In-text plate (folio 23) from Poésie de mots inconnus

Léopold SurvageWW-1949-M025626

1949·Woodcut from an illustrated book with seven woodcuts, seven etchings (two with aquatint, one with engraving), six lithographs, three drypoints, two engravings, one aquatint, and one linoleum cut·composition (irreg.): 9 13/16 x 7 5/8" (24.9 x 19.4cm); page: 12 5/8 × 9 15/16" (32 × 25.2 cm)

Catalogue

Year: 1949
Medium: Woodcut from an illustrated book with seven woodcuts, seven etchings (two with aquatint, one with engraving), six lithographs, three drypoints, two engravings, one aquatint, and one linoleum cut
Dimensions: composition (irreg.): 9 13/16 x 7 5/8" (24.9 x 19.4cm); page: 12 5/8 × 9 15/16" (32 × 25.2 cm)
Collection: Museum of Modern Art
Artist: Léopold Survage

Artist

Léopold Survage

Painting

Léopold Survage was a French painter and filmmaker whose work pioneered abstract animation in the early twentieth century. He developed a distinctive approach to color abstraction through oil painting and experimental film, creating geometric compositions that moved between pure abstraction and organic form. His practice bridged painting, printmaking, and cinema, exploring rhythm and movement as fundamental pictorial elements. Active from the 1910s through the 1960s, Survage maintained a rigorous formal vocabulary centered on the relationship between color, line, and temporal sequence.

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