Description

FIRST EDITIONLimited edition of 715 copies, including 10 off-price copies.
Album of 24 plates (12 in black and white and 12 in colour) depicting the barbarity of the German occupation.

SIGNED AUTOGRAPH CONSIGNMENT :

To my friends in Villefosse
in tribute
Guttuso
Roma 23 - VII - 46

These ink drawings, produced from September 1943, when the artist was acting as liaison with the partisans in the mountains of Abruzzo, were first published in L'Unità in 1944. That same year, they were included in the catalogue of the exhibition "L'arte contro la barbarie" (23 August-5 September, Galleria di Roma), organised by the critic and anti-fascist resistance fighter Antonello Trombadori. Trombadori, a close friend of Guttuso and survivor of the Massacre of the Ardeatine Pits perpetrated by the Nazis in Rome on 24 March 1944, wrote the preface to the book.

In 1960, the originals having been dispersed, Guttuso produced a re-elaboration of Gott Mitt Uns using facsimiles.

The wife of Commandant Louis de Villefosse - who sat on the Allied Commission responsible for ensuring that the clauses of the armistice with Italy were implemented - journalist Janine Bouissounouse (1903-1977) frequented Italian diplomatic circles from 1945 to 1947 and took part in the cultural life of post-war Rome. She met Renato Guttuso and Ranuccio Bianchi, director general of Belle Arti, as part of her weekly radio broadcasts on the cultural and artistic life of Rome.

Uncommon.

Missing from the BnF, which only holds later facsimile editions.