cinema in 1967. The series also included Jan Lenica, Emile Cohl (twice), Yoji Kuri, Gene Deitch, Vladimir Lehky, and Otto Messmer, the creator of Felix the Cat. 

All are scarce, but Breer's - which features geometrical forms in black and yellow on a white background - seems to be the most rare - with prices ranging from $400 to $1600 US. 

Breer, who died at the age of 85 in 2011, had been called “the kinetic poet of the avant-garde”. 

Johanna VanDerBeek, Stan VanDerBeek, and Robert Breer at the World Retrospective of Animation Cinema in 1967.