Chants pour Titine

'I use the engraving plate to be a writer without words'. Painter and engraver Albert Woda never became a real writer, but he did establish his own publishing business operating under the name Éditions de l'Eau. For his books, he favours the 'manière noire': an engraving technique that allows him to produce dark and mysterious images, like nighttime scenes, but also idyllic landscapes. From the early 1980s onwards, Woda has worked on a series of twenty self-produced editions in his studio in a cultural centre. He always selected poems and prose works by writers with whom he felt a connection. There is always a close correspondence between his image and their text.

Chants pour Titine is one of those books published by Woda. It contains prose and poems by Jean-Luc Bruyas- with whom Woda had also produced Lienne la muette in 1991. The texts are based on a song by Sergio Pesce (born in 1968), of which the sheet music was reproduced. Woda made one engraving for this little oblong-shaped booklet himself: a dark room, with a doorway and light shining in. A little girl dances in the middle of the room. This is Titine, of whom Bruyas writes that she is five-and-a-half years old and that she dreams of being a dancer, like her mother.

Bibliographical description

Description: Chants pour Titine / Jean-Luc Bruyas ; [avec des pièces musicales composées par Serge Pesce]. - [S.l.] : Éditions de l'Eau, 1990. - 16 p. : ill. ; 9×20 cm

Edition: 100 copies

This copy: Number 29 of 34 copies with an etching, signed by Albert Woda

Note: Signed by author, artist and composer. The texts are written to music by Serge Pesce

Bibliography: Monod 2030 ; Bénézit 14-679

Shelfmark: KW Koopm D 74

References

• Pierre Séjournant, 'Albert Woda: de la nuit des temps au mystère de la nuit', in: Nouvelles de l’estampes, (2000) 170, p. 54-58