Victoire Gineste Camille de Foresta

Paul Destribats (1926-2017) was one of the greatest book collectors of his generation. His collection of more than 6,000 volumes, manuscripts and printed documents covering the 20th-century avant-garde is one of the finest to ever come to market.

The collection offers an encyclopaedic overview of the diverse strands of the European, American, and even Asiatic avant-garde movements, and boasts works by some of its foremost writers, poets and artists, including Man Ray, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp and Pablo Picasso. The core of the collection, however, is formed by the work of André Breton, the leader and principal theorist of Surrealism.

Selected works from the collection of Paul Destribats were offered by Christie’s Paris, in association with Librarie Jean-Baptiste de Proyart and specialist Claude Oterelo, in July 2019. Further works from the collection will be offered in two sales at Christie’s in 2020. The first, Paul Destribats — Bibliothèque des avants-gardes — Part II, will present an important group of more than 250 works published by Pierre André Benoit (PAB) and Ilia Zdanevitch (Iliazd), two major Surrealist publishers of the 20th century… (altro)