Yves TANGUY agrees to illustrate his friend Benjamin PÉRET.

Yves TANGUY (1900.1955)

‎Autograph letter signed to Alain Gheerbrant.

A page in-4° on letterhead from his American residence.

 Woodbury. January 21, 1947

“I am naturally always delighted to illustrate my old accomplice Benjamin…”

Rare letter from the surrealist painter first of all deploring the discontinuation of the magazine Vrille , then agreeing to produce the illustrations for the work of his friend Benjamin Péret, Feu central , for Éditions K.

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“Dear Sir, I am sorry to hear that Vrille is definitely dead! Here we always hoped that things would one day get better. I am naturally always delighted to illustrate my old accomplice Benjamin [Péret] and I thank you for thinking of me.

Don’t worry too much about the “conditions” of this collaboration. If you want you will send me some books or some magazines from there [sic] and I will consider myself [sic] largely reimbursed for my “pain”. Very sincerely your Yves Tanguy. I don't know why your letter reached me so late. No after all a week isn't so bad. »

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. Illustrated with four gouaches by Yves Tanguy, reproduced in collotype, Péret's work, Feu central, was published by Éditions K in the fall of 1947.

. A surrealist magazine published in 1945, Vrille did not survive beyond an initial issue. Directed by Evrard de Rouvre, the review aimed to “renew a tradition over these four years of obscurity by presenting texts, young witnesses of a moving era and the hope of those who found, in Surrealism , the strength to contribute to the work of reconstructing modern thought. »

. Alain Gheerbrant (1920.2013) was in turn an editor, explorer, ethnologist, filmmaker, poet, essayist or memoirist! At the age of 25, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés de la Libération, he made many decisive encounters: Henri Parisot, Benjamin Péret, Jean Carteret, Hans Arp, Antonin Artaud, Georges Bataille… He then set up Les Editions K , a editorial UFO of three years of existence (1945-1948), whose fifteen titles are as many treasures.