ILLUSTRATED AND SIGNED BY HENRI CARTIER-BRESSON WITH AN ORIGINAL PHOTOGRAVURE AND ORIGINAL FOLIO LITHOGRAPHS

ARAGON, Louis. Le Paysan de Paris. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1994. Folio, original publisher’s Japanese silk and slipcase. $1650.

Signed limited edition, number 212 of 300 copies signed and illustrated by Henri Cartier-Bresson, with an original photogravure frontispiece and seven original lithographs. Hand-bound in Japanese woven silk.

Originally published in 1926, The Peasant of Paris was the outstanding achievement of Aragon’s Surrealist period. In it Aragon compares a poet’s love for his city to a peasant’s love for his land. A great admirer of the novel, Cartier-Bresson chose to illustrate this work for the Limited Editions Club. “My concern is to allow one’s imagination to develop according to nature; to forget oneself, and to abandon thought, in drawing as well as in photography. At the same time allowing the unconscious and one’s sensibility to function together so that a geometry, inspired by the subject, can affirm itself into a beauty of form.” With an afterword by Cartier-Bresson. Beautifully printed on Velin Arches paper and hand-bound in woven Japanese fabric. With the original prospectus laid in.

Fine condition.