Roue libre
Roue libre is an important artist’s book by Pierre Alechinsky in Skira’s Les Sentiers de la création series. The title suggests movement without constraint: a free turning of line, memory, text and image. Alechinsky appears here not only as painter or printmaker, but as an author commenting from within his own visual universe. The richly illustrated edition reveals how his work emerges from traces, margins, circular movements, calligraphic impulses and unexpected associations. Skira’s series was designed precisely for such hybrid books, in which artists could unfold their method, imagination and studio-thinking in book form. This copy belongs to the numbered hardbound issue of 1000 copies and is numbered 554. It is therefore a strong and representative collector’s object from Alechinsky’s mature period, at the intersection of the Cobra legacy, informal art and the self-reflective artist’s book.
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Alechinsky, Pierre
ALECHINSKY Pierre
Roue libre
1971 | Genève | Albert Skira
This numbered copy of Roue libre is an important entry into Alechinsky’s creative method. The rich illustration, Skira series context and hardbound edition of 1000 copies make it a strong document of the postwar artist’s book. Number 554 preserves Alechinsky’s freewheeling in a clear and collectible form.
Roue libre is an important artist’s book by Pierre Alechinsky in Skira’s Les Sentiers de la création series. The title suggests movement without constraint: a free turning of line, memory, text and image. Alechinsky appears here not only as painter or printmaker, but as an author commenting from within his own visual universe. The richly illustrated edition reveals how his work emerges from traces, margins, circular movements, calligraphic impulses and unexpected associations. Skira’s series was designed precisely for such hybrid books, in which artists could unfold their method, imagination and studio-thinking in book form. This copy belongs to the numbered hardbound issue of 1000 copies and is numbered 554. It is therefore a strong and representative collector’s object from Alechinsky’s mature period, at the intersection of the Cobra legacy, informal art and the self-reflective artist’s book.
€260
Condition Report:
In-Depth Study
References & Bibliography
Format
In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm
Edition Particulars
One of 1000 hardbound and numbered copies.
Print Run
1000
Copy Number
No. 554
Inscription
No inscription
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Edition Particulars:
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Product DETAIL
Roue libre is neither a novel nor a linear essay, but a richly illustrated exploration of Alechinsky’s own visual world. The book combines text, reproductions, drawings and visual documents to show how his painting and graphic work come into being. Its centre is movement, line, paper, margin, sign, memory and the associative logic of making. The reader follows not a plot with characters, but a route through motifs and working processes. The title, “freewheeling”, suits the structure: the book moves from observation to image, from image to thought and from thought back to graphic impulse. The content is therefore at once autobiographical, artistic and poetic. It presents the studio not as a closed place, but as an open route in which seeing, drawing and writing continually drive one another forward.
Char, Rene · Stael, Nicolas de
Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé
*Arrière-histoire du poème pulvérisé* is a later illustrated edition of a key text in which René Char looks back on the genesis and inner background of *Le Poème pulvérisé*. Published in 1972 by Imprimerie Union, it opens with a colour frontispiece by Nicolas de Staël. The pairing of Char and de Staël is especially charged: two post-war voices, each seeking concentration, clarity, and rupture in his own medium. This copy is one of only six hors commerce copies on Arches and is signed. The autograph presentation inscription to Doctor Marcel Zara, with poetic quotation and October 1972 dating, makes it a deeply personal copy.
Ill Book
€920
Ruscha, Edward · Ruscha, Ed
Some Los Angeles Apartments
Some Los Angeles Apartments is one of Ed Ruscha’s iconic early artist’s books, devoted to the banal architecture of Los Angeles. Instead of monuments, drama or urban glamour, Ruscha shows ordinary apartment buildings, coolly photographed and without visible sentimentality. This second edition of 1970, printed in 3,000 unnumbered copies, confirms the wider circulation of his conceptual book form. The small format, sober wrappers and original glassine wrapper make it an essential Ruscha object.
Ill Book
€950
René Char, Georges Braque · Lachaud, Mariette · Pierre Andre Benoit (PAB)
Ainsi va l'amitié
What makes this copy especially memorable is not only its tiny limitation but the way it fixes three friendships at once: that between Char and Braque, that between Char and PAB, and that of all of them with the image that outlives them. The eight original photographs are not an illustrative supplement but the true bearers of presence; they preserve gazes, workspaces, and silences. The fact that PAB and Mariette Lachaud signed this copy gives it an almost confidential status, as though the circle of makers were still present within the book. In such editions, bibliophily becomes more than rarity alone: it becomes a form of shared memory.
Ill Book
€4,500
Mari, Paul · Goetz, Henri
L’emploi du temps
L’emploi du temps is a modest yet notably appealing poetry book from the late 1960s. Paul Mari’s text is given particular weight by the presence of Henri Goetz, whose signed original colour engraving moves the volume into the field of the modern artist’s book. Published by Éditions Chambelland in 1969, it appeared in a limited issue on pur fil paper. This copy, number 22 of 50, belongs to the deluxe variant with original print. It is made more distinctive by Paul Mari’s autograph presentation inscription to Susy Solidor, a figure with her own charged place in twentieth-century artistic and social culture. The combination of small limitation, signed print, inscription and avant-garde context makes the book relevant to The Hidden Page, even if Mari is less canonical than his illustrator.
