Le cheval de 4

Extremely rare first edition printed in 32 numbered copies of the first issue – only three were published – of this journal presented by the group “Les Réverbères.”

Small marginal tears on the boards as well as the top and bottom of the spine.
Unique copy complete with the two double-page color supplement (missing and unknown in the already preserved rare copies).
This journal of exceptional visual and literary quality marks one of the last productions of the French artistic avant-garde before the start of the German oppression.
Le Cheval de 4 was published during 1940 by a collective of Dada artists, the “Réverbères” club. This club was founded in 1938 in the painter Jean Marembert's workshop by the literary critic Michel Tapié de Céleyran, cousin three times removed of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. The members of the club, amongst which were the neo-dadaist writers Jacques Bureau, Pierre Minne and Henri Bernard, denounced the denomination of Surrealism in the French literary landscape and campaigned for the rehabilitation of Dada at impromptu evening parties in the Montparnasse district.
With the same objective, they published this typically Dada journal, designed and produced on a small scale in an entirely traditional manner. The pages of Cheval de 4, the first issue in this collection, are real typographical masterpieces, combining literary texts using humour and vibrant color wood engravings. There are magnificent puns and spoonerisms, recapturing the extravagant spirit of the Dada pioneers, Tristan Tzara or Marcel Duchamp.