Hockney, David; Stevens, Wallace; [Crick, Francis]

The Blue Guitar: Etchings by David Hockney Who Was Inspired by Wallace Stevens Who Was Inspired by Pablo Picasso

London: Petersburg Press, 1977. Square quarto, original pale blue grey paper boards with pictorial label to front board, tan endpapers, original unclipped pictorial dust jacket. Rubbing to spine of jacket, small chips, one short closed tear. Small mark to pages 38-39. Ownership stamp of Dr. Francis H. C. Crick at the Salk Institute.

First edition of this catalogue documenting the publication of “The Blue Guitar," a group of twenty color etchings by David Hockney. In this volume, Hockney's etchings are reproduced alongside the text of “The Man with the Blue Guitar," the Wallace Stevens poem that inspired them: “They said, 'You have a blue guitar, / You do not play things as they are.' / The man replied, 'Things as they are / Are changed upon the blue guitar.'" Stevens was himself inspired by Picasso's 1903 painting, “The Old Guitarist," which figures at the center of Hockney's first etching. This copy bears the ownership stamp of Nobel Prize winner Francis Crick, who with James Watson discovered the structure of DNA. A very good copy, with an intriguing association.