Two unpaginated booklets by Seuphor, approximately 20 and 24 pp., respectively, "Te Parijs" with a single illustration. Octavo (9 3/4 x 6 1/2 and 9 1/4 x 6 1/8 inches). Original wrappers, Carnet Bric-à-Brac with typographic design in black, red, and blue by abstract painter Jozef Peeters. Some light soiling and browning to both, some small paper losses to covers of wrappers, Te Parijs with older tape repair to spine, overall good. Antwerp: Het Overzicht, 1924.

Michel Seuphor was the pseudonym of Belgian painter, writer, and editor Fernand Berckelaers (1901-1999). Seuphor moved in avant-garde circles and established a literary magazine, Het Overzicht, in Antwerp in 1921. He was associated at various points with artists such as Piet Mondrian and Theo van Doesburg, and together with Joaquin Torres-Garcia and Pierre Daura, founded the abstract artists' group Cercle et Carré, which included Wassily Kandinsky and Le Corbusier among its members.

These two volumes date to early on in his career. Each is comprised of poems by Seuphor and was published by his literary magazine, Het Overzicht. Based on the Seuphor.org website, it appears that these poems, either in excerpt or full-text, were published in two issues of Het Overzicht, nos. 16 and 21. These issues appeared in 1922 and early 1924, and at some point after the poems were published as slim standalone volumes.

Of his poetry, Seuphor was quoted as saying "What I write in correct prose demands to be understood right away. What I write when composing a poem, what I do when drawing, does not make this demand nor asks for such correctness. In prose I am forbidden to leave the analytical and reasonable domain. In poetry, on the contrary, I am summoned to leave it to enter the absurd or the over-reasonable. Whereas I have a complete freedom of thinking when I write my analytical discourse, I have another freedom, a much more profound freedom, when I produce a work of art. In the first case I use existing means of expression and I bend to their laws, in the second I invent a language and its means of expression. This does not mean that I flee from the discipline: I create it."

These standalone booklets of Seuphor's poetry are very scarce; as of June 2025, OCLC locates only two holdings in North America of Te Parijs in Trombe and only one of Carnet Bric-à-Brac.

Book ID: 53469

Price: $3,500.00