The Seven Spectral Perils , by Dorothea Tanning

Dorothea Tanning   (1910-2012) 

 The Seven Spectral Perils
 

• lithograph printed in moderate yellow and black, 1950
• signed in pencil lower right margin recto
• numbered in pencil lower left margin recto
• total edition of 55 on BFK Rives: hors commerce numbered 1-10, numbered 11-50, and five artist's proofs
• image size 13⅞" x 10½" (35 x 26.4 cm.)
• sheet size 19 13/16" x 12⅞" (50.4 x 32.6 cm.)
• published by Librairie "Le Pas Perdus", Paris
• printed by Desjobert assisted by Maurice Gantner, Paris
• Literature:  Dorothea Tanning: Hail, Delirium!, New York Public Library, 1992, catalog no.6.V, pp.24, 89

...My first lithograph adventure has become a book. An album with seven perils in it. Because to the seven deadly deadly sins I preferred the seven spectral perils, life being more perilous than sinful. The writer [Mandiargues], a good judge of both, naturally agreed. You might say that these interrogate the stone. And the stone, like an oracle, answered sometimes with effects never possible to achieve with other materials...
      -Dorothea Tanning, Hail, Delirium!, 1992, catalog raisonne