Si je mourais là-bas.

Published in 1962, just a year before Braque died, the timely Si je mourais là-bas [If I die over there] was a suite of eighteen wood-engravings to accompany poems from Guillaume Apollinaire's Poèmes à Lou, which Braque himself selected and edited accordingly. Braque had been a close companion of Apollinaire, who died forty years prior to the series but gave a lot of good publicity to Braque and his fellow Cubists. Despite this, Braque felt that his friend, who was also an art critic, understood nothing about painting, a source of playful tension between the pair which may have contributed to the obscure nature of the suite's images.

Pierre-Lucien Martin (1913-85) was one of the most successful French binders of the XX century. He was trained at the École Estiènne in Paris and gained experience in several binderies before emerging as a designer in his own right after the Second World His designs are characterised by understated colour, impressive three-dimensional effects, and the intricate but highly logical application of geometry. This volume is a superb example of his work.