Janela do Caos. (Window of Chaos).

Paris.: Imprimerie Union., 1949.. Loose as issued in original publisher's printed wrappers with title to front cover in black, the suite loose in a separate wrapper with title in black and flap, orange paper-covered board chemise with title to spine in black and grey paper-covered board slipcase.. Small folio. (326 x 260 mm).. Half-title, printed title in red and black and Mendes' verse illustrated with 6 monochrome lithographs by Francis Picabia, final leaf with achevé d'imprimer and justification, also included with this copy is the additional suite of lithographs printed in red; the lithographs were printed by Desjobert, Paris. A very good unsophisticated copy of the very scarce illustrated book 'Janela do Caos': Francis Picabia illustrating Murilo Mendes.From the edition limited to 220 numbered copies on Auvergne, with this one of 23 hors commerce examples marked 'EXEMPLAIRE / H. C.' with the additional suite of lithographs in red.This remarkable and scarce book, truly international in formation, combines the illustration of Francis Picabia with the verse of the Brazilian Modernist Murilo Mendes and typography by Michel Tapié; the text was printed by Imprimerie Union (Russian emigrés), the lithographs by the Parisian printer Desjobert, directed by the diplomat Roberto Asumpção de Araujo in collaboration with J. Guimarães Rosa and Francette Rio-Branco. Mendes' verse is taken from his collections 'Poesia Liberdade' and 'Mundo Enigma'.‘Apesar do número reduzido de poemas, eles representam o resumo do espírito da poesia muriliana. Ao contemplar as linhas do livro ‘Janela do caos’ fica nítida a heterogeneidade temática de Murilo Mendes. Observações sobre a sociedade passam quase despercebidas em palavras que inspiram a criação de imagens mentais, o cotidiano vira cenário para discussões filosóficas e existenciais e o surrealismo convida o leitor a acessar as próprias janelas da alma com debates poéticos sobre ordem e loucura … A união das estéticas visual e verbal que acontece em ‘Janela do caos’ era um desejo antigo do poeta … Assim, ao colocar para o leitor figuras reais como olhos, bocas, corpos, rostos, animais e fortes expressões num contexto surreal, criado pelos poemas, as imagens do livro ‘Janela do caos’, materializam algumas aspirações do poeta. E refletem, portanto, o contato sensível de ‘um grande poeta brasileiro e um grande pintor da escola de Paris’, como disse o jornalista Paulo Mendes Campos, no artigo ‘O itinerário de um livro em Paris’.’ (Museu de Arte Murilo Mendes).This edition of 'Janela do Caos' is scarce, likely due to the language and the fact the major portion of the edition was sold in Brazil. WorldCat lists copies at the National Library of Australia, the Library of Congress, Indiana and New Mexico only; COPAC lists no copies and neither do the catalogues of the British Library nor the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. We locate an additional copy at MoMA.