Poèmes, 1952

Nicolas de Staël   Famous Artists

Nicolas de Staël & René Char
Poèmes. Paris, [Aux Dépends de l'Artiste], 1952.

Artist's book including poems by René Char, taken from the collection The Sprayed Poem and 15 original printed works by Nicolas de Staël (14 woodcuts and a color lithograph for shirt).
Edition of 120 copies. One of the 90s on large Arches vellum, n ° 85 signed in felt-tip pen by Char and Nicolas de Staël in colophon.

René Char and Nicolas de Staël met at Georges and Marguerite Duthuit's at the beginning of 1951: very quickly, the idea was born of a collaboration around a book. For this first illustrated book, de Staël creates his woods without knowing the texts that will accompany them. The artist is first of all very impressed by the poet, and writes to Jacques Dubourg: "On the whole, this man is made of dynamite whose explosions would be tanned with calm softness. All the pundits rush to him without restraint, Braque alone has discretion. He has Matisse dragged around who sends him sixty watercolors which he does not like, chooses from a bundle of more than two hundred drawings by Miró and so on [...] But I absolutely cannot succeed that is, and cannot ask him frankly what he is going to do. Twenty poems or sixty pages of prose, on painting in general or on my apple in particular "(In the poet's studio, p. 651). He began to work his wood in July 1951: "I hit it as quickly as possible with 120 gouges".

René Char, recovering in Briançon, saw the creation through the letters of his friend: "I see our book from here between rock and stars with lucid and purified eyes". Seeing the engravings, he associates with each of them a piece from his collection The Pulverized Poem, which had already been the subject of a publication, thus sacrificing nothing to his habit which consisted, for his large illustrated books, to constitute them from old poems, which he modified or assembled differently.

Nicolas de Staël gives his opinion on the paper to be used: "the whole book will be on Arches, the suites on old Japan and an English vellum which keeps a shine when drying but sets the black on perfectly". Nicolas de Staël is worried, because it is his first "luxury book"; more experienced on the question, his friend reassures him: "you did a very impressive real work there". The book was completed in November 1951. The work, built on the black-white opposition, which we find not only in the woods but also in the architecture of the book, where illustration and text are never face to face , seems to be unanimously appreciated. It is thus one of the rare books "entirely assumed" by its illustrator, de Staël, papers, characters, woodwind printing, case, all under his own choice.

“We must give painting lovers a taste for painter's books. Made from start to finish by a painter. No more decoration. These were the words of Nicolas de Staël (1913-1955) to the merchant Théodore Schempp, shortly after the publication of Poèmes.