HENRI CHOPIN (1922-2008) Homage to Pierre Albert-Birot, for «Les femmes pliantes», 1973

signed and numbered in pencil ‘H. Chopin N.H.C. 25/30’ edition 25/30 HC screen print on paper 38 x 28 cm Henri Chopin, a French concrete and sound poet born in 1922 in Paris, began experimenting with a poetry that was more corporeal than linguistic following the purchase of his first tape recorder in 1955. Meeting the Lettrists in 1957, he published his poems with the publisher Caractères, directed by Maurice Lemaître. In 1958, Chopin met Pierre Albert-Birot, with whom he had a conflicting relationship. Chopin did not limit himself to cultivating the creative sphere of sound poetry; he was a visual, graphic and typographic artist, a performer, an editor and an independent artistic organizer, and he collaborated on several reviews. Henri Chopin died on 3 January 2008 in Dereham, Norfolk, England. Les femmes pliantes, a comic drama in three acts by the French writer Pierre Albert-Birot (1885-1967), published in 1923.