From Cover to Cover

Roy Kuhlman (1923–2007) worked during the mid-twentieth century, when graphic design was defined by experimentation. He designed seven hundred book covers and jackets for Grove Press, a publisher of modernist literature, psychology, Eastern religion, sociology, and radical politics. Kuhlman also worked on the design for Evergreen Review, Grove’s cultural magazine. In Roy Kuhlman: Reluctant Modernist, Steven Brower, who is a graphic designer himself, offers a selection of well over two hundred book covers designed by Kuhlman. These attest to his extraordinary ability for rendering “narrative abstraction,” as Steven Heller dubs Kuhlman’s style in his introduction to the volume.