Gravure print

1919 · 62005 — Paris: Chez l’imprimeur Leon Pichon 5 Rue Christine 1919. 12mo. 6.5 x 6.5 3 leaves unnumbered. title w/ woodcut borders & printer’s device 20 numbered woodcut engraved plates. Softcovers minor shelfwear w/ woodcut-decorated jacket folded over the covers minor spotting foxing on back cover very minor bumping to corners still VG copy numbered on colophon & ownership markings on ffep. First edition No. 353 of 400 copies printed of the noted engraver’s first major post-World War I work as a Dance of Death depicting Death’s passage in the blighted and stricken era and a firm protest against modern mechanized warfare. Hermann-Paul 1864-1940 rose to fame during the Belle Epoque with his cutting satiric depiction of the foibles of French Society was a noted defender of Alfred Dreyfus whom after the war departed from his previously leftist ideals of the Parisian art scene and spent much of the between-the-wars period as an outsider. Chez l’imprimeur Leon Pichon, 5, Rue Christine, paperback