Les Yeux fertiles
*Les Yeux fertiles* is one of the notable publications from Paul Éluard’s Surrealist period in the mid-1930s. The collection appeared in 1936 under the imprint of Guy Lévis Mano, the poet, typographer and publisher who played a significant role in French modernist book culture. It combines Éluard’s poetry with a portrait and four illustrations by Pablo Picasso, bringing text and image together in a distinctly avant-garde book. Éluard was by then a central literary voice of Surrealism, while Picasso, though historically rooted in Cubism, maintained close ties with the Surrealist circle. Their collaboration reflects the intense exchange between poets, painters and independent publishers in 1930s Paris. G.L.M.’s restrained typography reinforces the modern character of the volume without competing with either poetry or image. This copy, number 164 on tinted alfa paper, belongs to the regular commercial issue and remains largely unopened. As a conjunction of Éluard, Picasso and G.L.M., it is a compelling document of French Surrealist bookmaking.
Quantity
Éluard, Paul
Picasso, Pablo
Les Yeux fertiles
1936 | Paris | G.L.M. [Guy Lévis Mano]
*Les Yeux fertiles* brings together three essential forces of Parisian modernism: Éluard’s Surrealist poetry, Picasso’s visual language and Guy Lévis Mano’s refined bookmaking. This largely unopened copy on tinted alfa paper preserves the authentic regular state of a key 1936 publication.
*Les Yeux fertiles* is one of the notable publications from Paul Éluard’s Surrealist period in the mid-1930s. The collection appeared in 1936 under the imprint of Guy Lévis Mano, the poet, typographer and publisher who played a significant role in French modernist book culture. It combines Éluard’s poetry with a portrait and four illustrations by Pablo Picasso, bringing text and image together in a distinctly avant-garde book. Éluard was by then a central literary voice of Surrealism, while Picasso, though historically rooted in Cubism, maintained close ties with the Surrealist circle. Their collaboration reflects the intense exchange between poets, painters and independent publishers in 1930s Paris. G.L.M.’s restrained typography reinforces the modern character of the volume without competing with either poetry or image. This copy, number 164 on tinted alfa paper, belongs to the regular commercial issue and remains largely unopened. As a conjunction of Éluard, Picasso and G.L.M., it is a compelling document of French Surrealist bookmaking.
€350
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
Edition Particulars
Copy no. 164 on tinted alfa paper, one of the 1,240 commercial copies numbered 61–1300; without the original Picasso etching reserved for the ten copies on Japon impérial.
Print Run
1500
Copy Number
No. 164
Paper
alfa teinté
Inscription
No inscription
Product DETAIL
The collection brings together poems of love and dream in which the beloved, the body, the eye and sensory perception repeatedly serve as organizing motifs. The poems do not form a continuous narrative but unfold as a sequence of lyrical scenes, images and associations. Éluard allows concrete observation to pass into unexpected metaphor, giving familiar reality a dreamlike intensity. The title evokes eyes that do more than see: they imaginatively generate and make the world fertile. The human figure, particularly the beloved woman, often becomes the centre from which landscape, desire and inner experience are rearranged. The sequence of short poems moves between intimacy, eroticism, dream and expansive cosmic imagery. Picasso’s images do not literally illustrate a storyline but resonate with the poems’ focus on faces, bodies and transformation. The collection thus belongs to Éluard’s Surrealist exploration of love as a force capable of reshaping reality through imagination.
Éluard, Paul
Au rendez-vous allemand
Au rendez-vous allemand is one of the emblematic collections of Éluard’s wartime poetry. The book appeared in 1944 from Les Éditions de Minuit, the publishing house that, under the Occupation, became a moral landmark of the French literary Resistance. The volume gathers poems in which love, mourning, revolt and hope appear not as abstractions but as immediate necessities under German rule. The frontispiece, a portrait of the poet after Picasso, gives the book a powerful artistic signature: two voices of modern France, poet and artist, stand here in the same struggle. This is an ordinary, unnumbered copy, but signed by Éluard on the first page. That signature makes the book more than a Resistance document: it becomes a tangible witness to literary presence in a historically charged year. For the collector, it unites the clandestine aura of Minuit, Picasso’s name and Éluard’s own hand.
Illustrated Book
€350
Brillat-Savarin, Jean-Anthelme · Dufy, Raoul
Aphorismes et variétés.
An elegant *livre d’artiste* pairing Brillat-Savarin’s witty gastronomic aphorisms with twenty full-page original etchings by Raoul Dufy. Dufy’s airy, musical line lends the text a radiant cadence, turning the maxims into vignettes of conviviality and taste. Limited to 200 copies on Rives wove; this is no. 19, for the subscriber Mr Bernard-Beaumaine. Untrimmed copy with original covers and spine preserved, luxuriously rebound by F. Rousseau in 2001. Clear provenance enhances its appeal. Wrapper slightly toned; box with only the faintest rubbing. A refined encounter between culinary letters and modernist design.
Illustrated Book
€1,900
Michaux, Henri
Arbres des Tropiques
The first edition of a rare Michaux booklet: twelve pages of text followed by a suite of reproduced black drawings by the author. A compact atlas where observation meets inner theatre; shapes root and levitate at once. Printed on héliona de Navarre, which lends a satiny edge to the lines. This copy is luxuriously rebound by Miguet in red morocco with balsa boards and slipcase. Sources usually count 18 to 19 drawings, depending on method. A crisp, lucid book in which Michaux quite literally writes in images.
Illustrated Book
€1,150
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