Tristan Tzara: De Memoire d'Homme

 

Pablo Picasso

  1881 - 1973 (biography)

1950  

nine lithographs bound into book of poetry by Tristan Tzara 

images: various; book: 12-7/8" x 10" x 7/8" 

unsigned 

No. 127 (out of 300 numbered 31 - 330) 

typeset text throughout 

Bloch 665; Mourlot 187 

cream Arches wove 

published 

Bordas, Paris 

REMC101 

$4,000.00 

"In 1949 the founder of the Dada movement, Tristan Tzara, asked Picasso to contribute illustrations to his recently completed book-length poem “De mémoire d’homme.” To create his images, Picasso experimented with a new technique, using his finger rather than a lithographic brush as the painting instrument. He also limited himself to three types of mark making: the fingerprint or spot, the line “painted” with the finger, and the line drawn in lithographic chalk. By doing so, he draws a direct analogy between the written and pictorial mark: just as words are created from a finite repertoire of letters, his illustrations are created from a finite repertoire of marks." (Susan Greenberg Fisher, Picasso and the Allure of Language, New Haven, CT; Yale University Art Gallery, 2009)