Verve No. 1 - An Artistic and Literary Quarterly

Multiple Artists

The inaugural issue of the first year of its publication, Verve's Winter 1937 cover was designed by Henri Matisse. The content features four color lithographs by the artists Ferdinand Léger ("The Four Elements: Water"), Joan Miro ("The Four Elements: Air"), Abe Rattner ("The Four Elements: Fire"), and Francisco Borès ("The Four Elements: Earth"), all printed by Mourlot.

Writings include those of Gide, Bataille, Huyghe, Heine, Caillois, Dos Passos, Garcia Lorca, Malraux, Michaux, Vollard, and Matisse. Photographs include those of Brassaï, Man Ray, Blumenfeld, Nora Dumas, Florence Henri, Eli Lotar, Emile Gos, Marcel Bovis, and Dora Maar. This copy is accompanied by its original issuing box.

Excerpted from the website for DTMAGAZINE ["Magazine of the Week: Paris and the Art World of the Late 1930s in Verve magazine", Rick Gagliano, 10/12/06]. "When it comes to quality in the magazine process, possibly no other magazine can match the work of publisher Efstratios Teriade (born in Greece as Efstratios Eleftheriades) and his seminal publication, 'Verve' -- once called 'the most beautiful magazine in the world' by one of its backers - which first burst onto the streets of Paris in December of 1937 . . . .

Teriade, an ex-law student with more zeal for the art world and publishing than the law worked variously with fellow countryman Christian Zervos on Cahiers d'Art (1926-31), as art critic for the newspaper L'Intransigeant (1928-33), artistic director of Minotaure (1933-36) and co-founder (1935-36) of La Bete Noire before founding Verve with the financial assistance of David Smart, publisher of Esquire and Apparel Arts. . . . The magazine, a quarterly review of arts and letters, was lavish in design and challenging in content. Teriade's view of the world of art and literature was personal, bold and compelling.

The 38 issues that proceeded through Europe's war-torn years and ended abruptly in 1960 were a promenade of covers and interior art by Chagall, Bonard, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and other distinctive artists of the Paris School. Photographs by Man Ray, Dora Maar, Matthew Brady, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Blumenfeld graced many pages and accompanied articles and prose by luminaries of none less identity than John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Andre Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Albert Camus and others of note, often the presented artists themselves."