Max ERNST

Original photograph showing Max Ernst certainly during an exhibition. Vintage print.
On verso, printed stamp of photographer Jean-Philippe Charbonnier, with manuscript notations Max Ernst in blue pen and Walberg and v-1960 in pencil.

First edition in French, one of 15 numbered copies on Japon impérial paper, from the deluxe issue.
Discreet restorations at head and foot of spine, handsome copy.
Illustrated with a frontispiece by Max Ernst.

First edition, on ordinary paper, of the French translation established by Henri Parisot.
Handsome copy complete with its publisher's slip.
Autograph inscription signed by Henri Parisot to his surrealist colleague Georges Goldfayn.
Provenance: from the library of Georges Goldfayn.

First edition of the French translation, one of 50 numbered copies on vellum offset paper, the only deluxe copies.
Very handsome copy.
Cover illustrated by Max Ernst reproduced as frontispiece.

First edition in French, one of 25 numbered copies on Marais Crèvecoeur paper, deluxe copies.
Work illustrated with a cover by Max Ernst.
Handsome copy.

First edition, one of 150 numbered copies on vergé, this one not included in the justification, the only printing after 1 Chine, 10 Japon and 20 Hollande paper.
Rare and nice copy.
Illustrated with 3 drawings by Benjamin Péret and, as frontispiece, an original engraving on Chine paper by Max Ernst, the only one engraved by the artist.
Handsome autograph inscription signed by Benjamin Péret to Jacques Viot : " A Jacques Viot qui sonne utile tous les jours en jetant des assiettes to la tête des agents."

first edition for which it was not taken from large papers.
Binding to the bradel of the publisher in full cardboard, complete copy of its rhodoid that includes a tear in the head of the back.
Autograph signed by Max Ernst to Geneviève and Gaétan (sic) Picon decorated with a drawing representing three small birds.
Illustrated book of 120 reproductions of works by Max Ernst.
Pleasant copy.

First edition, one of 100 numbered copies on alfa paper, the only deluxe copies with some hors commerce also on alfa paper.
Iconography.
Work illustrated on the cover with a portrait of André Breton by Max Ernst.
Spine and covers lightly and marginally discolored, two small lacks at head and foot of covers.

First edition of the French translation, one of 60 copies numbered and justified by the publisher, frontispiece, the lithography Max Ernst shot in bistre on China and signed by the artist, only leading copies. One of the 20 copies in which there is an additional state of the lithograph drawn in blue on China and also signed by Max Ernst.
Stamp of the Alex Grall collection.
Rare and beautiful copy.
The

First edition in French, one of 750 numbered copies on alfama paper, the only deluxe copies after 25 on Marais paper and a few hors commerce copies.
Work illustrated with a cover by Max Ernst.
Spine and boards slightly and marginally discolored as is often the case, otherwise a handsome copy.

first edition on the current paper, the French translation.
autograph dedication of the author signed autograph of Joseph Breitbach Bernard Minorets.
Illustrated cover of a Max Ernst drawing.

First edition, one of 400 numbered copies on alfa alone draw with Japan 6 and 12 Holland.
Precious autograph signed by the author "Raymond Queneau and Janine (sic) their friend ..."
Illustrated book with a frontispiece of Max Ernst.

Important and moving set of three relics belonging to three prominent 20th-century avant-garde figures: Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, and Gala. Found by Cecile Eluard in the apartment of her mother Gala after her death.
- Iron cross of Max Ernst
- “Gri-gri” [trinket] of Paul Eluard in 1914: a blue hand-sewn pouch with a small photographic portrait of him in a helmet and one of his mother
- Gala's Orthodox medal with Saint Barbara, Saints Anthony and Theodosius on the back, mounted on a chain

Cologne, November 1921, almost three years after the armistice. Eluard and Gala, travel to Germany to meet Max Ernst in his studio, after having missed his great debut in France. "A single week was enough for Paul Eluard to consider Max Ernst as his brother." (D. Bona, Gala la muse redoutable). Gala is seen wearing Max Ernst's iron cross on two pictures immortalizing this crucial visit. The German painter and the French poet had both lived hell on the front:
“In February 1917, the surrealist painter Max Ernst and I were at the front, barely a kilometer apart. The German artilleryman Max Ernst was bombing the trenches where, as a French infantryman, I was standing guard. Three years later, we were best friends in the world and we have been fighting together ever since for the same cause: the total emancipation of man.”(Paul Eluard, Donner à voir)
This common trauma certainly brought the two artists together, creating between them a true brotherhood and artistic bond, beyond the abominations and absurdity of war.
Our set also contains a touching war relic, a tiny apotropaic scapular containing two miniature portraits: one of Paul Eluard, wearing a helmet, the other with a profile of his mother, Jeanne-Marie Grindel. This common kind of trinket was designed to ward off evil for the soldiers who wore them close to their hearts. Photographs of loved ones, gold coins or religious medals were a precious link between the battlefield and civil life. The religious medal in our collection belongs to Gala, who arrived in Switzerland in 1913. She entered the Clavadel sanatorium as Helena Diakonova and met the young Eugène Grindel, whom she married in 1917. She never separated from her talisman, an orthodox medallion with Saint Barbara on one side and Saints Anthony and Theodosius on the other.
"Max is [...] the best of friends. More natural, funnier, more seductive than most of his friends in Paris, handsome and delightful to be around, he is for Paul as well as for Gala, in that first week when they meet, charm itself. And what's more, Paul never stops telling Gala that Ernst is great. A very, very great artist, how can you not love him?” (D. Bona, op. cit.)
When Eluard returned to Paris, he was still in very high spirits. He worked with Ernst by mail on two poem collections: Répétitions and Les Malheurs des immortels. To celebrate this shared artistic success, Eluard and Ernst spent the summer together in Tarrenz, Tyrol with their wives and friends - including Tristan Tzara, Hans Arp and Sophie Taeuber. Ernst soon left the apartment he had rented with his wife to join Paul and Gala in their house by the lake:
“The Tzaras, the Arps, and Matthew Josephson witness an open romance: it is clear to everyone that Max and Gala are perfectly in love. They hold hands and take each other by the shoulders, they kiss, and prefer their solitude to group walks along secret mountain paths. [...] Gala for her part does not let Paul ignore anything either, and the poet cannot fail to see the impulse that carries his wife and his friend towards each other. Nonetheless he does nothing to oppose their affair. He is discreet and so complacent that he gives the impression of approving it. All the guests in Tarrenz notice it: Paul Eluard never tried to hold Gala back from an affair that he was the first to observe, even if he had to suffer for it. "You don't know what it's like to be married to a Russian woman!" he tells them, confiding [...] this admission of a much deeper and more complex heartbreak than that of a deceived and unhappy husband: "I love Max Ernst much more than Gala." [One thing is certain in the eyes of the guests in Tarrenz : Gala is not an issue between the two men. Ernst and Eluard, who get along wonderfully, are not rivals. She is the very pledge of their friendship, she is their mutual exchange, she is their common woman. They love each other through her." (D. Bona, Ibid)
At the end of the summer Eluard gave his own passport to Ernst, then banned from entering French territory. In early September, the painter illegally crossed the border to join the Eluards in Saint-Brice-sous-Forêt.
“Things are not all rosy in the ‘ménage à trois' anymore. Paul Eluard has become worried and no longer enjoys the ambiguities of sharing as much as he did in the early days. He still loves Max Ernst very much, he still loves Gala, but he has trouble finding his place between them. Are Max and Gala too much in love? He often feels cast out under his own roof, excluded by the love uniting his wife to his best friend. More and more often, he stays in Paris with the night owls of the gang, Aragon takes him to champagne clubs, in search of pretty girls and the oblivion of everything. He smokes, he drinks, but the party is sad. The dadas know it: Eluard is unhappy. (D. Bona, Ibid)
The Eluards left Saint-Brice for Eaubonne in early 1924. Ernst followed shortly after. In this "doll house" as Paul liked to call it, Max covered the walls of his studio with huge and magnificent frescos. On March 24, 1924, Eluard left the family home without warning. André Breton's wife Simone wrote in a letter to her cousin: “Eluard has been missing since Monday, taking 17,000 francs, and threatening his father via pneumatic message to kill the first person he would send to find him. The desire to leave grew more and more each day [...] He left. André says that he will never be seen again. Gala remains with 400 francs, the little one, and in an impossible situation because of Max Ernst”. No one knows where Eluard has run away, but he soon writes to Gala from Tahiti: “I'm bored. [...] But you will be consoled by the way I will love you. [...] You are the only precious one. I love only you, I have never loved anyone but you. I cannot love anyone else”. (May 12, 1924) This very Rimbaldian escape makes Gala regain her composure. She organized the sale of Eluard's works of art to get the funds needed to reach him: paintings by Juan Gris, Derain, Braque and Picabia, and three oil canvases by Ernst, who also wanted to join the fugitive. The trio reunited in Saigon a few weeks later. Far from being an exotic trip, this Indochinese escapade will put an end to the ménage à trois: Paul and Gala returned to Paris, Max stayed a while longer and left Eaubonne on his return to France.
In 1925 their illustrated poem collection Au défaut du silence was issued anonymously. This final creation emerged from their complex love story, with poems by Eluard and astonishing drawings by Ernst, is a vibrant tribute to their muse: "Gala appears powerful and terrifying, with her indecipherable mystery, opaque even to her lovers. […] Eluard's verses, both loving and plaintive, too lucid, echo Max Ernst's distraught drawings, a round of sharp, mean, unsympathetic faces, which tell his vision of Gala throughout these few pages, without any sympathy nor softness. It is his goodbye. Perhaps his farewell. At the same time as a last nod to Eluard, it is his letter of rupture to the fascinating and dark Gala, to her universe of Dostoyevskian dramas, to her dreams of impossible happiness." (D. Bona, op. cit.)
Provenance : Collection Paul Eluard - Collection Gala Eluard Dali - Collection Cécile Eluard - Collection Roger Dérieux

Original collage by Max Ernst made from different colored stamps, in the shape of a bird of prey with spread wings. The claws were drawn by the artist in pencil. Framed in a green mat, the collage in postcard format was originally placed on the twelfth plate of the enclosed album that belonged to Paul Eluard. The stamps that we were able to identify were produced between 1906 and 1913. The collage was probably made in the late 1920s or early 1930s. To our knowledge, it is the only bird of its kind made by Ernst from stamps, and it was most likely specifically created by the artist to pay tribute to his friend Eluard and his passion for cartophily. Werner Spies (Max Ernst - Loplop, 1997) also points out the presence of butterflies in other Eluard postcard albums, made using the same technique: "with their bodies and wings cut out of stamps, their legs and antennae added in ink".
The eagle chosen by Ernst echoes a beautiful poem by Eluard entitled "La Malédicition [The Curse]":

"An eagle, on a rock, contemplates the blissful horizon. An eagle defends the movement of the spheres. Soft colors of charity, sadness, gleams on the gaunt trees, lyre in spider web-star, men who under all skies are alike are as silly on earth as in heaven. And the one who drags a knife in the high grass, in the grass of my eyes, of my hair and of my dreams, the one who carries in his arms all the signs of shadow, fell, speckled with azure, on the four-colour flowers.” (Mourir de ne pas mourir – 1924 with a frontispiece portrait of Eluard by Ernst)

Throughout the poem, the bird of prey symbolizes the poet; in the collage it could be a self-portrait of Max Ernst. His friends frequently found his features similar to birds. The choice of an eagle motif could also be a political reference to Max Ernst's German origins. In any case, the creation of this collage coincides with the birth of Loplop, "the superior of birds", an alter ego of Max Ernst created after the whimsical figure of Ferdinand Lop.
"Like a mannequin, Loplop successively "tries on" various subjects that must be placed in the general context of an ever-changing creation. This leading figure embodies all genres by abolishing the boundaries between them. Characters, landscapes, flowers-shells, scenery and dramatic elements often appear simultaneously. The Loplop series is dedicated to mixing: combining and associating different motifs is one of the essential goals of surrealism, which tends to broaden the field of representation by disturbing the mind and the senses. [...] The identification with Loplop may have concerned only Max Ernst and been part of his personal mythology, but his Surrealist friends very quickly saw in this bird an alter ego of Max Ernst. Several sources testify to this, including a 1926 poem by Paul Eluard entitled Max Ernst: "Devoured by feathers and subjected to the sea / He let his shadow pass in flight / Of the birds of freedom" (W. Spies, op. cit.)

It is also known that Max Ernst was very familiar with Eluard's postcard albums and used the embossed ones to make his famous “fottages” (W. Spies, op. cit., pp. 71-72). Werner Spies goes further and states that Max Ernst contributed to the making of Eluard's albums (ibid, p. 32). This splendid bird collage that he offered him and its presence in our album therefore take on their full meaning here. It is not only a homage to Eluard's collection (using stamps as a reference to the art of epistolary correspondence), but especially a token of fraternal friendship between two prominent figures of Surrealism.

Included:

Exceptional album constituted by Paul Eluard, with 498 postcards artistically set on 83 pages. It is the only album in private hands from the famous collection of the poet. The others are now part of the French Musée de la Poste [Postal Service Museum]. This album was exhibited at the Musée du Jeu de Paume in 2008 along with the Max Ernst collage. Eluard's collection represented much more to him than a mere cartophilic whim: it became the means of a true artistic, political, and social expression.

Eluard (in Le Minotaure, no. 3-4, December 1933) described his collection as a surrealist manifesto, denouncing the enslavement of the masses by the prosaism of the image:
"Treasures of nothing at all, whose taste was given to the children through chromolithographs, stamps, images on chicory packages, catechism, chocolate wrappers or through those distributed in the Department stores, postcards quickly reached the masses by their naivety and more still, alas! by the kind of “levelling down” they established between the sender and the recipient. Among the billions of postcards [...] that circulated in Europe from 1891 to 1914, only few are beautiful, touching, or curious. We have searched for them relentlessly, trying to reduce as much as possible the enormous part that discouragement could make to the excess of imbecility, to the lowest comic, to the horror, sublimating the reasons of a deep, inevitable pessimism." « Trésors de rien du tout, dont le goût était donné aux enfants par les chromos, les timbres, les images de chicorée, de catéchisme, de chocolat ou par celles, en séries, que l'on distribuait dans les Grands Magasins, les cartes postales plurent rapidement aux grandes personnes par leur naïveté et plus encore, hélas ! par l'espèce d'égalité par en bas qu'elles établissaient entre l'envoyeur et le destinataire. Parmi les milliards de cartes postales […] qui circulèrent en Europe de 1891 à 1914, il en est peu qui soient belles, touchantes ou curieuses. Nous les avons recherchées avec acharnement, en essayant de réduire autant que possible la part énorme que le découragement pouvait faire à l'excès d'imbécillité, au plus bas comique, à l'horreur, en sublimisant les raisons d'un pessimisme profond, inévitable. » (P. Eluard, « Les plus belles cartes postales »)
The different types of postcards listed by Eluard in Minotaure all appear in our album containing glittery flowers, gaudy butterflies, explicit female nudes, small Napoleons and other jokes revealed by animated cards. Numerous images also bear witness to the racist and sexist stereotypes of the time, featuring the "types" of the colonies or mocking the alleged female ignorance in sexual matters.
The poet recreates an entire microcosm condemning the absurdity of the world and social inequalities:
"Commissioned by the exploiters to distract the exploited, postcards are not popular art. At most, art's and poetry's smallest currency. But this small change sometimes gives the idea of gold." (ibid.) « Commandées par les exploiteurs pour distraire les exploités, les cartes postales ne constituent pas un art populaire. Tout au plus la petite monnaie de l'art tout court et de la poésie. Mais cette petite monnaie donne parfois idée de l'or. » (ibid.)
"Gold" is precisely the result of this meticulous collection and careful arrangement of "ready-made" images forming a unique poetic language. The album's visual construction alternates between contrasts and analogies, similar to Max Ernst's collage-novels and surrealist “cadavres-exquis”.
Provenance : Collection Paul Eluard - Collection Gala Eluard Dali - Collection Cécile Eluard - Collection Roger Dérieux

«Masque» - Original aquatint signed by Max Ernst
1950, 31.5 x 50 cm, single sheet
Original aquatint by Max Ernst signed in pencil on bottom right by the artist. Autograph pencil note to bottom left: "BAT (avec fond)".
A handsome proof on vergé d'Arches paper of this original aquatint engraved by Max Ernst in 1950 and only printed 20 years later in the workshop of Georges Visat in 100 numbered copies and signed [Spies/Leppien, 38]. This copy is the contract proof of the engraving.
Two small pinholes to top left and bottom right of subject, as on all the plates in the printing.

Louis Broder & Cie, Paris 1965, 21 x 25.5 cm, loose in chemise and slipcase.

First collective edition, one of the 150 numbered copies on vélin cuve de Rives paper, the only printing with a few hors commerce copies reserved for the contributors.
A fine copy published to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the death of René Crevel.
With 14 original illustrations: 1 woodcut by Jean Arp, 2 drypoints by Hans Bellmer and one by Valentine Hugo, a lithograph by Wols, and 9 etchings by Max Ernst, Camille Bryen, Man Ray, Wifredo Lam, Alberto Giacometti, Oscar Dominguez, André Masson, Joan Miro, and Stanley William Hayter.
Manuscript signatures in pencil of all the illustrators to front of volume, except Wols and Oscar Dominguez, who had died prior to publication.

La Maison de la peur [The House of Fear]


Henri Parisot | Paris 1938 | 12.5 x 17.5 cm | original wrappers
First edition, one of 100 copies on Le Roy Louis teinté de Champagne paper, the only printing following 20 on Holland paper.
With a preface and three full-page collages by Max Ernst.
A good and rare copy.

Lead printing block: «Je crois qu'il faudra battre l'eau»

1926 | 11.5 x 16.5 cm | one lead printing block

Exceptional original printing block of an unpublished collage signed and dated 1926 within the form of the block. Although several original collages have been put up for sale, we have not found any mention of other printing blocks that enabled Max Ernst to produce his collage novels.
Only the original collage, signed and dated in ink and bearing the caption on paper glued under the engraving, has been indexed in Benjamin Péret's collection. (As the document attached to the panel stamp shows, inserted in a pocket behind the wooden panel stamp)
This composition fits perfectly into chapter VI of Max Ernst's first collage novel published in 1929: La Femme 100 têtes (he Hundred Headless Woman). Indeed, it has all of the characteristics of the work's other engravings, the size of the panel stamp, the disaster theme, the absurd caption, the size of the font and the exact positioning of the text under the image. It was not, however, used in the novel and we do not know of any print of this work. Only the original collage, signed and dated in ink and comprising the caption in the form of paper glued under the engraving, has been listed in Benjamin Péret's collection (as the document attached to the panel stamp shows, inserted in a pocket behind the wooden panel stamp).
This collage belongs, therefore, to theseries of original works that Max Ernst did not want to include in his collage novels and which he offered to his friends (Eluard, Breton...). However, this particular work differs from the other original collages by several elements that link it to the production of La Femme 100 têtes.
In the first instance, the absurd caption glued on the bottom uses the form and font of the captions in the novel, whereas the other unused collages – that we have been able to consult – do not have captions. However, unlike several of the captions in La Femme 100 têtes, which are Ernst's surrealist creations (indeed he gathered them together in 1959 in the La Femme 100 têtes poem), the caption of the collage offered to Péret originated itself from a textual collage.
It is the beginning of a phrase taken from the short story by the Countess of Ségur, Mémoires d'un âne: «I think that we have to beat the water to get the fish to come over.» We note that this printing block reveals that the caption of the collage – the «letter» – is an integral part of the panel stamp, since it is included in the printing block and not printed separately.
Whereas on the original collages Max Ernst signed in pencil under the engraving; the signature and date in the body of the work are characteristic of the «novel,» most of the plates of which comprise a small scratched surface
where Ernst's signature is found printed on the plate.
It appears, thanks to this printing block, that this deletion of the date and the attribution of the work is carried out after the mould printing, which still includes the date and signature in perfect printing state. However, it is mostly the very production of this block that is the determining element putting this work in an artistic research separate from other unpublished collages.
Max Ernst started working in 1921 on this artistic collage technique, already present in the Cubist works, that used the intrusion of reality in pictorial representation. However, Max Ernst's collages exclude reality by assembling heterogeneous representations of the same nature, wood engravings, without concern for scale or plausibility. The artist, therefore, is not looking to reproduce the Cubist «pasted paper» effect, but rather to create a work in which the external elements blend in entirely with the composition, as Aragon analyses in Les Collages:
«The elements he borrows are mostly drawn elements, and it is the drawing that collages most often replace. Here, the collage becomes a poetic process, perfectly opposable in its objectives to the Cubist collage, whose intention is purely realist. Ernst borrows his elements in particular from printed drawings, advertisement drawings, dictionary images, popular images, newspaper images. He incorporates them so well in the painting that sometimes we do not suspect them, and sometimes the opposite, everything seems collage, both with a meticulous that art the painter applied himself to establish the continuity between the foreign element and his work.»
Yet, this combination of elements will only be accomplished by the fundamental stage of photo-engraving. Indeed, when in 1929 Ernst decided to produce a graphic novel, he changed the perception of his first art works. As Julien Schuh notes in his work, Quelles traditions pour le livre d'artiste surréaliste?: «The original collage, produced with scissors and glue, remains a composite and imperfect object, marked by the difference in the papers used, their thickness, the cutting imperfections, the greyed out text and drawings that appeared transparent.»
The collages that display their creationprocess, therefore retain, despite everything, the structure of the Cubist pasted papers. However, with the intervention of photo-engraving, Ernst creates new homogenous works whose heterogeneous nature is no longer evident at a first glance.
The block reintroduces unity between the elements of the work that once again become one engraving. He thus creates a entirely new work whose aesthetic resonance differs radically from the original collages.
We have not been able to find, for comparison purposes, other collage blocks by Max Ernst, only the original works or the printed works remain on the international market. Yet, our panel stamp highlights Max Ernst's choice to produce these blocks in «relief printing,» in other words only the reliefs are inked, unlike intaglio where the ink builds up in the metal hollows. In this way he reproduces the technique of printing on wood as a raw material and thus ensures perfect graphic fluidity between the elements.
The collage offered to Péret was therefore at a very advanced stage of integration in his collage novel but was, in a sense, incomplete. This lead printing block appears as the last and necessary step in producing Ernst's desired transformation from composite art work to homogeneous graphic art. Finally, in his cuttings, Max Ernst has preserved the name of one of the illustrators, Philippoteaux, which can be found inscribed on the bottom left of the main piece. By introducing his own signature to the body of the engraving at the same level as that of the 19th century illustrator,
Ernst disowns the incomplete work and becomes an illustrator alongside the others, thus liberating the work of its creator: the ultimate Surrealist gesture.
However, in the collage novel, all of the names inscribed on the plates, including his own signature, will be roughly censored by the artist. A last minute damnatio memoriae or the transformation of an individual work showing its creative heterogeneity, into the simple element of a new work, a graphic novel, with origins explicitly denied by the blank left in place of signatures.
Remarkable testimony of the final stage in the creation of Max Ernst's first collage novel. Unique object, as much for its absence in extremis from the final work as for its particularly significant double signature.

ERNST, MAX
Invitation card to an exhibition of works by Max Ernst at the Creuzevault Gallery
Galerie Creuzevault, Paris 1958, 14.5 x 19.5 cm, single sheet
A rare invitation card for an exhibition of works by Max Ernst held at the Galerie Creuzevault from 17 January to 15 February 1958.
The card is illustrated with a reproduction of one of Ernst's works and has, inside, extracts from poems by Ernst.
Tiny wormholes, not serious, to foot of right-hand part.

VVV. Poetry, Plastic Arts, Anthropology, Sociology, Psychology n°1, n°2-3 & n°4, complete setComplete first edition of this periodical written by French surrealists during their exile in New York. Complete set of four issues in three volumes.
Very small marginal tears on the three volume covers and on the leaves of the fourth issue.
Complete fourth issue with the engraved plate in relief by Marcel Duchamp, entitled “Allégorie de genre”.
Covers by Max Ernst, Marcel Duchamp (Nos. 2&3) and Roberto Matta (No. 4).
Contributions by André Breton, William Carlos Williams, Roger Caillois, André Masson, Benjamin Péret, Max Ernst, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Aimé Césaire, Charles Henri Ford, Arthur Cravan, Leonora Carrington, William Seabrook, Victor Brauner...
Illustrations by Giorgio de Chirico, Max Ernst, Roberto Matta, André Masson, Pablo Picasso, Yves Tanguy, Marcel Duchamp, Wifredo Lam, Dorothea Tanning, Marc Chagall, Oscar Dominguez, Jacques Hérold, Joan Miro...

Unpublished handwritten and signed postcard from Max Ernst to his friend Joë BousquetUnpublished handwritten and signed postcard from Max Ernst, 21 lines written in blue ink in a compact, elegant hand.
Several strikethroughs and underlinings in Max Ernst's hand.
Photograph of the work 68 by Max Ernst on the recto, representing busts of two women and which are painted with two numbers forming the figure “68.” We have not located another copy of this postcard, which does not appear to have been put on sale. Two original photographs representing each of the busts are catalogued in the André Breton collection under the entry “Working photo album for La Révolution surréaliste” and were produced around 1929 (Vente Breton 2003, batch 5085). These photographs do not seem to have been selected to illustrate the periodical.
Important handwritten card signed by Max Ernst addressed to Joë Bousquet, attesting to the unswerving friendship between the two artists over several decades.
During the Battle of Vailly in May 1918, Lieutenant Joë Bousquet, aged 21, was hit by a German bullet in the spinal column; severely paralyzed and bed-ridden for the rest of his life, he set up lodgings at 53 rue de Verdun in Carcassonne. During the interwar period and the Second World War, Joë Bousquet opened his home to the most emblematic intellectual figures of the 20th century: Gide, Valéry, Aragon, Éluard, Michaux, Paulhan, Ponge, Simone Veil... Certain illustrious surrealist painters also made the journey to Carcassonne: Magritte, Ubac, Bellmer... It is estimated that 150 canvases and drawings were gradually affixed to the walls of the “great wooden underwater cabin” (Pierre Guerre), where one could view side by side the work of Arp, Bellmer, Brauner, Chagall, Dali, Derain, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Kandinsky, Klee, Lhote, Magritte, Malkine, Masson, Michaux, Miró and Picabia. But Bousquet reserved pride of place for the works of Ernst, collecting 28 of his canvases, collages and drawings. It was through Gala, then married to Paul Éluard, that Max Ernst first met this recumbent figure in Carcassonne.
From then on Ernst made frequent visits to Bousquet (“I do not yet know if my destiny will take me to the vicinity of Carcassonne this winter”). He had several of his paintings and collages sent to him: “I am sending you two photos of Loplop so that you can see them.” Loplop, the dreamy bird that had haunted Ernst's collages since 1928, was a true poetic double of the artist. This alter ego appeared for the first time in the painter's collage novels La Femme 100 têtes and particularly Une semaine de bonté, a work he evokes here: “I will soon forward, I hope, a book that I have just finished.” He adds: “It is hardly necessary to tell you that I'm looking forward to receiving yours.” The book in question here is Une passante bleue et blonde.
Important unpublished handwritten postcard, and a moving testimony to the intellectual bond and special friendship between Max Ernst and Joë Bousquet until the latter's death.

first edition of this exhibition pamphlet for which no large papers were taken.
Autograph signed by Max Ernst to Gaetan (sic) Picon decorated with a drawing representing a curious creature.
Works illustrated with reproductions of works by Max Ernst.
Pleasant copy, as usual, small traces of rubbing on the bit.

Edition for Spectreuses, full version Behind his double, one of 333 copies on vellum "bouffant" paper.
Binding of the editor in full red fabric, smooth back, first shown flat irons, full copy of its rhodoïd which has no defect.
Our copy, as he stipulated to the justification of the draw is full of original etching by Jorge Camacho he justified and signed.
Book illustrated with a frontispiece of Jacques Hérold and Max Ernst drawings.

Edition illustrated with 7 colored plates by Paul Eluard and 32 reproductions of Max Ernst's collages, one of 610 numbered copies on alma Marais, the only printing.
Spine and covers marginally sunned, internally good.

New edition.
Illustrated with 182 reproductions of works by Max Ernst.
A good copy.

With seven color plates by Paul Eluard and 32 black and white reproductions of collages by Max Ernst. One of 610 numbered copies on alma Marais, the only printing.
Two small traces of insignificant sunning to head and foot of spine.

Éluard Paul & ERNST Max. Les Malheurs des immortels [Misfortunes of the Immortals]
éditions de la revue Fontaine, Paris 1945, 16,5 x 22,5 cm, original wrappers
Second edition, one of ten numbered copies on Madagascar paper, this one unnumbered but justified “Madagascar”, leading copies.
With 22 reproductions of original collages by Max Ernst.
A very good copy.

ERNST Max. Journal d'un astronaute millénaire [From the Diary of a 1,000 Year Old Astronaut]
Alexandre Iolas, Paris 1969, 25 x 22 cm, original wrappers
First edition, printed in 1,215 copies on vélin d'Arches paper, one of the 55 first copies numbered and justified by the publisher.
This copy, as stipulated in the justification, retains its 2 frontispiece original lithographs by Max Ernst, signed by the artist.
With 50 reproductions of works by Max Ernst.
Printed ex-libris to head of one endpaper.
A fine copy.

First edition.
Contributions by René Char, René Crevel, Salvado Dali, Paul Eluard, Max Ernst, Benjamin Peret, Yves Tanguy, André Thirion and Tristan Tzara.
A good and rare copy.

First edition in French, one of 1000 numbered and justified copies by the publisher, the only printing with 20 deluxe copies.
Work illustrated with a frontispiece by M. Ernst, handsome copy.