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Ubu Roi

Name: Ubu Roi
SKU: UBUR-002
Price: 850 EUR
Availability: InStock

SKU UBUR-002

This edition of *Ubu Roi* brings together one of the founding texts of the modern avant-garde and the vivid, free graphic language of Pierre Alechinsky. Issued as the Centenary edition, it reproduces the text of the 1896 original while re-situating Jarry’s explosive drama within a distinctly bibliophilic framework. The book retains the material lightness of an issue in loose sheets, while the 26 illustrations give it a strong visual rhythm. The encounter between Jarry and Alechinsky is especially fruitful: both share a taste for disruption, grotesque energy, and playful subversion. The result is more than a reprint; it is a contemporary re-reading by a major artist. This copy on papier de chandelle, accompanied by a signed original lithograph, is among the most desirable deluxe issues of the edition. For the collector, it compellingly unites literary canon, artist’s book, and rarity.

Quantity

Jarry, Alfred

Alechinsky, Pierre

Ubu Roi

1996 | Fontfroide | Bibliothèque Artistique & Littéraire

A remarkable artist’s edition of Jarry’s most famous text, in which bibliographical exactitude and visual freedom reinforce one another with unusual force. This deluxe copy with original lithograph ranks among the most desirable states of the edition.

This edition of *Ubu Roi* brings together one of the founding texts of the modern avant-garde and the vivid, free graphic language of Pierre Alechinsky. Issued as the Centenary edition, it reproduces the text of the 1896 original while re-situating Jarry’s explosive drama within a distinctly bibliophilic framework. The book retains the material lightness of an issue in loose sheets, while the 26 illustrations give it a strong visual rhythm. The encounter between Jarry and Alechinsky is especially fruitful: both share a taste for disruption, grotesque energy, and playful subversion. The result is more than a reprint; it is a contemporary re-reading by a major artist. This copy on papier de chandelle, accompanied by a signed original lithograph, is among the most desirable deluxe issues of the edition. For the collector, it compellingly unites literary canon, artist’s book, and rarity.

€850

Condition Report:

In-Depth Study

References & Bibliography

Format

In-8 (Octavo) approx. 20 × 26 cm

Edition Particulars

One of 75 numbered copies on papier de chandelle, accompanied by a signed original lithograph.

Print Run

1000

Copy Number

No. 41

Paper

papier de chandelle

Inscription

Signed by the Illustrator

Product DETAIL

*Ubu Roi* remains a hinge-work of modern literature, at once parody, political grotesque, and verbal explosion. The drama undermines authority, good taste, and theatrical convention with a brutality that still feels strikingly fresh. Père Ubu is at once monster, clown, and caricature of power, which is precisely why he became an enduring cultural icon. In this edition, the text is restored in full as connected to its earliest puppet-theatre context of 1888. That gives the volume not only bibliographical value but also a strong historical awareness. The reader thus encounters a work that is both a classic and a still-living provocation.

ARTISTIC RELEVANCE

Alechinsky is an exceptionally apt illustrator for Jarry, because his spontaneous, nervous, elusive line moves between script, figure, and sign. His images do not explain *Ubu Roi* in a didactic way; they answer the text with an autonomous visual energy. What emerges is therefore not illustration in a merely decorative sense, but a genuine dialogue between two kindred imaginations. The 26 reproductions of drawings made especially for this edition firmly anchor the volume within the tradition of the modern illustrated book. The added original lithograph further gives this deluxe copy an additional artistic singularity.

AVANT GARDE CONTEXT

*Ubu Roi* is a major text of the proto-avant-garde and functions as a direct precursor to Dada, Surrealism, and the theatre of the absurd. Jarry’s destruction of logic, decorum, and political seriousness made the play a lasting touchstone of radical modernity. This Centenary edition underscores that historical role by returning to the original textual form and pairing it with an artist who himself emerged from the postwar avant-garde. Alechinsky, with his ties to CoBrA and experimental mark-making, deepens that genealogy in a compelling way. The book thus becomes a meeting point between two moments of avant-garde freedom.

PLACE IN THE OEUVRE

Within Jarry’s oeuvre, *Ubu Roi* is beyond doubt the central work, the point of greatest visibility and most enduring cultural influence. Yet it remains more than a famous scandal-play: in germ it already contains much of Jarry’s later pataphysical logic, linguistic deformation, and burlesque metaphysics. Any careful reissue of this text therefore carries the weight of a return to origins. In this edition, that canonical status is joined to a strongly articulated artist’s interpretation, so that the work appears newly alive rather than merely museum-like. For a Jarry collection, the book is thus both a foundational text and a high point in the modern history of its reception.

PUBLISHING CONTEXT

This edition was issued in 1996 by the Bibliothèque Artistique & Littéraire at Fontfroide as a Centenary edition, exactly a century after the original Mercure de France printing of June 1896. It reproduces the text of that first edition and presents it in an elegant octavo format, loose in sheets under illustrated wrappers. The issue was limited to 1000 numbered copies, of which only 75 on papier de chandelle were accompanied by a signed original lithograph. A clear distinction was thus created between the regular issue and a small, highly desirable deluxe run. The whole is exemplary of the late twentieth-century French artist’s book, in which fidelity to the text meets contemporary graphic intervention.

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