ORIGINAL EDITION
ONE OF 300 COPIES ON ARCHES LAID PAPER, after 3 copies on Chine, 10 copies on Japon. There are also 26 off-price copies. "made from broken leaves".

An admirer of Picasso, Cocteau met him in December 1915 and devoted several texts and poems to him, of which this is one of the first. We know of 4 different versions, from the first manuscripts dated 1916 to the definitive version published by Marguerat in 1947.

Interesting free-form layout.
Cocteau wrote in an unaccepted preface:

"Like all great things, the Picasso event presents itself naturally. One hesitates to encumber it with a text. One hesitates first of all because beauty has no subtitle; one hesitates also because the special mystery of this beauty threatens, as soon as a writer interferes, to incriminate the least literary of painters with literature." (Jean Cocteau, Picasso, Stock, Paris, 1923.) Caizergues, Pierre. "Poèmes à Picasso.

In Revue des deux mondes, July-August 1993. pp. 11-33