The livre d’artiste can (arguably) be defined as a rare collectable book illustrated by a well-known artist or sculptor.
This particular genre, which today may seem very traditional in comparison to the contemporary artist’s book, was just as open to innovation and experiment. For almost a century, it attracted many important artists, from Les Nabis to the late surrealists and representatives of lyrical abstraction.
This lecture will trace the key moments in the history of the livre d’artiste from the 1900s to the early 1980s touching on seminal works illustrated by Pierre Bonnard, André Derain, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Max Ernst, André Masson, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Roberto Matta, André Lanskoy, and other twentieth-century artists. Around one hundred such books can be found in the collection of the State Hermitage Museum, of which twenty-five are displayed as the Artist’s Book Cabinet.