Robert Lebel - ‎La Saint-Charlemagne‎ - 1976

First edition, one of the 250 numbered copies on Arches pure rag laid paper for the Club du Soleil Noir series (No. C84), without the 2 lithographs by Erro. 8 photographs on coated paper at the end.

A curious book-object: softcover, black cover with flaps, in a pink slipcase with two magnets on which Erro's two silkscreens would normally be embedded.

A masked autobiography of Robert Lebel. Max Ernst, moved by this text in which he saw his childish fantasies resurface, dedicated a striking illustration to it, which was his last before his illness and death (this illustration concerns the first 100 copies on Arches pure rag laid paper).

Summary: "How, from his earliest years, almost from the cradle, a little boy perceives the contradictions, inconsistencies, intimate secrets and impostures of his parents' environment, how he undertakes a ruthless critique of it, how he devises a plan to take charge of his own destiny, to prepare his revolt and his conquest of power, how this situation of belligerence against his family is accentuated, dramatised by the period and the neighbourhood in which the events are taking place: The pre-war period of 1914 with its very tense social climate and the "old Paris" of the Faubourg Saint-Antoine, a secluded place where workers, craftsmen, petty bourgeois, "apaches" and the poor mix at every turn in the contrast of vacant lots, slums, mazes of squalid alleys and new buildings. How, in spite of his native prejudices and the fear inspired by the threats and proximity of this neighbourhood of paupers, the attraction of the street has a powerful effect on the restive young student.

Light marks on the covers, the slipcase is lightly aged. Impeccable inside. In very good condition.

Robert Lebel
‎La Saint-Charlemagne‎
Paris, Le Soleil Noir (Club), 1976.
Octavo (25 x 16 cm); 96 pp., 2 ff.