Iliazd, the Poet-Architect of the Book, Gets Retrospective in Alès

The Musée-Bibliothèque Pierre André Benoit in Alès is staging an exhibition dedicated to Iliazd (Ilia Zdanevitch, 1894-1975), the Georgian-born typographer and book architect who collaborated with Picasso, Matisse, Chagall, and other avant-garde giants. Despite his seminal role in 20th-century book arts, Iliazd remains largely unknown in France. The show, running from April 10 to October 31, 2026, focuses on "the art of the letter and the page," centering on his 1949 anthology *Poésie de mots inconnus*—a polemic against Lettrism featuring twenty-three prints by Chagall, Picasso, Max Ernst, Matisse, Wols, and Jean Arp, alongside poets from Khlebnikov to Tristan Tzara and Antonin Artaud. The exhibition also highlights Iliazd's other activities: exploring Caucasian Byzantine churches, designing textiles for Sonia Delaunay and Gabrielle Chanel, making ceramics with Picasso, and producing Marcel Duchamp's *La Boîte en valise* (Series C). The museum aims to restore Iliazd's rightful place as the discreet architect of a century that would not have been the same without him.