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an old book with a brown cover and a blue stripa white book with black writing on the cover of itan ink drawing of a dragonfly resting on a piece of paperan image of a drawing of an eye on a piece of paperan image of a black and white drawing of a boat in the water
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72 - Max ERNST. Natural History. Paris, Jeanne Bucher, 1926.
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Estimate €3,000 - €4,000
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Description
Max ERNST. Natural History. Paris, Jeanne Bucher, 1926. Folio-sized album, loose-leaf, in the publisher’s portfolio bound in blue half-percale, with a printed title label mounted on the front cover, fastened with laces. First edition. Limited edition of 306 copies: one of the 250 copies on vellum (no. 59), numbered and signed by the artist. An important album of 34 frottages by Max Ernst reproduced by phototype and with a preface by Jean Arp: “A Surrealist Cosmogony” (Werner Spies). They were selected from over a hundred frottages produced by Max Ernst in 1925–1926. In *Histoire d’une Histoire naturelle* (1937), he explained his discovery of the frottage technique on 10 August 1925, placing a quotation from Leonardo da Vinci at the beginning of his essay: “It is like the tolling of a bell that makes one hear what one imagines.” Ernst added drawn elements to his rubbings of natural objects. Of Max Ernst’s rubbings and the paintings that resulted from them, Breton remarked: “Here again, surrealism—and not reality—will reassert itself.” The second volume published by Jeanne Bucher (1872–1946), one year after Jean Lurçat’s *Baroques*. (Jeanne Bucher, an avant-garde gallery 1925–1946: from Max Ernst to de Staël, 1994, pp. 91–92, and No. II, pp. 95–98.) A fine, complete copy. Plate XIV is duplicated. The portfolio’s calico cover has been restored.
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About the sale Henri Michaux, the Sven Pitsey collection
Auction location
Auction time 10/29/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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