VERVE: The French Revue of Art (Number 8)

Paris: Éditions de la Revue Verve, 1940. Complete issue of the French art magazine, September-November, 1940, Flexible Boards. The dust jacket is a lithograph after a cutout by Matisse that was created for this issue of Verve. Art historian Margaret Culbertson argues that the cover was an early act of French resistance to Nazi Germany: "Work on the issue started during the ominous summer before, as the world waited to see if Hitler would respect the Munich Agreement. The magazine’s editor, Efstratios Tériade, commissioned the artist Henri Matisse to design the cover.The aging artist, with anxiety fueled by memories of WWI, regularly visited Tériade’s Paris office. The brightly-colored sample pages for printer’s inks caught his eye. He spent hours cutting shapes from the paper and arranging them in different patterns, finally settling on abstract leaf-shaped pieces. Matisse completed his design just days before Germany invaded Poland, and the machinery of a worldwide war clanked into motion. Matisse’s cover evokes the terror of encroaching war. A stark black background surrounds the blues, greens, and purples of the leaves and knocks the yellow letters of the magazine’s title asunder. But art and life triumph here, for the colors appear even more intense next to the deep black, and the scattered letters of the title are still legible--V-E-R-V-E. . . in French, the same word exists in English, verve [vûrv]. Definitions include 'vitality, liveliness, spirit, and zest.' These are the antithesis of war, just as Matisse’s colored leaves are." In near fine condition.. First Edition. Paperback. Fine-/Very Good++. Illus. by Henri Matisse, Pierre Bonnard, et al.. Folio - over 12" - 15" tall. Magazine.