67. # AR UNICA ZURN (1916-1970) Oracles and Spectacles Frontispiece by Hans Bellmer Paris, Editions Georges Visat, 1967. Large in-4, leaves in folders, 46 pp. with black stiff cloth cover and slipcase. Fourteen poem-anagrams and a frontispiece, engraving signed 'Bellmer' and eight original etchings by Unica Zürn, all signed. 32 x 25 cm. Our copy also has a suite of etchings on japon Hosekawa. Introduction by Patrick Waldberg, Frontispiece and Postscript in French and German by Hans Bellmer. One of 120 copies on Rives vellum (No. 14) with a suite on japon Hosekawa signed by the artist. The magnificent typeface, in 16-point Roman bodoni, is by Fequet and Baudier, based on a design by Hans Bellmer. Unica Zürn (1916-1970) met Hans Bellmer in Berlin in 1953 and lived with him in Paris. It was at this time that she began to associate with the Surrealists and wrote as much as she drew. She was Hans Bellmer's model for a series of "bondage" photographs in which she appears naked and tied up. Suffering from schizophrenia, she spent long periods in a psychiatric hospital and ended her life on leave from the Maison-Blanche hospital. She went to see Hans Bellmer and threw herself out of the window of his flat on rue Mouffetard. Oracles et spectacles reflects this tormented world. It consists of fourteen poem-anagrams in German and eight copperplate etchings, preceded by a frontispiece by Hans Bellmer (a drawing of an insect), who also wrote the afterword. This shows the identity of their approaches and the symbiosis that had developed between the work of Hans Bellmer and that of Unica Zürn. The drawings depict fantastic beings, hybrid creatures that are part animal, part human and part plant. A marvellous bestiary emerges from this swarming of faces, tangled forms, volutes and arabesques. Oracles et spectacles is the only book to be illustrated with original engravings by Unica Zürn, a great artist who is certainly influenced by Bellmer but whose work emancipates herself from this influence to create a personal universe without equal. Provenance Private collection, France. Private collection, France (acquired from the latter).