Calligrammes
Chirico, Giorgio de. Apollinaire, Guillaume
Paris. Librairie Gallimard. 1930
Unique hand-coloured copy with the lithograph for the front wrapper and each of the lithographs in the book hand-coloured by de Chirico in delicate shades of water-colour.
From the edition limited to 131 copies signed by the artist, with this one of 25 hors commerce copies on Chine marked 'exemplaire chine' and numbered in Roman numerals.
Ciranna cites another copy hand-coloured by the artist: 'Nella vendita di libri illustrati moderni realizzata il 6 Giugno 1968 all'Hotel Drouot di Parigi figurò l'esemplare n. IV di CALLIGRAMMES, su carta madreperlacea del Giappone, con tutte le litografe nel testo acquarellate ... '. (Giorgio de Chirico, Catalogo dell'opera grafica, 1921 - 1969, pg. 38).
'Chirico drew the composition directly onto the stone, and said of his work for CALLIGRAMMES that he was inspired by memories of the poet whose writings he had read avidly.' (From Manet to Hockney - Modern Artists' Illustrated Books).
'This edition of Calligrammes, with its spacious pages and deliberately eccentric typographic design, seeks to express in visual terms the rhythm of the verse.' (The Artist & the Book: 1860 - 1960).
'Apollinaire had intoned of suns, moons and stars. And de Chirico thought of Italy, of his cities and his ruins, and he saw the suns and the moons return over the earth, after being extinguished in the sky, like peaceful enigmas, and rekindling in houses, or beneath porticos, or stoking fires and new lives ... It is a metaphor for death and life, for the regeneration of art and of ideas, which like the phoenix are continually reborn from their ashes. A spent sun always ignites another sun, to which it is linked by a mysterious thread.' (Paolo Balducci - Georgio de Chirico, Betraying the Muse, de Chirico and the Surrealists, June 8th - July 8th, 1994).
[Ciranna 17 - 82; Manet to Hockney 84; Castleman 180; Logan 105; Artist & the Book 57].
From the edition limited to 131 copies signed by the artist, with this one of 25 hors commerce copies on Chine marked 'exemplaire chine' and numbered in Roman numerals.
Ciranna cites another copy hand-coloured by the artist: 'Nella vendita di libri illustrati moderni realizzata il 6 Giugno 1968 all'Hotel Drouot di Parigi figurò l'esemplare n. IV di CALLIGRAMMES, su carta madreperlacea del Giappone, con tutte le litografe nel testo acquarellate ... '. (Giorgio de Chirico, Catalogo dell'opera grafica, 1921 - 1969, pg. 38).
'Chirico drew the composition directly onto the stone, and said of his work for CALLIGRAMMES that he was inspired by memories of the poet whose writings he had read avidly.' (From Manet to Hockney - Modern Artists' Illustrated Books).
'This edition of Calligrammes, with its spacious pages and deliberately eccentric typographic design, seeks to express in visual terms the rhythm of the verse.' (The Artist & the Book: 1860 - 1960).
'Apollinaire had intoned of suns, moons and stars. And de Chirico thought of Italy, of his cities and his ruins, and he saw the suns and the moons return over the earth, after being extinguished in the sky, like peaceful enigmas, and rekindling in houses, or beneath porticos, or stoking fires and new lives ... It is a metaphor for death and life, for the regeneration of art and of ideas, which like the phoenix are continually reborn from their ashes. A spent sun always ignites another sun, to which it is linked by a mysterious thread.' (Paolo Balducci - Georgio de Chirico, Betraying the Muse, de Chirico and the Surrealists, June 8th - July 8th, 1994).
[Ciranna 17 - 82; Manet to Hockney 84; Castleman 180; Logan 105; Artist & the Book 57].
[142 leaves; pp. 269, (3)]. 4to. (330 x 258 mm). Half-title, printed title with original lithograph vignette, leaf with achevé d'imprimer, leaf with Apollinaire's dedication ('A la mémoire du plus ancien de mes camarades') to René Dalize and Apollinaire's verse divided into 6 sections with title for each ('Ondes', 'Etendards', 'Case d'Armons', 'Lueur des Tirs', 'Obus Couleur de Lune' and 'La Tête Etoilée'), 2 leaves with 'Table', leaf with details of the first edition of Case d'Armons and leaf with justification, illustrated with 68 original monochrome lithographs by Giorgio de Chirico (including the wrapper and the title-page) each coloured by the artist by hand in watercolour. Printed text in red and black throughout with headline and marginal notes in red and occasional vignettes and musical notation in blue. Sheet size: 324 x 246 mm. Full black crushed morocco by Henningsen with his signature gilt, title gilt to spine, board edges ruled in gilt, red suede doublures and endpapers, original wrappers with lithograph and backstrip preserved, red cloth wool-lined slipcase.
#46465
