Sol de la montagne

The meeting between Dora Maar and André du Bouchet in 1951 marks the beginning of a relationship that cannot easily be characterised as purely artistic or personal. She is 44 years old at the time, he is 27. Du Bouchet is married and becomes a father that same year, but his marriage falls apart shortly thereafter. Soon after their meeting, Maar became the godmother of his daughter, though her presence remained sporadic. At the same time, poetry served as a unifying factor: in 1956, they collaborated on Sol de la montagne, a collection of poems published by Jean Hugues, for which Maar created four aquatints.

La femme qui pleure / The Weeping Woman

The period before Maar’s encounter with Du Bouchet is inextricably linked to her relationship with Pablo Picasso. When they met, Maar (pseudonym of Henriette Theodra Markovitch) already was an established photographer within the Surrealist circles of Paris. She mingled in intellectual and political milieus but was simultaneously positioned as a muse and a model by Picasso. In his work, Maar appeared in highly distorted portraits, such as La femme qui pleure – images often interpreted as an expression of her supposed melancholy. Her role, however, was not limited to that of a model: she played an active part in Picasso’s creative process, notably through her photographic documentation of the creation of the painting Guernica. After their relationship ended, Maar withdrew from photography and shifted her focus to painting and printmaking, in which techniques such as etching and aquatint came to play an important role. Moreover, Picasso introduced her to Roger Lacourière, a Parisian printer who specialized in high-quality printmaking.

The final etching in the collection, on page 47, is particularly noteworthy, as it reveals a figurative image, if one so chooses. This print depicts a broad, diagonal shape that cuts across the plane. The aquatint technique creates a grainy surface in which varying shades of grey emerge. The darker areas seem to clump together, while the lighter sections break them apart. The visual language is abstract, yet evokes associations with geological structures, such as a mountain landscape, while remaining open to multiple interpretations. This ambiguity aligns with the poems of Du Bouchet, who asserts that he writes as far removed from himself as possible: he denies direct self-expression by deleting text or rendering it ambiguous. Dora Maar’s prints reflect this process.

Early careers

The collection was finally published in November 1956 by Jean Hugues. At the time, he was still at the beginning of his career as a publisher: his first publication had appeared only recently, in 1953. Du Bouchet and Maar, too, were in the early stages of their artistic development at that time. Du Bouchet only had a few small publications to his name, while Maar had never before produced etching for a book. This would, incidentally, remain her only foray into this field. Thanks to the support of the renowned poet René Char, Hugues, after two years of not having published anything, regained the confidence to undertake a book project. Sol de la montagne thus became his fourth publication.

Both artists signed the colophon. For Du Bouchet, this publication marked the beginning of a fruitful period of limited editions; for Maar, it signalled a major turning point in her career. As Du Bouchet describes in Sol de la montagne, she set off on her motorcycle toward the French mountains and devoted herself increasingly to action painting.

Bibliographical description

Description: Sol de la montagne : poèmes / André Du Bouchet ; ornés de 4 eaux-fortes de Dora Maar. - Paris : Jean Hugues, 1956. - 55 p. ; 34 cm.
Printer: Jean Crès (text), Roger Lacourière (etchings)
Edition: 101 copies, of which one on vergé pur chiffon of Richard de Bas with the original etchings, and a hundred on vélin pur chiffon of Rives
This copy: Number 39 of 100 (numbered from 2 to 101) 
Note: Signed by the author and the artist
Shelfmark: KW KOOPM K 276

References

• Brigitte Benkemoun, Je suis le carnet de Dora Maar. Paris, Stock, 2019.
• Antoine Coron, ‘Pablo Picasso: Eaux-fortes originales pour des textes de Buffon, 1942’ in De Goya à Max Ernst : livres illustrés de la bibliothèque R.M.. Bever, Éditions du Fourmilier, 2018, p. 321–325.
• André du Bouchet, Carnets 1952–1956. Paris, Plon, 1990.
• Alicia Dujovne Ortiz (transl. Jossy Hartmans), Dora Maar: gevangene van een blik. Amsterdam, Sirene, 2006.
• Jean Hugues, libraire-éditeur : Le Point Cardinal. Paris, Cendres, 2004.
• Emma Wagstaff, Provisionality and the Poem: Transition in the Work of du Bouchet, Jaccottet and Noël. New York, Rodopi, 2006.