Carl Einstein (1885-1940) is emerging ever more clearly as one of the most representative and complex figures in the commitments of European artists and intellectuals between the First World War, revolution, avant-garde art, the Spanish Civil War and the rise of National Socialism.
With his book Negro Sculpture (1915) and African Sculpture (1921) Carl Einstein opened the European public to the immanent reality and intensity of this art. He co-edited various journals collaborating with George Grozs and John Heartfield, wrote a very successful Art of the 20th Century and a monograph of Georges Braque. In Paris he published, with George Bataille, the legendary journal Documents (1929-1930).
In an intellectual biography in which an epoch is portrayed, the American writer David Quigley maps out Einsteins various stages and positions in the territory of the political, philosophical and aesthetic arguments for a new art as basis for a new society.