Leonor Fini | La Bete de la mer (The Beast from the Sea)

color lithograph, 1961
signed in pencil lower right margin recto
signed in the plate lower right recto
inscribed Leonor Fini and L'APOCALYPSE "La Bête de la mer" lower left margin recto
titled, dated, and inscribed Litographie originale couleurs cantresigneé par l'Artiste and hand signed and dated in pencil by the publisher, Joseph Foret, and with his stamp lower verso
from the series L'Apocalypse
plate size 16½" x 13" (42 x 33 cm.)
paper size 18" x 15" (45.7 x 38.1 cm.)
published by Joseph Foret, Paris

A rare proof, hand signed by both artist Leonor Fini and publisher Joseph Foret, of one of Fini's four contributions to Foret's wildly ambitious "largest, heaviest, and most expensive book in the world". The original masterpiece was begun in 1959 and completed three years later as one volume weighing 463 pounds with a cover of bronze encrusted with precious stones sculpted by Salvador Dali, original artwork by Dali, Leonor Fini, Bernard Buffet, Leonard Foujita, Pierre-Yves Tremois, Ossip Zadkine and Georges Mathieu, and original graphics by Jean Cocteau, Michel Ciry, Frederic Delanglade, Ernest Fuchs, Roger Lersy and Pierre-Yves Tremois. Upon its completion in 1961 Foret published a further seven copies on different papers with etchings and lithographs.

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. - Revelation 13:1

Neil Zukerman has kindly informed us that there likely exists not more than perhaps twenty impressions of this lithograph, making it one of the rarest artworks in Fini's entire graphic oeuvre.