Frontispiece by Picasso.
One of only 70 copies on tinted Normandy vellum, numbered and signed by the publisher.
Signed presentation inscription: “à Suzanne Hugon, avec la vive sympathie et les compliments amicaux de René Char.”
This copy is enriched with a photograph by Man Ray: a portrait of Georgette Char, to whom Dépendance de l’adieu is dedicated, with an autograph note by the poet on the verso, “Georgette Char, 1934” (gelatin silver print on Kodak Bromesko paper (115 x 170 mm), the paper Man Ray used after the war for reprints of his photographs).
Many poets sought refuge with the Éditions GLM in the second half of the 1930s. The young artisanal house, then beginning to attract attention for its typographic interpretations, offered a welcome that the Surrealists found neither at Corti, nor at Denoël, nor at Hilsum’s Sans pareil, nor at La Belle Page, nor even at the Éditions surréalistes. Through them, Guy Lévis Mano met André Masson, Salvador Dalí, Joan Miró, Max Ernst, Pablo Picasso and Yves Tanguy, who entrusted him with original drawings: the drawing given by Pablo Picasso for this Dépendance de l’adieu is unpublished, and suits both poet and publisher perfectly. The perfection of the typography alone ensures the proper reading of the page, as Guy Lévis Mano intended. This helps explain how decisive this period of artistic collaboration proved for the future of the Éditions GLM and for the convictions of the typographer who led it (Sandy Rémy, L’Œuvre typographique et éditoriale de Guy Lévis Mano, 2009).
The “Repères” series comprised twenty-five issues, published between July 1935 and August 1937. Each volume was illustrated with a frontispiece by a different artist. This is the first book by Char published by Guy Lévis Mano, and the first book illustrated by Picasso for the young printer. Les Yeux fertiles followed in October, for which Picasso provided a portrait of Éluard and four illustrations. Moulin Premier, by Char, followed in the summer of 1936.
The R & B. L. collection preserved a manuscript of the poem — a fair copy, undated (Sotheby’s, 26 April 2016, no. 141).