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I�ve mentioned the etcher, lithographer and painter �douard Joseph Goerg in several previous posts, but never really focussed on his work. Born in Sydney, Australia in 1893, to French parents (his father was a champagne merchant, with whose bourgeois ethos �douard remained deeply at odds), Goerg was a very powerful artist, whose distorted figures and phantasmagorical compositions express a deep-seated sense of dread and apprehension. Goerg�s anguished soul is reflected in the texts he chose to illustrate, which include Dante�s L�Enfer (1950, etchings), Villiers de l�Isle Adam�s Nouveau contes cruels (1946, colour lithographs), and the Apocalypse (1945, black and white lithographs). �douard Goerg, lithograph for Baudelaire, 1947-52 Goerg�s majestic two-volume edition of Baudelaire�s poems, Les Fleurs du Mal (1948) and Tableaux Parisiens (1952) is often cited as his major work. It�s certainly a monumental achievement, containing 269 monochrome lithographs, all designed to surround an

I have already posted here about the great between-the-wars etcher and illustrator Chas Laborde. Now Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian, the man behind the excellent Chas Laborde and Gus Bofa websites, has kindly sent me a copy of his new book, which is a survey and celebration of Chas Laborde's art. The title is Chas Laborde: Un homme dans la foule (Chas Laborde: A man in the crowd), referring to Laborde's keenly observational account of street life not just in Paris but also in London, New York, Moscow, Madrid, and Berlin. Chas Laborde's most important works were the series of etched livres d'artiste he created under the generic title Rues et visages,  beginning with Rues et visages de Paris in 1926. Emmanuel Pollaud-Dulian, Chas Laborde: Un homme dans la foule Paris: Michel Lagarde, ISBN 978-2-916421-22-3, �19 Chas Laborde, Rue M�nilmontant Etching reproduced on p.15, I believe this comes from Rues et visages de Paris The book is a very handsome production, well illustrated

Following yesterday's post, Jane Librizzi of The Blue Lantern asked for illumination on the texts incorporated in the engravings by Henri-Georges Adam. They are all from the 1853 sonnet sequence Les Chim�res by G�rard de Nerval, the man who used to take his pet lobster for walks on a lead in the gardens of the Palais Royal. These are densely allusive, complex poems, and although it occurred to me to try to translate one, good sense prevailed. But in the spirit of "Be careful what you wish for", here is the original French text of G�rard de Nerval's best-known poem, El Desdichado (famously quoted by T.S. Eliot in The Waste Land), plus 7 English versions, the fashioning of which has gently whiled away a summer's morning.... The first version is a bare literal translation, the second an attempt at a rhymed equivalent, and the remainder wander steadily further and further from the source text. I would have just posted Martin Bell's translation, which I remember f

Henri-Georges Adam was born in 1904 in Paris, where his father was a jeweller and goldsmith in the Marais district. Adam worked in his father's studio while taking art classes in the evening, before entering the �cole des Beaux-Arts.  Henri-Georges Adam, Untitled, 1957 Engraving included in the 500 copies of Adam, Oeuvre Grav� Initially working as a painter, in the early 1930s, following an accident, Henri-Georges Adam changed direction. He took up engraving (the rudiments of which he had learned from his father), and abandoned painting for sculpture. He also designed monumental tapestries, always in shades of black and white.  Henri-Georges Adam, Le Christ aux Oliviers Engraving, 1947 As a printmaker, Henri-Georges Adam also insisted on the purity of black and white, and only used one tool, the engraver's burin. An anarchist and a pacifist, Henri-Georges Adam first distinguished himself as an engraver with a series of prints expressing his outrage at the Spanish Civil War,

T he painter, printmaker, sculptor and ceramicist Gio Colucci (sometimes known in France as G�o Colucci) was born in Florence (one source says Cairo) in 1892, and died in Paris in 1974. He studied architecture at the �cole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, after which he went to Egypt to practice as an architect in Cairo. It was in Cairo that he gradually moved over from architecture to fine art. His older brother was the writer and publisher Guido Colucci, born in Naples; Guido and Gio collaborated on a number of books to which Guido furnished the texts and Gio the illustrations. Gio Colucci, Bonheur du monde I Etching, 1929 From copy 74/105 Printed by Paul Haasen on Arches wove paper As a printmaker, Gio Colucci produced both etchings and wood engravings. From 1921 he showed his etchings at the Salon de la Soci�t� Nationale des Beaux-Arts, and also showed work at the Salon d'Automne and the Salon des Surind�pendants alongside Gleizes, Herbin, Delaunay, and others.  Gio Colucci, Bonheur du