Braque. [Une Aventure Méthodique]

[Paris]: Fernand Mourlot, 1949. First edition. Folio (17 x 12 ¾ inches). 60, [53] pp. Unbound gatherings laid into an open folding vellum portfolio, housed in publisher's clamshell case. Original color lithograph frontispiece, 26 en texte lithographs, and 12 offset color lithographs. One of 250 numbered copies on vélin d'Arches. Signed by the artist and author on the justification page. Some minor foxing throughout, some offsetting from prints. Cloth is separating slightly on the lower rear spine edge of the case, not affecting structure. Near fine.

"Achevé d'imprimer le 25 février 1950 a Paris sur les presses de J. Dumoulin, H. Barthélemy directeur, pour le compte de Fernand Mourlot et André Sauret. Les lithographies originales de Georges Braque et les reproductions ont été tirées sous la surveillance de l'artiste par Mourlot frères"--Colophon. "Le texte de Pierre Reverdy, Une aventure méthodique, est orné de vingt-six lithographies originales de Georges Braque qui a également exécuté la couverture & une lithographie en couleurs pour le frontispice de cet ouvrage."

"In his essay on Braque, Reverdy views as a unity the thirty-five years of the painter's activity.... this poet had more than any other the background and aesthetic insight to elucidate the painter's aims and preoccupations.... Braque, without leaving the world of every man's experience, has revealed new images, new depths which utter, like destiny, truths which no one else could have brought to light." Renée Riese Hubert, "Georges Braque & the French Poets." Books Abroad, vol. 37, no. 4, 1963, pp. 389-90.

Reverdy writes, "I assert that Georges Braque has undertaken and successfully carried out, in his life and his experience as a painter, a methodical adventure. For at the start and heading toward the future, there was nothing but unknown."

In Dora Vallier's catalogue raisonné of Braque's graphic works (no. 49), she notes that although the project was initiated by Mourlot, the book was actually published by Maeght.