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Post by Amfortas on Aug 18, 2021 22:00:47 GMT
I have always greatly admired the lustrous and finely delineated artwork of Steffi Grant that appears in, and on the covers of, her husband’s texts. It goes without saying that one cannot imagine Kenneth Grant’s published work without the wonderful evocative illustrations provided by his wife.
Is it possible that this body of very beautiful Occult Art, which may be compared to that of Austin Spare, will one day be catalogued and exhibited, and that an accompanying book might thereby arise?
And would it be permissible to ask whether there exist items that have not yet been full revealed to the public, as suggested by the remarkable ‘illuminated’ Liber AL plates included in ‘Servants of the Star and the Snake’ ?
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Post by Michael Staley on Aug 20, 2021 0:01:41 GMT
Is it possible that this body of very beautiful Occult Art, which may be compared to that of Austin Spare, will one day be catalogued and exhibited, and that an accompanying book might thereby arise? Yes, there will be an exhibition of Steffi's art, and her art will be collected into a book. I don't know when this will happen, but I'm sure it will. And would it be permissible to ask whether there exist items that have not yet been full revealed to the public, as suggested by the remarkable ‘illuminated’ Liber AL plates included in ‘Servants of the Star and the Snake’ ? Plates from the illuminated Liber AL also appear in the second edition of The Ninth Arch. The whole work has been photographed at a high resolution with publication in mind. Most of Steffi's work has been published in the Trilogies. Apart from the illuminated Liber AL, there are a number of drawings and paintings on the endpapers of various books. An example of this has already been published – 'Invocation of the Fire Snake', a plate in Aleister Crowley and the Hidden God. The drawing was rephotographed for the second edition of the book in 2013. I think that Steffi did most of her work in the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s. One day I was admiring an oil painting by her, 'Amber Woman', published as a frontispiece to Cults of the Shadow (where it was entited 'Priestess of the Fire Snake'). She remarked to me that she painted this picture whilst sheltering from a bombing raid during the Second World War. This dates it to the early 1940s. Most of Steffi's pictures are undated, but some of them can be dated. For instance, there is a lovely self-portrait in The Ninth Arch, and soon after painting this she sent it to Kenneth during his stay at 'Netherwood' as Crowley's secretary.
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