Celle que J'amais seul m'aime encore.... from: Planches du Salut

Louis Marcoussis

This impression is plate 8 from the 1931 suite of 11 etchings titled “Planches du Salut” (Plates of Salvation). The portfolio was printed in a total edition of 77 impressions as follows: 1 on Japan paper with the set of etchings in all states and proofs of the cancelled plates; 10 on Japan with an extra set on Arches (this impression), numbered 2/11 - 11/11; 60 on Arches; and 6 hors commerce (HC).

The Cubist planes in this print are created only by lines, not shading. This is a pencil signed proof from an edition of 11, before the plate number was added to the lower left. In the portfolio "Planches du Salut" Marcoussis pays homage to some of his favorite writers: Baudelaire, Dostoyevsky, Rimbaud, Shakespeare, Gerard de Nerval, and Apollinaire with the poems selected by the artist.

The title for this work roughly translates to "The one I love still loves me.." and was the beginning of a poem.

Provenance: This impression was offered for sale by the William H. Schab Gallery, Inc, catalogue 62, item 69, page 97, illustrated. The catalogue entry states:

"...in 1930 and 1931 Marcoussis executed suites of etchings for two books: Gérard de Nerval's 'Aurélia' and Tristan Tzara's 'Planches du Salut.' Dieter Koepplin in the exhibition catalogue 'Kubismus' comments that in these etchings Marcoussis' cubist forms 'tend toward a surrealist suggestiveness.' This tendancy is apparent in the work of most important artists of this circle. Surrealist artists had found in turn new paths opened by the cubist idiom. In works such as the present, the flat transparent planes and rhythm of cubism with the empty spaces and dreamy mysterious shapes of surrealism."