MESENS, Édouard Léon Théodore.

£1,500 · Offered by Peter Harrington · No longer available

Troisième Front. First UK edition, first impression, presentation copy inscribed on the half-title "A mon vieil ami Jacques Bernard Brunius, 'Nous avons mis vingt ans trente ans, A vivre avec ingénuité, Force et ingéniosité...' En toute affection, E. L. T. Mesens. 9 Avril 1944". This bilingual publication, with French and English facing texts, is number 8 of 500 copies only signed by the author in pen and five colour fingerprints.The recipient was the French actor and film director, Jacques Brunius (1906-1967), who worked as assistant director to Luis Buñuel on L'Âge d'or, and appeared in more than 30 films, under several pseudonyms. Brunius was a member of surrealist groups in France and then in England, with his friends Conroy Maddox, Roland Penrose, and the Belgian composer, E. L. T. Mesens (1903-1971). Mesens was an artist and writer, and a founding member of the Belgian Surrealist movement. In 1938, he settled in London and ran the London Gallery, where surrealist works were exhibited to popularise the surrealist movement in the Saxon world. In 1941, he worked with the BBC on their wartime broadcasts and adapted the tune of "La Cucaracha" for the taunting refrain, "Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris ment, Radio Paris est allemand" ("Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris lies, Radio Paris is German"). Loosely inserted are pp. 9-12 from another of Mesens's London Gallery 1944 publications: Message from Nowhere. Page 9 includes a note by Maddox on religion, pp. 10-11 is a poem by Mesens

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