Description
Jean Lurçat, celebrated for reviving the art of tapestry in the 20th century, brought his vivid, modernist style to the printed page in Géographie Animale. First released in 1948 in a deluxe limited edition, the book is a surrealist bestiary rendered in eighteen original lithographs accompanied by poetic texts. Lurçat’s animals aren’t just decorative—they’re archetypes, vessels for myth, memory, and metaphor. With bold use of line and color, the lithographs blur the boundaries between science and dream, conjuring a vision of nature as spiritual terrain. Though better known for monumental textile works, this is Lurçat at his most intimate and strange.
This facsimile edition faithfully reproduces the original’s scale and elegance: oversized leaves (23.8 × 31.5 cm) printed on creamy Vélin bouffant paper from the Papeteries de Hauteville, housed loose in a cloth chemise and matching slipcase. Limited to 750 numbered copies — this being 534. The folded leaves include stunning plates such as “Tortue des Ardennes” (Turtle of the Ardennes) and a haunting albino carp “placide comme les falots” (“calm as beacons”). While the accompanying French prose might mystify some readers, the visual storytelling is universal—abstract, darkly whimsical, and like nothing else in postwar book art. The production history alone is museum-worthy, even for this “re-pop”: lithos pulled under Lurçat’s own direction in Zurich and text composed in Caslon at the Genève press of André Kundig.
In an age of digital art, this one invites you to turn each page like a secret door into a surreal zoological dreamscape.
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