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Avant Garde Catalogue
Explore rare avant-garde and surrealist books
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Vautier, Ben
Ben Vautier — Participations au Festival non art, anti art, la vérité est art,
comment changer l’art et l’homme… (1–15 juin 1969)
This rare Fluxus portfolio, designed by Ben Vautier, embodies late-1960s dematerialised art: the work *is* a bundle of ideas, instructions, and attitudes. *Participations…* operates as a catalogue for a “non-material” exhibition and, at the same time, as a logistical trace of a festival announced as worldwide, from 1 to 15 June 1969. Instead of objects, the folder offers contributions reproduced through plain printing, stencil, or photocopy—an aesthetic of speed, circulation, and intention. It gathers voices that redrew the boundaries of art: from George Maciunas and Robert Filliou to Daniel Buren, Dieter Roth, Wolf Vostell, Joseph Beuys, with Marcel Duchamp as a conceptual horizon. The deliberately ironic tables of contents and playful notes on the submissions affirm a Fluxus principle: seriousness needs play. As a numbered first edition limited to 502 copies, it stands as an emblematic document of the moment when art became protocol, performance, and network.
Catalogue
€1,000

Ernst, Max
Écritures
*Écritures* is one of the major artists’ books from Max Ernst’s later career and at the same time one of Le Point Cardinal’s most striking achievements. The volume brings together Ernst’s texts with one hundred and twenty images drawn from his own visual world, so that writing and image continually echo one another. The original lithograph on the cover immediately gives the book the status of an autonomous art object. In the artist’s copy, a signed etching used as frontispiece further elevates the whole into a luxurious and highly desirable bibliophilic edition. The publisher’s presentation, with the Leroux-designed case and its distinctive cobra spine, lends the book an almost sculptural presence. For that reason, this edition holds an eminent place within the postwar French artist’s book.
Ill Book
€2,850

Baudelaire, Charles · Leonor Fini
Les Fleurs du Mal
This monumental edition of *Les Fleurs du Mal* brings together Baudelaire’s dark music and Léonor Fini’s sensual imagination. Issued as a large in-folio in loose sheets, it is conceived as a true bibliophilic object: reading becomes a ritual of unfolding, touching, and returning. For Le Cercle du Livre Précieux, Fini created 24 original lithographs—mostly in colour according to the notices—making Baudelaire’s erotic charge, dream logic, and looming menace vividly present. The dialogue between text and image is not mere illustration but a parallel poetry, theatrical in tone, where desire and decay echo one another. This copy, no. 436, is from the regular issue and is in very good condition. A classic text reframed through a distinctly twentieth-century artist’s gaze.
Ill Book
€1,150

Henry, Maurice
Les Métamorphoses du vide
With *Les Métamorphoses du vide*, Maurice Henry produced for Les Éditions de Minuit a rare postwar “story in images,” poised between picture-book, comics, and surrealist poetry. Adrien’s journey is dreamlike and elusive, driven by emptiness and transformation—something that unfolds as an experience rather than a conventional plot. The first edition comprises 64 colour plates on 32 leaves, 16 of them die-cut, turning viewing into a spatial event. This copy has the second-state cover (non die-cut), adopted after a first perforated version was dropped due to technical difficulties. Minuit’s restrained modern design throws Henry’s hallucinatory imagination into higher relief, sharpening the graphic wit. As an object it is both fragile and radical: paper, colour, and cut-outs become dramaturgy. A key item for collectors of postwar avant-garde printed matter.
Ill Book
€780

Collective
Toutes ces dames au salon !
This sharp postwar intervention belongs to the primary printed matter of the Internationale Lettriste, on the threshold of the Debord milieu and the genealogy of Situationism. *Toutes ces dames au salon !* responds to the Brussels exhibition “L’Industrie du pétrole vue par des artistes” (2–14 June 1956), targeting the moral veneer of the salon system sustained by corporate patronage. The sheet operates as direct action: a text that does not merely speak about art but intervenes in the social field. The convergence of Paris (Internationale Lettriste), Brussels (Les Lèvres Nues) and Milan (Movimento Arte Nucleare) turns it into a rare node of transnational neo-avant-garde exchange. This set is especially desirable because it brings together two material variants: the well-known large two-column placard and the narrow one-column version that also circulates on its own. Ephemera of this kind was made to vanish, and its survival—here in duplicate form—is exactly what gives it bibliophilic force.
Pamflet
€750

Miller, Henry · Orfeo Tamburi · Rièra
Blaise Cendrars
This rare, numbered edition of *Blaise Cendrars* shows Henry Miller at his finest as a literary portraitist—admiring, unguarded, intensely personal. Published by Denoël in 1951 as the first French-language edition (translated by François Villié), it takes a generous in-4 format that gives the book an almost “album-like” presence. Orfeo Tamburi provides the colour-illustrated wrappers, setting a modern, lively, faintly ironic mood. A key feature is the frontispiece: an original portrait of Cendrars by Rièra, printed as a lithograph by G. Viton et fils, anchoring the volume as an art object. This copy is no. 394, one of 950 on pur fil Johannot paper. It is further distinguished by a warm, autobiographical inscription to “Alice,” signed “Tito” and dated 20/III/1963. A compelling intersection of literary friendship, printed art, and collectable edition.
Ill Book
€450

Benoit, Pierre-André · Braque, Georges
Impuissant à t’aimer
*Impuissant à t’aimer* belongs to the finely judged small-format books through which Pierre-André Benoit shaped a distinctive bibliophilic identity for his press. This 1953 edition brings together a text by PAB and a reproduced drawing by Georges Braque, a meeting that lends the volume a quiet but unmistakable artistic charge. Its modest format heightens the intimate, concentrated quality of the whole. As so often with PAB, its strength lies in restraint, proportion, and sensibility rather than display. The very small limitation and PAB’s signature make this a desirable postwar illustrated book.
Ill Book
€600

Ferry, Jean
Le Mécanicien et autres contes
*Le Mécanicien et autres contes* is the book through which Jean Ferry, in 1950, gave his singular prose its decisive form. The collection appeared in a restricted bibliophilic edition and immediately acquired the aura of a cult book. André Breton contributed an important foreword, printed in red, explicitly placing Ferry near the surrealist sensibility. The volume brings together absurdity, dream logic, and an exceptionally precise narrative voice. Pierre Faucheux’s restrained yet thoughtful design heightens that tension between modernity and strangeness. As the first edition, it is a key book for collectors interested in the less orthodox branches of surrealism.
Book
€550

Éluard, Paul
L'Éternelle Revue, n° 1 et 2
L'Éternelle Revue stands as a monument of intellectual resistance during the Occupation of France. Compiled by Paul Éluard and published in the summer of 1944, these issues served as a moral beacon for the underground literary world. Printed clandestinely, they were originally intended to be dropped by parachute over occupied territory. The project bears witness to the indestructible power of the free spirit against oppression. For the bibliophile, these fascicles represent the ultimate symbiosis between poetry and political engagement. This specific lot contains the exceedingly rare first two issues in their original state. The fragile nature of the paper underscores the precarious conditions under which this work was produced.
Pamflet
€600

Aragon, Louis · Aveline, Claude · Morgan, Claude
Ensemble de trois volumes clandestins et publics des Éditions de Minuit (1943–1946)
This set of three slim octavo pamphlets captures the book’s wartime double life: two clandestine Éditions de Minuit publications issued under the Occupation, followed by a “first public edition” after Liberation. It comprises *Le Musée Grévin* (Aragon, under the pseudonym François La Colère; achevé d’imprimer 6 October 1943) and *Le Temps Mort* (Claude Aveline, under Minervois; achevé d’imprimer 1 June 1944), both printed “aux dépens de quelques lettrés patriotes” and regarded as the original clandestine editions. Completing the trio is *La Marque de l’homme* (Claude Morgan, under Mortagne), published in 1946 as the “première édition publique,” in a limited run of 2,000 numbered copies—this copy being No. 1, the first off the presses. Together, the volumes trace Minuit’s passage from perilous secrecy to postwar legitimacy, while retaining the urgency of the Resistance moment. Condition is notably fine: original wrappers preserved, two covers lightly sunned, interiors immaculate.
Book
€400
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