May 15, 2008 - Sale 2146

Sale 2146 - Lot 98

Price Realized: $ 16,800
?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 12,000 - $ 18,000
SIGNED TWICE BY HUGNET, WITH A COVER BY DUCHAMP HUGNET, GEORGES. La Septième Face du Dé, Poèmes-Découpages. Illustrated with reproductions of 20 photo-collages, several in color. Accompanied by Hugnet's poems. 4to, embossed photo-pictorial sewn wrappers illustrated with a Man Ray photograph of a Marcel Duchamp readymade; in a custom-made clamshell box. Roth 92. one of 294 copies; this initialed "g.h." on the colophon, and double-signed by hugnet on the title page. Paris: Éditions Jeanne Bucher, 1936

Additional Details

with--Two prospectuses announcing the sale of this volume, one with photographic reproductions.


From the Library of David Raymond.


Warmly inscribed to Jacques Grou-Radenez, the master printer of this volume, by Hugnet in 1936. A second inscription, also by Hugnet, describes Grou-Radenez's death in World War II and the author's rededication of this volume to fellow Surrealist photographer and collagist Léo Dohmen in 1963.


The object pictured on the cover of this volume is a Duchamp readymade titled "Why Not Sneeze, Rrose Sélavy?" (photograph by Man Ray), which was included in an exhibition titled "Fantastic Art, Dada, and Surrealism," at the Museum of Modert Art. Hugnet wrote the preface to the catalogue. The title is spelled out in letters containing scores of cultural figures, including de Sade, Freud, Chaplin, Swift, and Saint-Just. Hugnet's collages (with components cut from Paris Magazine), are accompanied by his highly metaphorical poetry.


Hugnet, remembered primarily for his critical contributions to Surrealism, became associated with the group in the early 1930s, though by 1939 tensions with André Breton forced his official exit.