[GERMAIN, Louise-Denise]. POE, Egdar Allan [traduction de Charles BAUDELAIRE].

Lot 1381
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1500 - 2000 EUR
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Result : 3 159EUR
[GERMAIN, Louise-Denise]. POE, Egdar Allan [traduction de Charles BAUDELAIRE].
Extraordinary stories, followed by the genesis of a poem. Edition decorated with 22 compositions by Bernard Naudin engraved by Aubert, Germain and Perrichon. Paris, Éditions d'art Édouard Pelletan, R. Helleu, 1916. 2 volumes in-8 [202 x 150] of (4) ff., 382 pp., (1) f. ; (4) ff., the first blank, 360 pp., (2) ff, the last blank : cream half calf, vertical edges and spine tinted in black, veined in blue, grey and gold with silver lamé lines and silver lamé borders, authors and title in stylet capitals, ironed in grey on the first board, smooth spine, quintuple gilt fillets framing the inside, painted endpapers, gilt edges on witnesses, cover and spine preserved, in a modern blue demichagrin slipcase (L.-D. Germain). Edition printed at 785 numbered copies on laid paper (n° 396). A fine copy. Some rubbing on the boards, minor cracks on the hinges. Exhibition : Paris, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, 2017, n° 43. Seventeen bindings by Louise-Denise Germain A willingly secretive figure in creative bookbinding, Louise-Denise Germain (1870-1936) was active for more than three decades, from her first exhibition at the Salon d'Automne in 1903 to her death. A decorative artist specializing in leather, she was not a certified bookbinder: she entrusted the execution of the book to Chambolle fils, Stroobants, Mercier or Canape, her artistic intervention being the preparation and decoration of the covering leather. With her, maturity is concomitant with the renewal of Art Deco whose leading figures are embodied by Pierre Legrain and Rose Adler. From the outset, we observe that she stood back, faithful to her own vocabulary, indifferent to the decorative overkill. Faced with the multiplicity of possibilities, Louise-Denise Germain built a work all the more singular as her production asserts itself by its style refractory to any fashion. "Fashion passes, style remains": Yves Saint Laurent's slightly provocative formula seems relevant to account for her creations that herald contemporary bindings. Obstinacy and loyalty to an immediately recognizable aesthetic. Fidelity to materials of modest appearance; neither maroquin, nor shagreen, she retained simple calfskins. Fidelity to a sober, if not severe, chromatic range: shades of brown, ochre and black, muted tones. Fidelity to a raw decoration that could then disconcert bibliophiles. The insistent presence of the materiality of the skin is as if reinforced by inlays in the form of staples, precious metal threads or gold and silver lamé - in geometric compositions with elliptical shapes. This Arte Povera-tinged minimalism will be her signature. The Corrézienne of origin "gone up in Paris" showed rigor and strength. Anticonformist, it will have known to impose itself by a coherent work. But the sobriety of the decoration always conceals a surprise as soon as one examines the endpapers of her invention, painted and watercolored. His daughter Nadine having married Sima, who is known to have collaborated in the creation of the painted and unsigned endpapers, it was customary to attribute them to him. Thanks to the work of Fabienne Le Bars, we now know that they were first executed by "Mademoiselle Germain" herself; the painter of Czech origin did not intervene until after 1922, the date of the marriage. As far as a renewed posterity is concerned, Jean Toulet did not contribute little to it, as well as Jean de Gonet. The former had already made his presence felt in 1979 during the Joseph Sima exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale. His study of Louise-Denis Germain's bindings in the catalog was a milestone. As for Jean de Gonet, having sensed, as early as 1977, that the survival of his practice presupposed an erasure of the decoration while liberating the structure, he could not but be seduced by the audacity and accuracy of the pioneer. Fabienne Le Bars recently organized the first retrospective of Louise-Denise's work Germain: in the catalog of her 2017 exhibition at the Bibliothèque nationale de France, she listed some two hundred bindings and leather objects that she was able to find in exhibition and auction catalogs. (Edited by Fabienne Le Bars, Louise-Denise Germain (1870-1936), reliures, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, 2017.)
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