APOLLINAIRE Guillaume Calligrammes. Poèmes de la paix et de la guerre (1913-1916). Ondes – Étendards – Cas d’armons – Lueurs des tirs – Obus couleur de lune la tête – La Tête étoilé.

Talvart-Place, I, p. 80/15 ; Connolly, Cent livres-clés de la littérature moderne, nº 32.

First edition.

Sonia Delaunay’s own copy, bound by her and for herself, her only embroidered binding and one of two or three of her bindings still in private hands.

Copy of the current issue on regular.

Calligrammes is the second major collection of the soldier-poet's most daring innovations.

"Some of the best war poems in any language are gathered in this collection, alongside experimental works such as Les Fenêtres (close to cubism) and La Jolie Rousse, which were far ahead of their time". André Breton praised the "rocket-gladiolas, bursting like muslin roses in this "splendid collection of meteors […]. This work, while remaining in the popular tradition of graffiti, on the borders of the art of writing and the art of painting, inaugurates a series of experiments […]. The poet has become a herald (Connolly).

Unique binding by Sonia Delaunay made in 1921 on her return from Madrid "in memory of Guillaume Apollinaire", whom she never saw again after her departure in 1914.

It is her only embroidered binding, and the only one in private hands (of the four and last bindings) she made on her return to Paris after World War I. Made for her own pleasure, these special copies were part of her personal library: "I bound the books I liked" (Sonia Delaunay, Collages de Sonia et Robert Delaunay, xxe siècle, n°6, January 1956, p 19).

Rarity:

Sonia Delaunay's bindings are extremely rare and most are held in public collections. At the time of the exhibition "Sonia et Robert Delaunay" in 1977 at the French Bibliothèque Nationale, the catalogue listed "all the known bindings", including ten cut paper bindings (1913-1914), three painted bindings, and a binding of cloth glued to sheep leather (for the proofs of Ricciotto Canudo's Les transplantés), which, along with the present embroidered binding, is the only known binding by Sonia Delaunay assembling cloth.

In 1922 and 1923-1924 she also produced two sewn leather bindings (for Ledentiu Faram [Iliazd] and for De nos Oiseaux [Tzara]), and one in black sheep without decoration for the proofs of Détours (Crevel). A recent census by the MNAM accounts 23 bindings by Sonia Delaunay from her first series (1912-1914) and only four (including the 3 leather-bound ones mentioned above, all in the MNAM, as well as the present one) from her second series (1921-1924).

Exhibitions:

– Livres en broderie, reliures françaises du Moyen-Âge à nos jours, Bibliothèque Nationale de France / Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, 1995-1996, no. 127.

– Surrealism [the Daniel Filipacchi Collection without mentioning the name]: Two Private Eyes, Guggenheim museum, New York, 1999, n° 771.

Provenance:

– Sonia Delaunay

– Edmée Maus (book plate)

– Daniel Filipacchi

– Julien Bogousslavsky.