Connaissance de Paul Bonet ... à l'Occasion d'une Présentation de Ses Reliures à la Galerie Giroux ... &c
Bonet, Paul. Gaffé, René
Brussels. Des Presses de A. Lesigne [for] Galerie Giroux. 1933
An excellent copy of the scarce catalogue of the exhibition of bindings by Paul Bonet together with the original invitation to the exhibition.
From the edition limited to 300 copies.
The exhibition, held at the Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels, was from 4th to 14th March, 1933. The introductory text, laudatory in the extreme, is by René Gaffé, one of Bonet's principal customers during his early years of innovation. The Giroux exhibition incorporated some of Bonet's most innovative - at least up until that time - bindings, several of them from Gaffé's own collection. The composition of the bindings, innovative in their own right, liberate the binding from tradition and utilise it as a further plane of expression. Those bindings displayed promote in particular Bonet's masterful use of different metals as both a material to incorporate and for the whole binding itself and demonstrate his mastery of pictorial typography as decoration.
René Gaffé (1887 - 1968) was a Belgian patron, collector, journalist, businessman, friend to the Surrealists and the author of influential critical texts. An inspired collector, Gaffé assembled an exceptional collection of books and manuscripts and an unrivalled body of paintings by the most important Paris-based artists of the day. A number of paintings owned by Gaffé, many acquired directly from the artists, were sold by Gaffé's widow at Christie's in 2001 to benefit UNESCO (as directed by Gaffé in his will); the sale included exceptional early paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Miró, Arp, Ernst and Léger, as well as de la Fresnaye, Magritte (a portrait of Gaffé himself) and others.
René Gaffé's extraordinary collection of books, the majority featuring the ex-libris designed for him by Paul Bonet, were sold in 266 lots in 1956. A friend and patron of Bonet, it was Gaffé who introduced Bonet to Surrealism in the early 1930s and was instrumental in Bonet's development of bindings making use of metal (several are included in the present catalogue) and of the later spectacular Surrealist photo-montage bindings (for obvious reasons not included here).
This catalogue is rare and we can locate few examples: MoMA in the US, Montreal in Canada, Waseda in Japan and Lausanne-Dorigny in Switzerland only.
From the edition limited to 300 copies.
The exhibition, held at the Galerie Georges Giroux in Brussels, was from 4th to 14th March, 1933. The introductory text, laudatory in the extreme, is by René Gaffé, one of Bonet's principal customers during his early years of innovation. The Giroux exhibition incorporated some of Bonet's most innovative - at least up until that time - bindings, several of them from Gaffé's own collection. The composition of the bindings, innovative in their own right, liberate the binding from tradition and utilise it as a further plane of expression. Those bindings displayed promote in particular Bonet's masterful use of different metals as both a material to incorporate and for the whole binding itself and demonstrate his mastery of pictorial typography as decoration.
René Gaffé (1887 - 1968) was a Belgian patron, collector, journalist, businessman, friend to the Surrealists and the author of influential critical texts. An inspired collector, Gaffé assembled an exceptional collection of books and manuscripts and an unrivalled body of paintings by the most important Paris-based artists of the day. A number of paintings owned by Gaffé, many acquired directly from the artists, were sold by Gaffé's widow at Christie's in 2001 to benefit UNESCO (as directed by Gaffé in his will); the sale included exceptional early paintings and sculptures by Picasso, Miró, Arp, Ernst and Léger, as well as de la Fresnaye, Magritte (a portrait of Gaffé himself) and others.
René Gaffé's extraordinary collection of books, the majority featuring the ex-libris designed for him by Paul Bonet, were sold in 266 lots in 1956. A friend and patron of Bonet, it was Gaffé who introduced Bonet to Surrealism in the early 1930s and was instrumental in Bonet's development of bindings making use of metal (several are included in the present catalogue) and of the later spectacular Surrealist photo-montage bindings (for obvious reasons not included here).
This catalogue is rare and we can locate few examples: MoMA in the US, Montreal in Canada, Waseda in Japan and Lausanne-Dorigny in Switzerland only.
[10 unnumbered leaves]. Small 4to. (241 x 180 mm). Four leaves with Gaffé's text, final verso of text and following leaves with monochrome reproductions of photographs of twelve bindings by Bonet, final leaf verso with a reproduction of a photograph of a cabinet with fifteen bindings by Bonet. Original publisher's grey paper printed wrappers stapled as issued, titles in black to front cover, justification verso, printer's credit to foot of rear wrapper.
#48772
