Poèmes

First edition printed in 45 numbered copies, signed in pencil by Ania Staritsky, ours is number 29. Original collage accompanied by the manuscript initials GW on the wrapper, 5 original engravings, and text presentation by Ania Staritsky.

Wrapper composed of two cardboard boards joined by cords, five kraft paper booklets containing bifolia of thick white paper. The year "1964" is inscribed in pencil on the first booklet. One of the three cords is missing, otherwise a fine copy.

Laid in are Gerhard Weber's autograph visiting card, a clipped page from the bilingual French-German newspaper Pariser Kurier, and a postcard reproducing a work by Ania Staritsky, mentioned in an article in the newspaper. This is "Carrefour des routes," a work resulting from Staritsky's collaboration with the poet Gérard Dresdner.

The book as medium is a constant throughout Staritsky’s work. Having left the USSR for France at the age of seventeen, she “then settled in Brussels in 1932, where, after completing her training at the Institut supérieur des arts décoratifs in La Cambre, she worked as an illustrator for books, newspapers and advertising.” (Jean-Claude Marcadé, Dictionnaire universel des créatrices). Alongside her career as a painter and draughtswoman, she illustrated such classics as La Dame de pique by Alexander Pushkin (1947) and three volumes of Ronsard’s Amours (1950). During the latter part of her life, she “perfected her mastery of collage, tirelessly engraved on zinc, copper, lithographic stones, and linoleum” (Jean-Claude Marcadé, ibid.), creating artworks mixing typography and imagery. She collaborated with French poets and writers (among them Michel Butor, Eugène Guillevic, Pierre-Albert Birot, Albert Dasnoy, Jean Follain, Michel Seuphor and Pierre Restany) in the creation of bold and experimental livres d'artiste.

Rare copy of this livre-objet adorned with a collage, one of the techniques the artist favored in the later part of her life.