Isadora Duncan, fille de Prométhée

In 1919, at Isadora Duncan's request, Bourdelle provided drawings to illustrate the book Isadora Duncan, Fille de Prométhée by the poet and journalist Fernand Divoire. 
Divoire is the author of several books on dance, including two devoted to Isadora Duncan. For this original 100-copy limited edition, he let the dancer choose the final illustrations from the drawings provided by Bourdelle.
They first met in 1903 at a dinner given by Rodin in Vélizy, but the sculptor became truly fascinated by this pioneer of modern dance after seeing her on stage in 1909. He made some 350 sketches from memory, which later served as the basis for his research for the reliefs for the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées. He used this impressive corpus to inform his illustrations for this book, printed by Frazier-Soye and presented at the exhibition Les Arts du livre français at the Palais Galliera in 1925.
The creativity of the typography and punctuation echoes the dynamism of the drawings and of the dancer's movements. Three drawings are reproduced in the text, as well as two watercolours on the front and back covers. The subtle use of paragraphs, line breaks and block capitals gives rhythm to the reading, while squares of gold leaf punctuate the text. The publisher Maurice Heine was praised by Bourdelle for his sense of layout.

Jason Vertray