Paris Post War: Art and Existentialism 1945-55

16 April 1954

Cher Jean,

Here is what I think will be good.

Germaine Richier (certainly the greatest sculptor working today) is going, you know, to have a special exhibition in Chicago. She has asked me to write some lines. I gave them to her the other day. They are the latest things I have written.

If you would like them for the NRF (Nouvelle Revue Francais), where they won't take up too much room, you can publish them. But it would have to go in the anthology section of the next number. It would be a nice surprise for her, which she really deserves. It would also give great pleasure to Rene (the critic, Rene de Solier, lived with Richier). (He deserves it equally, and, if it is true that things are not going well between NRF and him, then it would without doubt improve things a bit.) Finally, since you wanted to get a text from me, perhaps it would please you yourself (I hope so, and that you can love the text 'completely', as you say)?

Not to mention the pleasure I would get from it.

Jean Paulhan-Francis Ponge, Correspondances 1923-68 (Gallimard, Paris 1986).

(Research by Kate Oldfield)

(Photograph omitted)