RIGHI, Francois. GRÉGOIRE (Marie) ~ Heures dispersées.
No. 24 of 28 copies, signed by the author and the artist in pencil. 19 drawings and lettering by François Righi printed in lithography by Michael Woolworth in Paris, and 3 copper engravings printed by the artist. There is a loose leaf with translations of the text by Gregoire in English and Spanish. Printed in Antique Olive on japon Kawasaki paper. 24.5 x 26 cms. 8vo., stab sewn as issued in stiff card boards with japon wrappers and a lithograph in black and silver on the upper cover. A fine copy housed in the original chemise and slipcase covered in midnight blue japanese moire paper.
This book features drawings and thoughts inspired by the sculpted ceiling in the oratory of the Hôtel Lallemant, a Renaissance-era building in Bourges. The recessed panels of this ceiling are decorated with alternating crest and cherub emblems, and each type of panel provides the inspiration for the various illustrations in this book. The fourteen panels decorated with cherubs are the stimulus for Righi's intricate drawings and calligraphies showing the circles of time, while the sixteen sculptures decorated with crests are the inspiration for the engraved frontispiece. Two additional engravings further illustrate the book.
This volume is part of a larger trend in the Righi's work, which in his own words, “attempts to inscribe one within the other the spaces of a place and of a book.” The ceiling of the Hôtel Lallemant is also the subject of the book Le Miroir Volatil (2003), a collaboration between Righi and Robert Marteau.
François Righi, born in 1946, is a visual artist and publisher. The creation of books polarises his work: he designs, prints, engraves, and sometimes writes unique or very limited edition books that he thinks and realizes like works of total art. Around this practice he createsThe prints, drawings, objects, installations and performances that he also creates gravitate around this magnetic center, as do his editorial activities.