Sale 2683 - Lot 284

Desnos, Robert (1900-1945) & Pablo Picasso (1881-1973)
Contrée.

Paris: R.-J. Godet, 1944.

First edition, limited issue, octavo; number 126 of 200 copies on velin pur fil Lafuma with an etching by Picasso; illustrated with vignettes throughout, and frontispiece etching; bound in publisher's printed wrappers; with original glassine wrapper embossed with spiderwebs (minor offsetting from frontispieces, a few leaves starting; paper wrapper detached, some small chips at edges of glassine wrapper); 11 x 7 1/2 in.

Published as a compendium of poems intended to go "against the grain," Contrée heavily criticized German occupation in France during the Second World War. Desnos was an active member of the French Resistance and was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944. He was subsequently transferred to Auschwitz, and later moved to Terezin in the occupied Czech Republic. Tragically, Desnos perished from typhoid only one day after being liberated from the concentration camp in June of 1945.