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Avant Garde Catalogue

Explore rare avant-garde and surrealist books

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Biographie d’André Breton, poète
Arrabal, Fernando · Baltazar, Julius
Biographie d’André Breton, poète

This exceptional copy of <i>Biographie d’André Breton, poète</i> brings several strands of the twentieth-century avant-garde into a single tangible object. Fernando Arrabal writes on André Breton, the poet and theorist who gave Surrealism both its programme and its myth. Julius Baltazar contributes an original graphic work, while Daniel Knoderer radically transforms the book in 1993 into a sculptural binding. The volume therefore moves beyond bibliophile publication into the realm of the livre-objet: text, image, construction and performance at once. Bright colours, bolts, plastic plates, collage fragments and painted inscriptions turn the binding into an autonomous sculptural statement. The copy is also bibliographically intriguing because the normal justification leaf is absent and replaced by Knoderer’s handwritten confirmation. The designation Exemplaire OOO gives the volume an irregular but strongly conceptual status. For The Hidden Page, it is a compelling example of literature, printmaking, book art and avant-garde practice converging in one object.

Illustrated Book
€3,700
Bonpiet beau neuille
Dubuffet, Jean
Bonpiet beau neuille

With *Bonpiet beau neuille*, Jean Dubuffet created in 1983 one of his last and most radical artist’s books, in which writing, drawing and speech almost merge. The text is composed in his idiosyncratic jargon, a phonetic and deliberately destabilized form of French that disrupts conventional spelling, syntax and literary decorum. Dubuffet himself calligraphed the text and combined it with 27 drawings, allowing words and images to operate as a single graphic structure. The book was issued by Jeanne Bucher in an extremely limited first edition reproduced in collotype by Atelier Arte. This copy, number 37, belongs to the 70 signed copies numbered 11 to 80 and consequently contains no unique original drawing. Only the first ten copies were accompanied by an original drawing. This edition must be clearly distinguished from the trade edition published by Ryôan-ji in 1984. Its probable provenance from the library of bibliophile Jacques Dauchez adds further interest to this exceptionally well-preserved copy.

Illustrated Book
€1,100
Bal de la Grand Ourse (programme grand format). Organisé par l'Union des Artistes Russes à Paris à la Salle Bullier (...) le Vendredi 8 Mai 1925, avec fiche de programme: Le 8 mai 1925. La Grande Ourse Bal
Union des Artistes Russes à Paris · Henri Laurens
Bal de la Grand Ourse (programme grand format). Organisé par l'Union des Artistes Russes à Paris à la Salle Bullier (...) le Vendredi 8 Mai 1925, avec fiche de programme: Le 8 mai 1925. La Grande Ourse Bal

This large-format programme sheet for the Bal de la Grand Ourse is one of the most vivid survivals from the Parisian artistic scene of the mid-1920s. It was issued by the Union des Artistes Russes à Paris for the event held at the Salle Bullier on 8 May 1925, an occasion that was at once social, performative, and programmatic. The document announces not merely a ball, but a total event in which modern architecture, decorative arts, and stage design converged. Henri Laurens's contribution gives the sheet a direct connection to the international avant-garde and to the sculptural language of cubist and post-cubist Paris. The programme also includes a facsimile musical score and an additional illustration, bringing text, image, and rhythm together within a single printed object. Its full roster of participating artists reads like a snapshot of the École de Paris, with names such as Braque, Chagall, the Delaunays, Foujita, Man Ray, Marinetti, Matisse, Picabia, Picasso, and Zadkine. This copy also retains the accompanying slip Le 8 mai 1925. La Grande Ourse Bal, bibliographically and materially part of the same ensemble. That completeness makes the piece especially appealing to collectors of avant-garde ephemera.

Plaquette
€600
Les Ballets russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Décors et costumes. Le costume théâtral par Nathalie Gontcharova. Quelques artistes contemporains, no 2
Michel Georges-Michel · Waldemar George · Gontcharova, Nathalie · Picasso, Pablo · Matisse, Henri · Mikhaïl Larionov · Braque, Georges · Marie Laurencin · Derain, André · Giorgio de Chirico · Rouault, Georges · Léon Bakst
Les Ballets russes de Serge de Diaghilew. Décors et costumes. Le costume théâtral par Nathalie Gontcharova. Quelques artistes contemporains, no 2

This original 1930 edition offers a compact yet richly illustrated survey of the scenographic world of Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. Michel Georges-Michel and Waldemar George place the enterprise within its artistic context, while Nathalie Gontcharova contributes a separate discussion of theatrical costume. Four colour plates and sixteen black-and-white illustrations reproduce designs by Picasso, Matisse, Gontcharova, Larionov, Braque, Laurencin, Derain, De Chirico, Rouault and Bakst. These are carefully selected reproductions rather than original lithographs or separate graphic works. Published in the series *Quelques artistes contemporains*, the book is closely connected with the retrospective exhibition of sets, models and costumes organized by Galerie Billiet-Pierre Vorms in October 1930. Together, the publication and exhibition show how Diaghilev transformed ballet into a meeting place for painting, music, fashion and theatre. This copy retains its original printed covers and an old glassine dust jacket, while the contents remain notably fresh. For the bibliophile, it combines documentary importance, international avant-garde art and appealing original condition.

Illustrated Book
€250
Beau regard. Conte illustré d’images dessinées et gravées par J. Sima
Jouve, Pierre Jean · Sima, Josef
Beau regard. Conte illustré d’images dessinées et gravées par J. Sima

*Beau regard* unites Pierre Jean Jouve’s poetic modernism with Josef Šíma’s graphic imagination. The first edition was published in Paris by Au Sans Pareil in 1927. The octavo volume contains fifteen wood engravings and three original drypoints printed hors texte. Copy number 604 belongs to the issue of six hundred copies on vélin Montgolfier d’Annonay and was published without an additional suite. Its broad margins, untrimmed edges, surviving tissue guards and generally fresh interior preserve its distinctly bibliophilic character. Although the green-grey wrappers show some fading and browning, the uncommon survival of the intact original glassine enhances the copy’s appeal. As an artist’s book, the publication also records Šíma’s transition towards the visionary language soon associated with Le Grand Jeu.

Illustrated Book
€530
Delbrouck et M. Defize à la
  Galerie Van Leer avril 1929
Breton, André · Delbrouck · Delize, M. · Émilie Delbrouck · Marcel Defize
Delbrouck et M. Defize à la
Galerie Van Leer avril 1929

This rare exhibition catalogue accompanied the joint presentation of Émilie Delbrouck and Marcel Defize at Galerie Van Leer in Paris from 1 to 15 April 1929. The small publication comprises eight pages and reproduces two works. Its particular significance lies in André Breton’s preface, which places the exhibition directly within the Surrealist context of the period. The conjunction of two Belgian artists, a Parisian avant-garde gallery and Breton as advocate makes the pamphlet more than a passing exhibition document. Breton’s text later acquired a second life when it was reused under the title *Exposition X…, Y…*. The catalogue therefore preserves a tangible trace of the international exchanges surrounding Surrealism at the end of the 1920s. For the bibliophile, this meeting of art, programmatic writing and ephemeral print is especially compelling. The fragile condition of the present copy also emphasizes the inherently vulnerable nature of such exhibition catalogues.

Catalogue
€325
Contro Roma e Contro Benedetto
  Croce
Papini, Giovanni
Contro Roma e Contro Benedetto
Croce

A rare early Futurist imprint in which Papini crosses swords with Rome and the philosopher Benedetto Croce. Delivered at the serata futurista in the Teatro Costanzi (21 February 1913), the text was promptly issued as a standalone pamphlet by the Direzione del Movimento Futurista in Milan. This four-page flyer, printed by A. Taveggia, marries polemical fervour to typographic restraint. The large format and horizontal fold reveal its ephemeral circulation—by post or at the venue. For bibliophiles and scholars it is a keystone linking *Lacerba* to the Milanese Futurist network. A compelling document of militant literature on the eve of the war years.

Pamphlet
€200
BAL BANAL, organisé par l’Union des Artistes Russes
​
BAL BANAL, organisé par l’Union des Artistes Russes

Original admission ticket for the Bal Banal of the Union des Artistes Russes, held Friday 14 March 1924 at Salle Bullier, Paris. The small colour woodcut ticket, designed 1923/24 by Natalia Gontcharova and plate-signed “N. Gontcharova,” is numbered 2962, printed recto only in two colours, and bears two Union stamps. In a handy c. 16 × 22.5 cm format, it fuses function with graphic flair—a rare survivor of the famed artists’ balls linking the Russian émigré scene to Montparnasse.

Other
€350
La Danse Futuriste. Danse de l’aviateur – Danse du shrapnell – Danse de la mitrailleuse. Manifeste futuriste
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso
La Danse Futuriste. Danse de l’aviateur – Danse du shrapnell – Danse de la mitrailleuse. Manifeste futuriste

La Danse Futuriste is one of the key texts of Italian Futurism in its most direct, militant, and performative form. It is a separately issued French manifesto by Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, founder and tireless propagandist of the movement. Rather than a deluxe book, it is a tract, designed for the rapid circulation of ideas and for immediate impact. That modest physical form is precisely what makes it so faithful to Futurist practice, in which print was used as an instrument of artistic intervention. The text transfers the Futurist glorification of speed, violence, and mechanism into the realm of dance, doing so with the aggressive clarity that is so characteristic of Marinetti. As a separate French issue, the pamphlet is bibliographically intriguing, since specialists have catalogued it both as 1917 and as circa 1920. That uncertainty only adds to its interest rather than diminishing its importance. For collectors, this is above all a primary avant-garde document: scarce, fragile, and historically charged.

Review
€700
La Boule de gui
Dorgelès, Roland · Dunoyer de Segonzac
La Boule de gui

This first edition brings together three war episodes omitted from Les Croix de bois: La Boule de gui, Permissionnaires, and Le Prisonnier bénévole, formerly titled L’Ennemi des vieux. Published in 1922, it is also the first illustrated issue of these texts. André Dunoyer de Segonzac accompanies Dorgelès’s front-line prose with 42 reproduced drawings and five original drypoints hors texte, including the frontispiece. His nervous, direct line closely matches the stories’ hard observation and comradeship. This copy, number 401 on tinted Lafuma paper, belongs to the regular yet still limited issue of 519 copies on this stock. Devauchelle’s exceptional artist’s binding translates trenches, crosses, and explosions into a forceful modern design, turning the volume into a distinctive bibliophile object.

Illustrated Book
€1,150
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