Published by The French Review of Art, September - November, 1940

Hard boards with folded over jacket. The spine has been reinforced with black tape. The edges do show wear and rubbing - please see pics. But the publication is entirely intact which is unusual as many people removed the art for framing. This is an incredible piece of art history.

This large publication (360 x 270 mm) is impressive on so many levels - in the calibre of the artists selected (inc. Matisse, Bonnard, Picasso, Braque), the quality of the book's illustrations of the artwork (see images); and not least in the timing of its production - entirely composed during the war with printing being completed in Paris, June 1, 1940. The covers were designed by Henri Matisse and completed on the day before war broke out. To quote the text: 'The successive printings necessary to reproduce the 26 different colours of the leaves constituted a difficult task and considerable time was required under wartime conditions to print this Chromatic Symphony, as it is called by Matisse.' 

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.

Tériade managed to pull the rest of the issue together over the next few months. Illustrations by the artists Picasso, Brock, and Matisse presented the dynamic art of pre-war France. Matisse's cover proved to be the most excruciating to print. Each copy had to be run through the press twenty-six times, once for each of Matisse's colors, but the result stuns us with it's vibrancy.

In addition to the original front cover colored lithography by Henri Matisse, there is double-paged color lithograph by Pierre Bonnard [Sunset Over The Mediterranean], plus eleven color drawings in red by Andre Derain with small tipped-in colour plates.