Verve | The Levy copy of this landmark publication

Verve

Verve: Revue artistique et littéraire. Paris: Tériade and New York: Harcourt Brace & Co., 1937- 1958

Numbers 1-34 in 25 volumes, folio (approximately 355 x 270 mm). Mixed set, with both French and English-language editions, profusely illustrated with reproductions and original lithographs by various artists of the School of Paris; primarily marginal browning, occasional and unobtrusive staining and offsetting, remnants of tape adhesive. Original wrappers and pictorial boards; some wear and rubbing to extremities, occasional splitting, old tape securing mylar wrappers, hole to lower wrapper of No. 23, final four issues a bit more rubbed with some loss. Housed in custom slipcases; some wear and splitting. 

A near-complete run of the sumptuous arts journal of mid-century Paris—the Levy copy.

This landmark Modernist magazine is prized for its lithographs of works by Picasso, Matisse, Braque, Chagall, Bonnard, Kandinsky, and others. Originally published by Teriade between 1937 and 1960, in addition to the remarkable range of artists it featured, its early literary contributors included James Joyce and Ernest Hemingway.

PROVENANCE:

Jacques Levy (his sale, Sotheby's New York, 20 April 2012, lot 355, $20,000)