53 - Marie LAURENCIN (1883–1956). 7 letters, addressed to Roger ALLARD, written from Berlin, Düsseldorf, or Paris, 1920. Set of 12 pp., in-4 or 8 format, mounted on tabs and bound into a small in-4 volume, blue half-maroquin with corner caps (Huser).

Marie LAURENCIN (1883–1956). 7 letters, addressed to Roger ALLARD, written from Berlin, Düsseldorf, or Paris, 1920. Set of 12 pp., in-4 or 8 format, mounted on tabs and bound into a small in-4 volume, blue half-maroquin with corner caps (Huser). These letters exude a very special charm—spontaneous, full of original insights, and veiled sensitivity. They were written during a stay in Germany in 1920. First, Berlin: “a bit distressing. Misery—debauchery—boredom.” “A dreadful city,” she concludes, were it not for a circus “with ten elephants, perhaps two hundred horses, and camels, and Black people.” She works with colored pencils. “I draw unhappy angels.” And then a host of small, seemingly unrelated notes: “You have no idea how beautiful I find Paris.” She would accept life in the countryside “if I lived in the present moment, but this mind—which is my mind, my possession—is never with me—once every three months I feel it on my shoulders—while swimming, too… and I’m constantly missing something.” She wavers between the South of France and Paris and admits: “I’m quite easily influenced, and LA FRESNAYE moved me. Back then, I was awful to him”… In Düsseldorf, where she is staying after Berlin, she suddenly finds herself “quite isolated there and far from the world—a feeling of desolation right down to my fingertips… and paintings in the making. Above all, a tenant in an ideal apartment.” The letter ends with this confession: “Selfishness is with me.” It was from Düsseldorf that she oversaw the publication of her book *EVENTAIL*, edited by Roger Allard. And it was he who came up with the idea of decorating the cover with a fan bearing the names of writer friends. Marie Laurencin fears that this idea of “putting the names on a fan might be too much like advertising.” As for the choice of poets, she isn’t interested. “My utter ignorance sets me apart from all of you in literature and also in painting.” She has, however, read some verses by Valéry Larbaud “purely by chance. I liked them. I don’t know him.” She has read nothing by Paul Valéry. As for Roger Allard, let him do as he pleases—“I don’t care.” She plans to work on the ten drawings for the illustration in Düsseldorf and then have them engraved in Paris. “Without LABOUREUR to prepare things for me. “I’m stupid,” and it is also Laboureur whom R. Allard must ask for advice on setting the price of the volume. Her life in Germany is spent “in work and chastity”; she is beginning to love her “convent,” which is “blue and madder pink.” And Marie Laurencin has this lovely exclamation about blue and pink—which are, par excellence, her colors, evoking all her art on their own: “You don’t know what it’s like to leave behind blue and pink—to leave behind colors! It takes a long time to balance them and find them—to bring them together. Oh! The day I have my own colors in Paris, perhaps I’ll stay. Colors are in space.” The last letter, written from Rue de Penthièvre, where Marie Laurencin had returned, is intended to tell R. Allard that his verses, as published in the N.R.F., are “more than a delight—truly lovely and enchanting,” and she concludes this lovely missive on blue paper as follows: “I’m still a troublemaker and I’m still painting. Your friend, Marie.”