Phaidon Verlag Press' brilliant art publications: from Vienna to London and New York

Phaidon Verlag was founded as a history and art-book publisher in Vienna in 1923 by Ludwig Goldscheider (1896–1973), Dr Béla Horovitz (1898–1955) and Frederick Ungar (1898-1988), all Jewish scholars.

The founders named the com­pany Phaidon after a pupil of Soc­r­ates, to reflect their love of classical culture. The company's distinctive logo der­ived from the Greek let­t­er phi, which represented the golden rat­io, employed by artists, arch­itects and de­signers since antiquity. Their first titles were on lit­erat­ure, philosophy and history, incl­uding a German edition of Plato's works. Great attention was paid to value and design, two factors that remained throughout MY undergr­ad­uate career. Their objective was to deliver quality books at an aff­ordable price; Goldscheider's contrib­ution came in the elegant layout and handsome production; mine was to stun and amaze the Art History Dept where I studied.

The company soon became known across Europe for its high-quality books about art and arch­itecture. The large-format art books first emerged in 1937, featuring works by Vincent van Gogh, San­dro Botti­c­elli and the French Impressionists. Then they expanded the programme to include the works of art his­t­orians like Burckhardt, and the addit­ion of beau­t­iful photogravure plates. Then the published editions of fine C19th bio­graphies of Raphael & Michelangelo both by Grimm, and Velázquez by Justi.

Michelangelo by Goldscheider,

Phaidon, 1953

The story of art, by Gombrich.

Phaidon 1956.

The classic Phaidon book, which went to every private and institution­al art library, emerged in 1937 with large-format books and high-quality plates. These books by Horovitz were aimed at the British and American market; he was a pioneer of the internat­ion­al co-edition and it was these large print-runs that achieved decent prices.

To avoid the tragedy of the Nazi Anschluss of Austria in 1938 on Jews, Hor­ov­itz and Goldscheider quickly moved the company to London, re-est­ab­lishing it as Phaidon Press. Ungar also had to leave Austria urg­ently, but he went to New York in 1939 and founded the Frederick Ungar Pub­lishing Co there in 1940. The trio sadly never got together again.

British success was possible with the help of publisher Sir Stanley Unwin, who later gave a graphic account of how he beat the German authorities in his auto­biography The Truth about a Pub­lisher (1960). For the next 14 years Phaidon books were distrib­uted via George Allan & Unwin Ltd. Horovitz and Goldscheider expanded the large-format series to in­clude books on Donatello, Bell­ini and Mich­aelangelo, many edited by Goldscheider him­self. They had fine photo-gravure printers who kept high reproductive standards.

After the war the company laun­ched innovative schol­arly and popular art publishing. They published monographs on established and new art­ists, as well as surveys of various art movements. Their best known title, The Story of Art first published in 1950, had its origins in a chance meeting between Horovitz and Ernst Gombrich (1909-2001) on the top deck of a London bus. A fellow pre-war ref­ug­ee from Vienna, Gom­brich had become a research fellow teaching at the War­burg Institute in 1936. It was inspiration on the part of Horovitz to pers­uade him to write a one-volume survey of the history of art. The Story of Art, Ernst Gomb­r­ich's narrative survey, has sold 8+ million copies and has been tran­slated into 30+ languages, becoming one of the best-selling art books EVER. The company also published the world's second best-selling art surv­ey: The Art Book, which presented the work of 600 artists from the medieval era on.

The Art Book, 1994

Phaidon 

Great Women Artists, 2019

Phaidon 

Gombrich was just one of the great art historians published by Phaidon. Other famous authors were Sir Kenneth Clark, Bernard Berenson, Anthony Blunt and Rudolf Wittkower. Sir John Pope-Hennessy's high quality Introduction to Italian Sculpture was re-published later.

In 1951 publishing history was made with the first Phaidon Colour Plate book, which made artists' work readily available in colour to a wide audience at a reasonable price.

Following Horovitz’s death in 1955, Phaidon was taken over by his son-in-law, Harvey Miller. Miller continued the trad­ition of sch­olarship and high quality monog­raphs and catalogues in New York. He ex­panded the Colour Plate series and many of Gombrich's more scholarly titles.

In 1967 Phaidon was sold to Frederick Praeger Inc, a part of Encyclop­aed­ia Britannica. Praeger found the business unprofitable and in 1974 he sold to Elsevier. Phaidon books continued to be distributed in America and translated into many other languages.

The 1970s saw a great expansion in the number of staff and the number of titles. Like other contemporary publishers, Phaidon diversif­ied into a range of areas, took on production and distribution of some El­sevier titles and began to buy in titles from publishers abroad. While many good quality books were published, the strong and disting­uished Phaidon identity had been lost. Elsevier also found art books unp­rof­­­itable and in 1981 a management buy-out was sorted by 4 directors under a holding company. Phaidon was acquired by Richard Schlagman in 1990. Sch­lagman hired the designer Alan Fletcher in 1993 to be the creat­ive lead, and in 1998 Fletcher brought on board the young German des­igner Julia Hasting. She focused on conceptual book design, emphas­is­ing the art book as an object.

Atlas of Brutalist Architecture,

edited by Phaidon editors, 2020

Thank you Phaidon for publishing monographs on my absolutely favourite C20th Architecture masters includ­ing Marcel Breuer, Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe, Alvar Aalto & Eero Saar­inen. And mono­gra­phs on contemporary inter­nat­ional architecture. In 2004 Phaidon pub­lished historical surveys on arch­itecture eg Atlas of Brutalist Ar­chit­ecture. For lecturers and students more interested in the dec­or­ative arts, Phaidon publishes mon­ographs on furniture, graphics, design and interiors.