Handmade Mail Art from Wallace Berman to David Haselwood

Item #6844

Larkspur, CA: np, 1960. Handwritten postcard with photo collage and stamp. 5 1/2 x 2 5/8 in. Minimal wear and discoloration; else near fine. 

Photo collage postcard addressed to Auerhahn [Press] in San Francisco with personal note handwritten by Wallace Berman. 

Beginning in 1958, Dave Haselwood’s imprint Auerhahn Press published books by John Spicer, Michael McClure, Diane di Prima, and other writers associated with the San Francisco Renaissance. Beat artists like Wallace Berman often designed the books’ covers. In this handmade postcard (evidenced by its abnormal  dimensions), Berman wrote to Haselwood that he had not yet “received the Burroughs piece,” alluding to a text by William S. Burroughs. Auerhahn Press published Burroughs’s first book under his own name, the short story collection The Exterminator, in 1960, the same year the postcard was postmarked. An early work of mail art and an example of Berman’s relationship with key figures of the Beat scene. .

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