Apr 11, 2024 - Sale 2665

Sale 2665 - Lot 15

Price Realized: $ 2,750
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,800 - $ 2,500
Desmazières, Érik (b.1948) & José Luis Borges (1899-1986)
La Biblioteca de Babel / La Bibliothêque de Babel.

N.p.: Le Livre Contemporain et les Bibliophiles Franco-Suisses, and others, ca. 1997.

Presentation copy, limited edition, folio, copy number 17 of 37 reserved for the artist and various collaborators; illustrated with ten folding etchings on Arches paper; the first plate present in two states; title inscribed by the artist in pencil, "For Philip and José, with very best wishes, Houston, October 31, 1998"; also signed on the colophon, with Borges's text in Spanish and French, English translation by Néstor Ibarra; housed in the publisher's cloth clamshell box; 12 x 9 1/2 in.

This remarkable set of etchings by French engraver and printmaker Érik Desmazières recalls works by Piranesi and M.C. Escher. His images capture the interlacing hexagonal architecture of Borges's imagined library.