[3 book covers by Josef Capek]

Josef Capek was a Czech painter, writer, and poet. He invented the word “robot.” No joke. An outspoken anti-fascist, he died in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Lower Saxony. But before that, he designed hundreds of book covers. Here are three, the titles of which are (roughly) Little Fairy Tales for Little Readers, Aristophanes: Assemblywomen, and The Tower of Love. We’ve got here a good representation of his work with hand-drawn, slightly naïve lettering, geometric simplicity, and childlike pictorial motifs. A good starter collection of work that didn’t really make it over here and that represents a completely different approach.