Descripción
Text in French and English. Wraps are lightly age-toned, binding sound, internally clean. 89 pages, illustrated in black and white and color. From his arrival in Paris and during the first years of his trying youth Villon drew caricatures for the little satirical journals of the period. Let us pause over these early works: one thing strikes me about them, namely that the line appears less like the stroke of a draughts-man than the stroke of an engraver. It is sharp and short, tending not to go beyond the page which is exclusively dominated by the strong oppositions of darks. One may recognize in these drawings the essential character of the artist: that of an engraver. He practices engraving and triumphs in it before finding himself as a painter. It is to engraving that he resorts when he feels the pinch of need: for example, on his return from the War of 1914 and especially during the late twenties when he executed all those color plates after contemporary painters which are now in the Chalcographie du Louvre. And always this meticulous and delib-erate spirit, this marvelous craftsman will be impassioned, cease-lessly perfecting himself in the m?tier of black and white, in all this great art of printmaking that the greatest ? Rembrandt, Goya ? have carried to the sublime. Concise by nature and in his inherited pro-fundity, there he is, our Villon, an engraver. And when the condi-tions of his life impel him to an immediate expression, this expression is engraving. By vocation as by necessity, he must excel in the graphic arts and become thereby one of the most admirable mas-ters of all time. One thing makes us measure more exactly the extent of his genius. This born engraver, and so perfect, became also, by an-other path, gradual but ultimately no less sovereign, an admirable painter. This master of black and white became a master of color, and here also one of the best of all time. He is one of the most know-ing colorists who ever lived, at the same time one of the most capti-vating, alluring, exquisite. Let us contemplate in Jacques Villon a genius made for an exacting craft, embarked on a career of artisan development, arithmetical, patient, and at the same time accom-plishing a most delightful oeuvre, musical, magical, enchanting. This twofold itinerary astonishes, for it has something of the ex-ceptional and miraculous. But also it inspires in us a sentiment of tender and fervent gratitude when we evoke the one who has achieved it, the Villon dear to us, whose grandeur, like that of the saints, was framed of humble virtues: purity, simplicity. (Translated from the French). N° de ref. del artículo 230917022
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