78 - [Max ERNST]. Joë BOUSQUET, Michel TAPIÉ.

[Max ERNST]. Joë BOUSQUET, Michel TAPIÉ. Max Ernst. Paris, René Drouin, 1950. In-4, paperback, illustrated gilt-edged cover, modern navy blue paper slipcase. First edition, including two original signed color lithographs by Max Ernst. Beautiful exhibition catalog from the Drouin Gallery, published at the expense of Heinz Berggruen. It is illustrated with 11 full-page compositions and 10 reproductions of works, in addition to the two original lithographs at the beginning. This was the first exhibition in Europe of Max Ernst’s American works. Limited edition of 58 copies on Montval paper. A personalized copy printed for Henri Michaux, signed by the artist. Max Ernst was one of Michaux’s greatest admirations, as he revealed in a 1956 letter to Patrick Waldberg: “Max Ernst and Paul Klee, at about the same time, when I was twenty-four, introduced me to painting. Until then, I had rejected it with hostility. I hated painters more than anyone else, seeing them as the willing accomplices of cumbersome reality and its appearances, which are all too apparent and all-encompassing (even the Cubists had never transcended them—quite the opposite). Finally, through Ernst and Klee, I saw something like what lay beneath the surface. It was a path, a hope.” As for Joë Bousquet, the poet visited him during the exodus, like so many others: “This visit, which HM had planned through Ballard a few years earlier, now took on a different meaning. There were many, in those days, who passed through the dimly lit room of Bousquet, the man wounded in the other war and, ever since, paralyzed for life. He seemed to embody a truth that eluded them. [...] “He’s someone,” HM said laconically of Bousquet in a letter to Ballard. Nothing about the others” (Jean-Pierre Martin, p. 335). Cover partially sun-faded.