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Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627)
Twenty poems. Translated by Z. Milnern these poems are engraved in Spanish and adorned with twenty hors-texte pages by Pablo Picasso. Paris, "Les Grands peintres modernes et le livre", 1948
In-folio, in sheets, with editor's cover in red-printed and tucked Auvergne paper, with folder and case
Limited print of 275 : this one one of the 235 on Marais paper with artist's Gongora watermark.
41 Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627)
41 etchings and sugar aquatints by Pablo Picasso : 20 portraits and 20 poems with historiated frames and the author's name engraved in the full sheet
Beautiful print bearing the inscription :
Pour Madame and Max Pellequer
>Picasso
PARIS le 23.12.48
with an additional India ink and inkwash portrait of a young woman in profile in full sheet, in the same vein as the work's illustrations.
"Here is a book whose importance is bound to be recognized [...]. Assembled here are twenty sonnets by Luis de Gongora y Argote (1561-1627), one of the major, if not the major poet from the Sapnish golden age.
The French translation accompanies the Spanish transcription by Picasso, who illustrated them with the author's portrait followed by nineteen feminine portraits. Picasso's transcriptions are completed by comments. The portraits, in sugar-lift aquatint and etching, manifest the author's supreme ease as an engraver. Each sonnet is treated in the same way, with two typewritten pages (title and text) and two engraved pages: the structure of this large format book is simple. The beauty of the sheets and the density of the Castilian poems in Picasso's incisive handwriting make it one of his most beautiful artist's books. [...] For this first large 'Spanish' book, dedicated to a poet who grabbed every opportunity, grave or futile, to fashion a sonnet, Picasso managed to make of these wildly varying poems - heroic, amorous, burlesque and mournful, a monument diametrically opposed to a tomb.
A supreme vitality runs through it. (Antoine Coron)
(Coron, De Goya a Max Ernst, 2018, no. 60.-Goeppert-Cramer, no. 51 : "Picasso shared his peers' admiration for El Greco's paintings, and Gongora's poetry. Having discovered, that same year, the aesthetic of writing through the Chant des Morts, handwritten by Reverdy, he copied the Spanish text of 20 sonnets chosen by Milner and adorned them with many comments. [...] Each poem is prefaced by a full-sheet engraving."- Paul Bonet notebooks, no. 1668.)
