Blaise Cendras, Fernand Léger: “La Fin du monde filmée par l’Ange N.D.”, 1919

This publication introduced screenplay-style and film-inspired composition. It reflected the designers’ passion for cinema, announcing future collaborations and cinematic experiments.

Blaise Cendrars (1884-1961) and Fernand Léger (1881-1955) published La Fin du monde filmée par l’Ange ND, published by la Sirène, in 1919. Cendrars, companion of the avant-gardes, had already written a “simultaneous poem” with Sonia Delaunay, in 1913: La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France. Léger had collaborated with Cendrars on his story J’ai tué, in 1918. La fin du monde is inspired by an American farce , written in the style of a screenplay . The composition evokes the editing and succession of shots in a film. The taste for cinema of the two artists led them to carry out other experiments during the 1920s . Léger contributed to Die Chaplinade , “ cinematographic poem ” by Ivan Goll, published in 1920 in German, followed by a publication in French in 1923. Cendrars published, in 1921 , the ABC of cinema to which Légerpays homage in his ABC Still Life. Both participated in Abel Gance’s film, La Roue (1923), the first as an advisor and the second by designing the poster. In 1924, Fernand Léger directed the film Le Ballet mécanique.

Document : The End of the World filmed by Ange ND, in 4 paperback , 31.7 x 25 cm.

22 illustrations by Fernand Léger (including 2 on the cover and 20 color stencils in the book). Completed printing on October 15, 1919. The composition, in Morland body 24, and the printing were done in the workshops of the Frazier-Soye printing company. The color edition is done by the publisher Richard , where the illustrations are executed with a stencil . The draw includes 1 225 copies, including 25 printed on Rives paper in the form and 1200 grape quartos on Lafuma vellum register paper .

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