111 - MAN RAY & Paul ÉLUARD. *Les Mains libres*. Drawings illustrated by the poems of Paul Éluard.

MAN RAY & Paul ÉLUARD. *Les Mains libres*. Drawings illustrated by the poems of Paul Éluard. Paris, Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1937. In-4: brick-red half-maroquin with small corners, smooth spine, untrimmed, gilt head, illustrated cover and spine preserved, slipcase (P.-L. Martin, 1963). First edition: this volume showcases the artist Man Ray and marks his second collaboration with Éluard following *Facile* (1935). Limited edition of 675 copies: one of 650 printed on Chester laid paper (no. 290). 67 full-page reproductions of Man Ray’s drawings, including a frontispiece. Man Ray also designed the title, which appears on the cover. 54 of these drawings are accompanied by poems by Paul Éluard. (Jeanne Bucher, an Avant-Garde Gallery 1925–1946: From Max Ernst to de Staël, 1994, p. 112, no. XIX.) Autograph dedication signed on the half-title page: To A. J. Gonon / his friend, / Paul Éluard This book boasts superb provenance, having belonged to a close friend of Éluard’s who affectionately nicknamed him “Ajigé”: Alphonse-Jules Gonon was not only one of the poet’s—and several other Surrealists’—regular bookbinders, but also a publisher to whom we owe one of Éluard’s earliest publications, *Le Devoir et l’Inquiétude*, in 1917. A beautiful copy in which four autograph poems by Éluard have been bound, each mounted on a tab opposite the printed text: “Plante-aux-Oiseaux” (eight lines, page 109); “Avignon” (two lines, page 121); “Des nuages dans les mains” (10 lines, page 133); and “Feu d’artifice” (two lines, page 151).