Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Russian (1885-1979) and Blaise Cendrars, Swiss (1887-1961). Frontispiece, La Prose du Transsiberien et de la petite Jehanne de France, France, 1913. Gouache and colored pencil with graphite underdrawing. Purchase: Leigh Schadt and Edwin Schadt Art Museum Trust Fund, 2000

ALLENTOWN, PA.-The Allentown Art Museum presents Picasso & Delaunay: The Book as Inspiration. This exhibition features a rare portfolio of thirteen prints by Pablo Picasso (1881-1973), the result of a collaboration with legendary Parisian fine art publisher Ambroise Vollard to produce an illustrated edition of Honore de Balzac's 1931 novel, Le Chef-d'oeuvre inconnu. In it, Balzac tells the story of an old artist who worked in anonymity for ten years on a painting that was to be the epitome of feminine beauty, but the painting on which he labored proved to be incomprehensible to anyone but the artist. Picasso did not literally illustrate the Balzac tale but provided eleven exquisitely simple line compositions that play off a favorite subject—the artist and his model—and one bullfight scene. Picasso's twelve etchings and sixty-seven wood engravings, coupled with Vollard's impeccable taste as a producer of limited editions de luxe (only 340 numbered copies of the book were made) resulted in one of the most beautiful books of the twentieth century. The 12 etchings from the book along with two frontispiece pages are included in the exhibition.

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