One of only 101 copies accompanied by an original etching in colour, here signed by Dado and numbered 15/80.

A lovely softcover copy, printed on uncropped vellum paper. The etching is on thick BFK Rives vellum paper.

"Each of the one hundred and seventy-six texts in this collection is an onzain, a poem of eleven lines, each line having eleven letters. Each line uses the same series of different letters, something like a scale, whose permutations will produce the poem according to a principle similar to that of serial music: a letter cannot be repeated until the series has been exhausted. All of the poems have the ten most frequently used letters of the French alphabet in common: E, S, A, R, T, I, N, U, L, O. The eleventh letter is one of the remaining sixteen letters: B, C, D, F, G, H, J, K, M, P, Q, V, W, X, Y, Z. There are eleven poems in B, eleven poems in C, etc. ... making a total of eleven complete alphabets, i.e. 16 x 11 = one hundred and seventy six poems."

Dado (Cetinje, Yugoslavia: 4 October 1933 - Pontoise: 27 November 2010), a Yugoslav painter, draughtsman, engraver and sculptor. After arriving in France in 1956, he was quickly noticed by Jean Dubuffet who introduced him to Daniel Cordier

Author: Georges Perec / Dado
Title: Alphabets: 176 onzains hétérogrammatiques
Edition:
Paris, Éditions Galilée, 1985, large octavo, softcover (170 x 255 mm), [14] 176 [8] pp.