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Arenberg Auctions

613 - Mordicus. [Illustrated by] Jean Dubuffet.
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Estimate €500 - €700
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Description
Mordicus. [Illustrated by] Jean Dubuffet. In-8°. - First edition printed in rubber lettering and illustrated with 10 full-page puzzle figures hatched in dark blue and bistre by Dubuffet (1901-1985). In 1957, Dubuffet had already collaborated on the publication of 2 collections by the poetess and had retained a happy feeling of symbiosis: "Thus, the familiar and childlike writing adopted by Kay Sage (not forgetting Dubuffet's eminently fanciful drawings), constructs, according to the illustrator, a veritable "poetics" of indigence, understood as the poetic alloy of formal brevity [..] in which 'Sage and Dubuffet write and draw despair, hidden behind the false naivety of a child's simulacrum'", cfr. lisaf.org). Fifth and last collection of poems, written in French, by the American painter and poet Kay Sage (1898-1963), widow of Yves Tanguy, published a year before she committed suicide and Dubuffet's first involvement in PAB's work: "Dubuffet had twice refused to collaborate with PAB, even arguing, in 1959, that he was hostile to illustration, a hybrid and arbitrary combination in his view. It was not PAB's recently printed books that persuaded him to change his mind, but the illustrated manuscripts, produced without 'bibliophilic' primping or seduction" (Coron). - One-piece cover ("the title of the work is spread out in all directions on the first and fourth covers in an almost obsessive manner, sometimes extending beyond the limits imposed by the covers, even to the point of biting into the spine of the book", cfr lisaf.org). Edition of 253 unnumbered copies on cream vellum. - Ref. PAB 415. - Coron, Le Fruit donné, p. 44-45. - http://lisaf.org/project/sage-kay-mordicus.
See original version (French)
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About the sale Prints & Drawings, Photographs & Comics, Rare Books, Atlases & Manuscripts, Surrealism, Congo, Erotica & Ballets russes
Auction location
Auction time 06/25/2026 at 1:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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