PICASSO (Pablo) - CÉSAIRE (Aimé). - Lot 118

PICASSO (Pablo) - CÉSAIRE (Aimé). Corps perdu. Paris: Éditions Fragrance, 1950. - In-folio, 390 x 285: (6 ff. 2 first blanks), 123 pp. (4 ff. 2 last blanks), illustrated cover. In sheets, filled cover, parchment spine folder and publisher's slipcase. Cramer, no. 56. First edition of this poetic collection by Aimé Césaire, illustrated with 32 compositions by Pablo PICASSO (1881-1973) (1 etching on the cover, 1 magnificent full-page etching and drypoint depicting a head in profile, 10 aquatints and 20 burin engravings). This book is the fruit of an encounter as unlikely as it is fertile. It all began in 1948, at the World Congress of Intellectuals for Peace in Wrocław, Poland. Two major figures of the 20th century met there: the Martinique poet Aimé Césaire, champion of Négritude, and the Spanish painter Pablo Picasso, icon of the artistic avant-garde. Both were involved with the French Communist Party, but refused to bend their art to political directives. What do they have in common? A fascination with surrealism and African art, and a willingness to break with convention to denounce the violence of their time. For Césaire, Corps perdu is a plunge into the quest for identity by Black people, descendants of slaves in search of dignity. His poems describe the black man as a torn being, half-man half-beast, marked by colonial history. Picasso, for his part, responded to this poetry with hybrid engravings, combining human bodies, plant forms and sexual symbols. His illustrations, produced in 1949, evoke flower-women, plant-men, root-sexes - creatures both monstrous and poetic, like a visual echo of Césaire's words. According to Cramer, the influence of Wilfredo Lam, a Cuban painter close to Surrealism, is palpable in these burins. Picasso, who knew Lam well, used his dreamlike motifs, such as crescent-moon faces and half-animal, half-plant figures. André Breton, on his return from the West Indies, even suggested that Picasso illustrate the collection, thus sealing the collaboration between two artistic worlds. The edition was printed in 219 copies by Pierre Bouchet for the text and typography, and by Atelier Roger Lacourière for the engravings. A chapel copy, from the collection of the engraver Pierre Bouchet and then that of Pierre Jean Mathan, his successor, printed on Montval vellum, unsigned on the justification. It includes the following items: - Maquette with the portrait printed upside down: "Vallauris 15 décembre 1949". Double sheet, the second bearing the quotation in pencil: "Nègre nègre nègre du fond du ciel immémorial...". - P.A.S. by Aimé Césaire, one page in-8, giving the final approval for the phrase "Nègre nègre nègre depuis le fond du ciel immémorial...". "dated Paris, May 30, 1950. - Two identical handwritten lists of Césaire's poems for the collection. This interesting document, in an unidentified hand, perhaps that of the publisher or printer, mentions 20 poems considered for publication; only 10 were selected. - Typescript of the 10 poems in the collection, 30 pages in-4, each with cut lines and handwritten corrections, in the same hand as the two lists. All are complete except the second, Présence, for which the beginning of the text is missing. - Typescript of the 10 poems not selected for publication, 11 pages in-4, with corrections in the same hand. Includes: Mobile fléau - Cervelle armée - Maison-Mousson - À la face des foudres - Bucolique - Saison évidente - Spirales - Arborescence du naufrage - Sillage de la mémoire - Levée en masse. A very well preserved copy. A few rare brown spots. Provenance: Pierre Bouchet. - Pierre Jean Mathan.