HIROSHIMA, SIGNED BY HERSEY, PENN WARREN, AND ARTIST JACOB LAWRENCE, "ONE OF THE BEST-KNOWN ARTISTS OF HIS TIME," WITH EIGHT FULL-PAGE COLOR SERIGRAPHS BY HIM
(LAWRENCE, Jacob) (WARREN, Robert Penn) HERSEY, John. Hiroshima. With a New Poem by Robert Penn Warren and Silk-Screens by Jacob Lawrence. New York: Limited Editions Club, 1983. Quarto, original full black morocco, original slipcase. $3200.
Limited edition of this "quietest and best" account of Hiroshima, number 868 of only 1500 copies signed by John Hersey, Robert Penn Warren and Jacob Lawrence, featuring eight full-page color serigraphs by Lawrence, in publisher's original full black morocco with original slipcase.
"The quietest and the best of all the stories that have been written about the most spectacular explosion in the time of man" (New York Times Book Review). "Hersey once described himself as a novelist of contemporary history… in 1946 he visited Hiroshima, interviewed survivors of the first atomic bomb attack, and published the New Yorker article which changed him profoundly. In Hiroshima… he drew from the victims themselves the understanding of history that had eluded him as a war correspondent. The six Hiroshima residents told him how they had lived before the bomb struck, why they were not killed, and precisely how illness, exhaustion and personal sorrow had qualified their survival" (Contemporary Novelists, 634). This exceptional volume is especially memorable in containing exquisite color plates by Black artist Jacob Lawrence, who died in 2000. "One of the best-known artists of his time," Lawrence also stands out as "one of America's leading modern figurative painters…. among the most impassioned visual chroniclers of the African American experience." In 2020 he was the subject of a landmark retrospective at the Met. "Artists have always doubled as historians… Lawrence's work will come to be seen as a juggernaut among American historical documents" (New York Times). Containing "a new poem by Robert Penn Warren"; eight original full-page full-color serigraphs by Lawrence. LEC 535.
Pristine, fine condition.