VERVE: REVUE ARTISTIQUE ET LITTERAIRE
Volume 6, Numbers 21 and 22: October 1948
Pierre Matisse, E. Teriade [Directeur]
Pierre Matisse, E. Teriade [Directeur]: VERVE: REVUE ARTISTIQUE ET LITTERAIRE. Paris [6e]: Editions de la Revue Verve, October 1948 [Volume 6, Numbers 21 and 22]. First edition. Text in French. Folio. Plain card boards covered in a dust jacket printed in two colors. Unpaginated with approximately 60 pp. and 25 color plates plus Black and white images throughout. Includes an original lithograph by Matisse following the title page. Illustrations in color are reproductions of original Matisse works from 1944 – 1948. Matisse created the black and white drawings especially for this edition specially and designed the dust jacket as well. Spine ends and tips lightly worn. Jacket faintly edgeworn. Faint sun toning to interior page edges. The original Matisse lithograph is in wonderful condition. A very good or better copy.
10.5 x 14 perfect-bound magazine with well-illustrated pages: “Le présent numero de Verve réunit des tableaux prints par Henri MATISSE á Vence, de 1944 á 1948, L’artiste en a exécuté spécialment la couverture, le frontispice et tous les dessins. L’ouvrage a été achevé d’imprimer le 1er Octobre 1948, par Draeger Fréres, sur papiers Grillet et Féau. Clichés Mansat et Draeger. “
Verve No. 21/22 was published in October 1948, and was devoted entirely to a series of reproductions of paintings and drawings by Matisse, executed in his studio in Vence between 1944 and 19481. The ink drawings by Matisse reproduced within the magazine, as well as the colour lithographs on the front and back covers and the frontispiece, were specially commissioned for this issue of Verve, which contains a total of twenty-five plates in colour and forty plates in black and white.
Matisse and Tériade had collaborated on a previous issue of Verve, published three years earlier, in November 1945, with the title De la Couleur. The success of that project led Tériade to devote another entire issue of the magazine to Matisse’s recent work. As Michel Anthonioz has written, ‘The project got under way while Tériade was spending Christmas of 1947 at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. The paintings strewn about Matisse’s studio and house were important enough (and there were enough of them) to fill an issue of Verve. Apparently, Matisse was quite willing to round out reproductions of his work with line drawings he would do in his garden and in the garden of Tériade’s Villa Natacha. Pomegranates, acanthus leaves, oranges and orange-tree leaves, ivy leaves cast on white pages, provide this issue with a rhythmic “breathing” and act as interstitial tissue between the paintings. These line drawings, done quickly without corrections, were repetitions of a single motif. Matisse drew them while sitting in his wheelchair; often the work was physically taxing. Today they strike us as spiritual, an ascesis of the eyes.’
Anthonioz further notes that ‘Matisse’s cover for Verve Nos.21/22, an original lithograph, fairly bursts with delight in the sun and Mediterranean light. A blinding yellow background sets off some of those half-plant, half-shell cut-outs of which the artist was so fond. (Reminiscences of Tahiti?) This ‘hymn to the sun” spills over onto the back cover, where its rays overwhelm the entire surface, and is extended to include the frontispiece (a lithograph that features a solar eclipse). There is no text in this issue, aside from some prefatory lines handwritten by Matisse…The absence of any literary contribution is striking: this is the only issue of Verve that does include a poem, article, or some other form of original writing.’
Matisse seems to have been quite pleased with how this issue of Verve turned out. As he wrote in a letter to Tériade, dated 14 November 1948: ‘Yesterday I received two copies of the Verve-Matisse. It’s all right! Word has reached me that Bérès displayed it in his window and that it looked very nice. I’m not surprised. Red-white-black – well-proportioned, or well enough…Anyway, let’s wish it every success. Everyone did his best. As we all know, reproductions can only be approximate.’ Four days later, he wrote again to Tériade: ‘Take a look at the November 15 issue of Combat. A Mr. Charles Etienne, whom I do not know, talks about our recent Verve and hails it as ‘an event, for it gives us our first look at the paintings Matisse did in Vence, and in flawless colour reproductions.’ Obviously that’s what all of us were hoping for. So let’s all be happy and satisfied.’
Excerpted from the website for DTMAGAZINE [Magazine of the Week: Paris and the Art World of the Late 1930s in Verve magazine by Rick Gagliano, 10/12/06]. "When it comes to quality in the magazine process, possibly no other magazine can match the work of publisher Efstratios Teriade (born in Greece as Efstratios Eleftheriades) and his seminal publication, 'Verve' -- once called 'the most beautiful magazine in the world' by one of its backers - which first burst onto the streets of Paris in December of 1937 . . . . Teriade, an ex-law student with more zeal for the art world and publishing than the law worked variously with fellow countryman Christian Zervos on 'Cahiers d'Art' (1926-31), as art critic for the newspaper 'L'Intransigeant' (1928-33), artistic director of 'Minotaure' (1933-36) and co-founder (1935-36) of 'La Bete Noire' before founding 'Verve' with the financial assistance of David Smart, publisher of 'Esquire' and 'Apparel Arts.' . . . The magazine, a quarterly review of arts and letters, was lavish in design and challenging in content. Teriade's view of the world of art and literature was personal, bold and compelling. The 38 issues that proceeded through Europe's war-torn years and ended abruptly in 1960 were a promenade of covers and interior art by Chagall, Bonard, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and other distinctive artists of the Paris School. Photographs by Man Ray, Dora Maar, Matthew Brady, Brassai, Cartier-Bresson, Blumenfeld graced many pages and accompanied articles and prose by luminaries of none less identity than John Dos Passos, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce, Andre Malraux, Jean-Paul Sartre, Andre Gide, Albert Camus and others of note, often the presented artists themselves."