LAC (Ferdinand). Journal of Great Men. 125 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS - Lot 144

Lot n° 144
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Estimation :
3000 - 4000 EUR
LAC (Ferdinand). Journal of Great Men. 125 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS - Lot 144
LAC (Ferdinand). Journal of Great Men. 125 ORIGINAL DRAWINGS (24 x 18.5 cm each). 1951. Fort in-folio (42 x 41 x 11 cm), fawn half-maroquin with corners, double gilt fillets, spine ribbed, brown title piece (Rel. ep.). UNIQUE ORIGINAL WORK. This strong album, entirely mounted on tabs, opens with an autograph introductory sheet entitled "Réflexions et réalités loin de la Grande Histoire", signed "Ferdinand Bac 20 nov 1951 (ended 10 December)": the artist and writer declares, with a paradoxical sadness in relation to his personality, to now feel a certain "indifference for this "Great History" almost exclusively filled with the perpetual massacre of the Innocents". The volume brings together 125 original portraits in black, signed and most of them dated "51", each accompanied by a commentary in red, glued on brown cardboard, under snakes: writers, artists, politicians, famous women... Dante, Pic de la Mirandole, Louis XI "wearing the cap of Gustave Courbet", Pascal who "told many things to explain his moral distance from the great institutions", Stendhal "contemporary of Mr Balzac, formidable competition", Daguerre, "with Niepce responsible for the collapse of art through photography", General Mangin, who is "called the assassin, (Funny job all the same...)". Like an artistic testament, it is the last work of the artist, who died a year later, in November 1952; aged 92 at the time of its realization, Ferdinand Bac conceived it especially for his friend the writer Geneviève Gennari (1920-2001), his "niece of election"; in a signed autograph letter addressed to his "dear Geneviève" (one page in-8, Nov. 1951 Compiègne), Ferdinand Bac's irony and critical spirit are still raw: "... if all this is necessary to maintain the just pride of Nations over its glory - Victory, it is not forbidden for a nonagenarian to approach the other side of men, if only to know to what extent they have been divinized or discredited by their contemporaries". Wet
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