DICTIONNAIRE ABREGE DU SURREALISME. Paris, Galerie... Lot 11

DICTIONNAIRE ABREGE DU SURREALISME. Paris, Galerie Beaux-Arts, 1938. In-8, 75-(1) pp, half mastic calf, mute spine with exposed blue calf nerves, soft anthracite RIM boards with stylized palmettes, polychrome calf pieces adorning the upper board including a title, brick nubuck lining, covers preserved, chemise-sleeve (Jean de Gonet 1989). FIRST EDITION OF THE FIRST DICTIONARY OF SURRREALISM. Composition in colors by Yves Tanguy on the upper cover. Very numerous illustrations in the text. Publisher's banner preserved, enclosed. A booklet of the exhibition catalog was printed and is sometimes bound with the dictionary, which is not the case here. "Conceived and elaborated by André Breton and Paul Éluard, and published on the occasion of the International Exhibition of Surrealism [...], this document [...] offers to the reader, at the same time as a panorama of the surrealist pictorial experience throughout the world, precious information on the poets and visual artists of the movement [...]. But its most fascinating contribution consists in the harvest of "definitions" concerning concepts as well as selected objects or characters, definitions borrowed as well from the great elders (Swift, Lichtenberg, Duchamp, Vaché) as from the surrealists themselves, from Aragon to Scuténaire and Tzara- or resulting from the "collective invention" such as it is revealed by the various "games"" (Gérard Legrand, in Dictionnaire général du surréalisme et de ses environs, Paris, PUF, 1982, p. 130). BEAUTIFUL BINDING SIGNED BY JEAN DE GONET, IN SOFT REVORIM. Provenance: Fred Feinsilber (vignette-ex-libris).