Picasso draws Icarus for a dancer who remade French ballet

Serge Lifar was a dancer and choreographer who helped remake French ballet in the middle of the twentieth century, above all through his influence at the Paris Opéra. In 1960 Jean Laurent and Julie Sazonova told the story of his career, and their title gives their verdict: Lifar as the renewer of French ballet.

The book is full of photographs of dancers and performances, and it closes with an appendix recording Lifar’s choreography and productions, so it serves as a reference as well as a life. It is written in French. Its cover reproduces, in colour, a Picasso composition of a winged figure and a sun on the theme of Icarus: a reproduction printed by the publisher, not an original drawing.

This is the ordinary first edition, published in Paris by Buchet/Chastel-Corrêa, in off-white card wrappers that are toned, soiled and creased, worn at the spine and chipped at the corners and edges. The text and plates appear present in the pages sampled, but the 274 pages and the plates have not yet been counted.