Le Chien de cœur
A remarkable presentation copy inscribed by Miró to Gisèle Prassinos, with an original drawing:
“Pour Gisèle, hommage d’amitié, Miró, VI/69.”
In May 1968, while France was shaken by political and social unrest, René Char suffered the first of a series of heart attacks. The experience inspired Le Chien de cœur, written that summer at Les Busclats and published the following year. Its six poems explore, among other themes, the distortions of modern society and the widening distance between man and nature.
Gisèle Prassinos, younger sister of the painter Mario Prassinos, emerged as a remarkable figure of Surrealism while still a teenager. Her automatic writings attracted the attention of the Surrealists through Henri Parisot; Man Ray photographed her reading her poems at the Café Dynamo, and her work appeared in Minotaure in 1934. Her first collection, La Sauterelle arthritique, was published by GLM the following year, with a note by Paul Éluard and a photograph by Man Ray. She was the only woman included by André Breton in the first edition of his Anthology of Black Humor.
Prassinos later worked as an illustrator and, from the late 1960s, as a painter and visual artist.
A superb binding designed and executed by Louise Bescond.
Provenance: Gisèle Prassinos (presentation inscription); Sous le signe de Maeght, Paris, De Baecque, April 2015.