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Folio. 132pp. Original stiff pictorial wrappers by Pierre Bonnard, housed in original tan paper-covered cardboard clamshell box with original Chagall lithograph on cover. Lavish in design and challenging in content, this spectacular issue of "Verve," the renown French quarterly review of arts and letters, is dedicated mainly to Islam and the Orient. The issue is splendidly illustrated throughout with heliogravures in color and gold, illuminations, including eight striking lithographs from the Indian Pantheon, and four lithographs by Marc Chagall, Joan Miro, Rattner, and Paul Klee. Includes three drawings by Henri Matisse, one by Rembrandt, and photographs by Gaetan Fouquet, Rogi AndrĂ , Schneider-Lengyel, Pierre Verger, ThĂ rĂ se Le Prat, Rosie Ney, Zucca, and others. Texts by Rabindranath Tagore, AndrĂ Siegfried, Pierre Reverdy, Paul ValĂ ry, Louis Massignon, Henri Michaux, Elisabeth de Gramont, AndrĂ Malraux, Paul Claudel, Georges Bataille and others. Contains two pages with extracts from original French texts at rear. The magazine's publisher, Stratis Eleftheriades (1889 - 1983), took the nom de plume TĂ riade, was a native of Mytilene, the capital of the Greek island Lesbos. He went to Paris in 1915 at the age of eighteen to study law, but became an art critic, and patron instead. From 1937 to 1975 he commissioned various outstanding artists and philosophers such as Picasso, Matisse, RenĂ Daumal, etc. to produce series of works for this legendary journal whose 38 issues published between 1937 and 1960 were a promenade of covers and interior art by Chagall, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Braque, and other distinctive artists of the Paris School. When "Verve" burst onto the streets of Paris in December of 1937 exhibiting a cover by impressionist painter Henri Matisse, it was considered "the most beautiful magazine in the world" by one of its backers. 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. The magazine was published in both French and English editions. Text in English. Three corners of bottom part of box with tan tape reinforcements, cover of the box with various large chips along bottom of spine, bottom and foredge, reinforced with light brown tape. The lithograph on the top of the box is slightly affected at bottom. Issue with minor wear along edges, except very small crease at top of foredge. Box in fair, issue in near fine condition overall. Seller Inventory # 53726
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