Original Wrapper for Prose on the Trans-Siberian Railway and of the Little Jehanne of France by Blaise Cendrars

This parchment cover, hand-painted by Sonia Delanuay, holds a copy of La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, widely considered to be one of the most important artist’s books of the twentieth century and a celebrated example of Delaunay’s "simultaneous" abstract painting. The book, produced as an accordion-fold vertical sheet, contains a composition by the artist that runs parallel to a text by Blaise Cendrars: a semi-autobiographical account of a poet’s journey (with his companion, Jehanne) on the Trans-Siberian Railway through Russia and Mongolia. Cendrars’s prose, written in an erratic rhythm and printed in different fonts and colors, echoes the train’s trajectory through disparate landscapes, while the artist’s vibrant abstraction suggests the dynamic motion visible through a train window. This fluid unification of text and image gives visual form to the spatial and temporal dislocations of modern life effected by technological innovations.