Marc CHAGALL - Original Print - Etching - The lover (A poem in each book Paul Eluard)

Artist : Marc CHAGALL (1887-1985)

Title : The lover, 1955

Medium : Etching on Arches paper

Type of work :  Original etching signed by hand by the artist in pencil in the lower right corner, and dedicated "For Louis Broder in memory". This work is an additional edition in large margins of the illustration 6 of the book tribute to Eluard "a poem in every book" published in 1956 at 120 copies. In the book the illustration 6 is positioned beside the poem of Paul Eluard "L'amoureuse" drawn from the part "mourir de ne pas mourir" of "capital de la douleur" (1926). The work here proposed comes from the album called "Album A", Printed separately from the book at 20 copies. Each album contains like the book 16 prints (including this work of Marc CHAGALL) but they were drawn with large margins and contrary to the prints of the book, all signed or monogrammed by the artists. The album that we have was the property of the publisher Louis BRODER. It is different from the others because it is enriched in addition to the 16 illustrations with large margins of many other prints collected by the publisher throughout his collaboration with the artists on this book.

Dimensions : 38 x 53 cm (Image 23 x 39,5 cm)

Condition : Good, Very slight foxing of barely 1mm at the top left. See picture 5.

Provenance : Genevieve et Jean Paul Kahn Collection

Expert's comment : Marc Chagall illustrates with this print one of the most beautiful and famous poems of Paul Eluard. In L'amoureuse, the poet evokes the perfect symbiosis existing with the beloved woman, a key subject of the surrealists. The work of Chagall proposed here, just like the poem, is moreover constructed in such a way as to show this symbiosis pushed to the extreme, almost unreal. As a result, we perceive in the characters a melancholy undoubtedly linked to a future source of suffering with the potential disappearance of this link which unites the two beings. In the same way in the poem, Eluard multiplies the imaginary images and ends in a somewhat dark way with this line: "She is swallowed up in my shadow".

The Album and the Book : Explanatory photo 1: Comparison between Album A offprint of "a poem in each book" printed in 20 copies and the book "a poem in each book" printed in 120 copies.
Explanatory photo 2: Album A offprint of 20 copies having belonged to the publisher Louis Broder contained in a gray canvas box with a label stuck on the back and the first cover.
Explanatory photo 3: Proof of printing of Album A which indicates the maximum number of copies of prints contained in total in the 20 albums as well as the names of the artists. It is annotated in red pencil "Editor's copy B" because it belonged to Louis Broder.
Explanatory photo 4: Original print signed and printed with wide margins by Pablo Picasso, contained in album A
Explanatory photo 5: Original print signed and printed with large margins by Max Ernst, contained in album A
Explanatory photo 6: Book "a poem in each book" printed in 120 copies, containing the 16 prints unsigned by the artists (signatures on the proof of printing of the book)
Explanatory photo 7: Print by Pablo Picasso on double page, unsigned contained in the book "a poem in each book"
Explanatory photo 8: Print by Max Ernst unsigned contained in the book "a poem in each book"

To discover in pictures the history of Album A and the rare prints it contains, click on the video below !

Biography of the artist : Marc Chagall is a painter and engraver born in Belarus in 1887. He studied at the School of Fine Arts in Saint Petersburg and then worked in a studio where he was a pupil of Léon Bakst.
It was in 1910, in Paris, that he discovered Fauvism, the movement of which was dying out, and Cubism, which had just been born. From fauvism he is inspired by joyful colors, from cubism by the deconstruction of the object. His native Russia and the Jewish culture in which he was immersed as a child are still present in his work. If it cannot be associated with a particular movement, since the artist prefers to mix styles, we nevertheless find in his work characteristics of surrealism and neo-primitivism.​

History of the book and the album : We advise you to read our blog "THE ALBUM OF LOUIS BRODER: A LEGENDARY PORTFOLIO".

About Paul ELUARD : We advise you to read our blog "PAUL ELUARD: THE CHOSEN ONE OF THE ART".

Some verses of the poem "the lover":
She's standing on my eyelids
And her hair is in mine,
She's shaped like my hands
She's the color of my eyes
She engulfs herself in my shadow
Like a stone against the sky.
...