Arthur Rimbaud / Zao Wou-ki - Illuminations - 1966

Illuminations, by Arthur Rimbaud

Well complete with the eight watercolors by Zao Wou-Ki

This work offers a singular encounter between visionary poetry and pictorial abstraction. The Rimbaud collection, composed of prose poems and blazing texts, explores interior landscapes made of ruptures, bursts of color, metamorphoses, and sensory impulses. The writing, dense and fragmented, seeks less to describe than to provoke an experience, liberated from the traditional frames of language.

The works of Zao Wou-Ki accompany this approach with compositions where gesture, color, and movement suggest rather than represent. His inks and lithographs establish an open visual space, resonating with the intensity and indeterminacy of the text. Far from literally illustrating the poems, the artist extends their energy and breath. This edition thus brings into dialogue two forms of expression sharing a common quest for freedom, making Illuminations a place of convergence between poetry and contemporary painting.

1966, 22 x 25 cm, 134 pages. In sheets with a french-fold cover and case. Signs of rubbing on the case. Browning, more pronounced on the first and last pages and on the page edges.