INSCRIBED TO A FELLOW COLLECTOR, WITH A LETTER: Savage Messiah

Reissue of Jim Ede’s groundbreaking study of Henry Gaudier Brzeska whose archive and many of whose sculptures he owned. Ede has inscribed the book on the title page to his friend and fellow art collector Ronnie Duncan: ‘For Ronnie and Henriette Duncan most gratefully Jim Ede 30.9.71’. Laid in is a letter from Ede to Duncan, written a year later, on Kettle’s Yard headed paper, trying to arrange a visit and recommending ‘the Gaudier Exhibition in Leeds & perhaps also seeing the film which I have not seen yet’ - this was Ken Russell's film adaptation of Ede’s book which dramatised the obsessional relationship between the young French artist Henry Gaudier (played by Scott Antony) and Sophie Suzanne Brzeska (Dorothy Tutin) which was scripted by Christopher Logue. Ede continues in his letter to discuss his imminent move to Edinburgh, having gifted Kettle’s Yard and its contents to the University of Cambridge. A good copy of this paperback edition with quite splendid associations. Ronnie Duncan (1928-) is a Yorkshire art collector who befriended many artists and poets during their time at the University of Leeds as Gregory Fellows, subsequently inspiring his life-long love of mid-century modernist 1950s and 1960s British art.