L'Afrique fantôme

L'Afrique fantôme [Phantom Africa]
Gallimard | Paris 1934 | 14 x 23 cm | original wrappers
The first edition, of which there were no large paper copies, an advance (service de presse) copy.
Covers and spine lightly sunned as usual, small lacks to upper edge of leaves in first gathering due to work being cut down.
32 photographic plates.
Rare autograph inscription signed by Michel Leiris to Roland (Tual).
An artist without works (except two films in 1941 and 1943 with Robert Desnos and Henri Jeanson), Roland Tual nonetheless exercised a major influence on a number of writers and artists of the avant-garde, serving as a sort of guardian angel for them.
He met Leiris at Kahnweiler's house when he was 18 and introduced him to André Masson, and later Juan Miro
and Antonin Artaud; he took part with them in the Surrealist adventure from 1924 to 1929. The "Pope" himself was floored by the outstanding intelligence of this man who "trepaned the works of his contemporaries." "Of all the Surrealist lot [as we were] after the War of 1914-18, [Roland Tual] was the most promising, on account of his intelligence, his irresistible charm and his extraordinary social ease and casualness - and also the only one who, inexplicably, left no writings behind him" (Michel Leiris).