L’Amour la poésie

A magnificent provenance for this “endless book,” dedicated to Gala, at the very moment Man Ray began his relationship with Lee Miller. From then on, the two couples remained close, spending three “warm” summers together at La Garoupe, alongside Nusch and Paul Éluard, Ady Fidelin, Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, and Pablo Picasso and Dora Maar.

Éluard and Man Ray collaborated in 1936 on Facile, and Man Ray illustrated Les Mains libres the following year. After his American years, Man Ray returned to France only shortly before Éluard’s death, and the two nonetheless resumed their collaboration.

Man Ray had a copy on pink paper of À toute épreuve, published by Éditions Surréalistes in 1930, bound in at the front of the volume.

“Trémois” does not appear in Fléty, but it probably refers to the gallery M.-P. Trémois, run by Madeleine and Paul Trémois on avenue Rapp, active until 1932. Two other identically bound copies from Man Ray’s library are known: one of Le Point du jour, inscribed by Breton, and another of Aragon’s Traité du style. It is likely that Man Ray himself commissioned the binding, and that his library accompanied him to the United States, where he lived from 1940 to 1951. The volume contains an old label from an American bookshop, where the copy was catalogued, dated “NY 1950”: before returning to Paris, Man Ray would therefore have sold all or part of his library there. The copy was probably acquired at that time by Henri Hoppenot, the French ambassador to New York, and subsequently remained in the diplomat’s library, from which it comes.

Copy in a simple contemporary binding; some foxing to the copy of À toute épreuve; spine of the boards faded.

Provenance: Man Ray (presentation inscription); Henri Hoppenot (sale, Paris, 2024).