Beschreibung:

SURREALISM-- Exposition Internationale de Surréalisme présentée par André Breton et Marcel Duchamp Le Surréalisme en 1947 . Paris: l'Imprimerie Union for Éditions Pierre à Feu and Maeght Éditeur, 1947. 4° (231 x 203mm). 25 plates, comprising: 6 colour-printed lithographs by and after Victor Brauner Max Ernst [Leppien Max Ernst 24], Jacques Hérold Wilfredo Lam and Joan Miró [Queneau Joan Miró 56]; 12 lithographs by and after Serge Brignoni Alexander Calder Bruno Capacci, Elizabeth van Damme, Julio de Diego Enrico Donati David Hare Jacqueline Lamba Roberto Matta Echaurren, Kay Sage Yves Tanguy [Wittrock Yves Tanguy 15B], and Toyen; one colour-printed etching by and after Hans Bellmer; four etchings by and after Marcel Jean Maria Martins Yves Tanguy [Wittrock Yves Tanguy 15A] and Dorothea Tanning; 2 woodcuts by and after Hans Arp [Arntz Hans Arp 120-121], the lithographs and woodcuts printed by Mourlot Frères, the etchings by Lacourière. Illustrations, some full-page. Original printed wrappers, the upper cover with a photograph after Rémy Duval of an original work for the binding by Marcel Duchamp [Schwarz Marcel Duchamp (1997), 523], original glassine dustwrapper titled in red on the upper cover (head and tail of spine lightly rubbed, wrapper partially detached from spine, tears on dustwrapper). FIRST EDITION, LIMITED TO 999 COPIES, THIS NUMBER 398 OF 950 on vélin supérieur . 'THE SURREALIST EXHIBITION [...] AT THE MAEGHT GALLERY, PARIS, IN 1947 WAS THE LAST GREAT EXHIBITION OF ITS KIND HELD IN FRANCE (Jentsch 191). The scope of the exhibition was broad, with eighty artists from twenty-four different countries participating, and 'The catalogue is a veritable anthology of surrealism with texts by Bréton, Bataille, Arp, Miller, Nadeau, Bonnefoy and others and is one of the last documents of the movement' (Jentsch loc . cit .). The layout of the exhibition 'was conceived as a series of ritual tests, reduced to a minimum, through which the visitor had to pass before he could look at the works on show. Progress from one room to another was intended to help in the gradual transformation of the neophyte into an initiate. So the visitor gained access to the upper rooms by climbing a red staircase made up of twenty-one steps in the form of spines of books [that] indicated the degrees of ideal Knowledge' (Sarane Alexandrian, quoted in Schwarz Marcel Duchamp (1997), 523). Le Surréalisme en 1947 is also notable for the frontispiece by Miró, which was his first colour-printed lithograph. Castleman A Century of Artists' Books pp.232 and 244; Jentsch The Artist and the Book in Twentieth-Century Italy 191.