top of page

Les yeux fertiles. Avec un portrait et quatre illustrations par Pablo Picasso.

SKU LESY-001

A touchstone of Surrealism in which Éluard’s poems acquire a tender precision beside Picasso’s luminous line. This original edition unites poem and image on an intimate scale: a frontispiece portrait and four full-page compositions accompany the text without overwhelming it. The wraparound band, with its aphoristic line, weighs utility against the irreducible need for imagination. The poet–painter collaboration crystallises a fertile 1930s friendship. For bibliophiles, it is a model GLM production, sober, elegant, and exacting.

Quantity

Les yeux fertiles. Avec un portrait et quatre illustrations par Pablo Picasso.
1936 | Paris | GLM (Guy Lévis-Mano), G.L.M. [Guy Lévis Mano]
A rare, tightly focused meeting of text and image that preserves the edition’s original restraint. For readers of the Éluard–Picasso dialogue, this is a keystone.

A touchstone of Surrealism in which Éluard’s poems acquire a tender precision beside Picasso’s luminous line. This original edition unites poem and image on an intimate scale: a frontispiece portrait and four full-page compositions accompany the text without overwhelming it. The wraparound band, with its aphoristic line, weighs utility against the irreducible need for imagination. The poet–painter collaboration crystallises a fertile 1930s friendship. For bibliophiles, it is a model GLM production, sober, elegant, and exacting.

€320
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-12 (Duodecimo) approx. 17 × 22 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 1440 on tinted alfa paper; numbered copy 672; complete with the wraparound band.
Print Run
1500
Copy Number
672
Paper
Alfa teinté

Product DETAIL

The volume gathers poems that celebrate the beloved and the act of seeing. Sections such as La Barre d’appui and Grand air set rhythms of desire, openness, and motion. The tone is limpid yet dreamlike, images slide recur and shift. Gaze becomes substance as if words themselves gave off light. The plates act as pauses and counterpoints that guide the reader.

Au dépens des mots
Hugnet, Georges · Valentine, Hugo
Au dépens des mots

An exceptional oblong in-16 volume bound in a single tome, comprising three editions of Au dépens des mots, including the exceedingly rare tête-de-tête edition on nacré japon.

Illustrated Book
€3,200
Au rendez-vous allemand
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
Aphorismes et variétés.
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
Arbres des Tropiques
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
Studies & Dossiers
a2528886ab741f214e81c180bed24f0dd3fc06e8.png
When a Signature Becomes Provenance

A signature confirms; a dedication connects; an association copy tells a story.

a2528886ab741f214e81c180bed24f0dd3fc06e8.png
The Fragile Meaning of ‘Complet’

In auction descriptions, “complete” often sounds reassuring — but it is only meaningful when verified against the colophon, the justification, and the bibliography. For The Hidden Page, clarity begins where vague market language ends.

a2528886ab741f214e81c180bed24f0dd3fc06e8.png
The Avant-Garde and the Illustrated Word

How the Twentieth Century Recast the Book as an Artistic and Ideological Medium

bottom of page