RETURN FROM ICELAND. MICHEL BUTOR - BERNARD ALLIGAND. For the Centenary of Michel Butor's Birth (1926-2026)
- Editions d'art FMA
- Mar 24
- 4 min read
To mark the centenary of Michel Butor's birth (1926-2026), FMA Art Editions is delighted to announce the publication of the original edition of Return from Iceland, an unpublished poem by Michel Butor, in dialogue with an engraved and painted work by Bernard Alligand.
A COLLABORATION BORN OF WRITING AND FRIENDSHIP
Our story with Michel Butor began with the artistic collaboration that had already united him and my husband, the painter Bernard Alligand, since 2005. Together, they had already created seven artist's books with other publishers. When I founded FMA Art Editions in 2008, my greatest wish was to create my first book as a publisher with them. This is how the project *The Restoration of the Female Body* was born.
The collaboration with Michel Butor began with correspondence about this project, before our first in-person meeting in March 2008, at the book signing at the Librairie Les Arcades in Paris. This meeting marked the beginning of a fruitful and warm collaboration that would last nearly ten years. This close bond, born of writing and friendship, gave rise to about ten artist's books, including *Return from Iceland*, and was marked by numerous exhibitions as well as a pivotal trip to Iceland in 2014.
To celebrate the centenary of Michel Butor's birth, it was only natural to reveal to the public one of our most personal projects: *Return from Iceland*.
Conceived in 2015, this unique manuscript, calligraphed by the author in only seven copies based on illuminations by Bernard Alligand, crystallizes the memory of our 2014 Icelandic journey, his last great voyage. By publishing this rare work today, we honor not only the memory of the poet, but also that of his traveling companion, whose curiosity and enthusiasm illuminated nearly a decade of shared creation.
This edition is a tribute to the creative vitality that always animated Michel Butor.
Françoise Maréchal-Alligand, Founder of FMA Art Editions
THE FOUNDING JOURNEY: ICELAND, LAST GREAT JOURNEY
The initiative for this trip came from Bernard Alligand, acting as exhibition curator. In close collaboration with the Icelandic poet and playwright Sigurður Pálsson, then living in Reykjavik, he conceived and organized the exhibition "Michel Butor and His Painter Friends" at the National Library of Iceland in May 2014. At this invitation, Michel Butor, accompanied by his daughter Agnès, undertook his last major trip abroad. This stay, in the heart of the landscapes that had long nourished Bernard Alligand's work, was an intense and profound sensory and intellectual experience.
LITERARY & ARTISTIC NOTE
The poem "Return from Iceland" was conceived in dialogue with the paintings and engravings of the artist Bernard Alligand.
"RETURN" AS A CENTRAL SUBJECT
This is not about "A Trip to Iceland," but rather about Return. The book-work thus explores the paradox of the post-travel period: How to recount an experience? How to fix it in memory, in words and images? How does the shock of travel transform one's perspective on their country of origin?
The book-work is built upon this tension between "there" (mental images of Iceland) and "here" (the artist's writing desk and studio), between memory and present.
The foundational elements are: fire (volcanoes, geothermal energy), ice (glaciers), stone (lava fields), and water (seas, waterfalls). The author and artist treat these elements not as mere scenery, but as primal forces.
*Return from Iceland* explores the layers of time (geological, historical, mythical) and how the traveler inscribes their own ephemeral trace within them.
THE ARTISTIC APPROACH
Conceived as a journey, Return from Iceland unfolds as a seventeen-panel leporello, revealing an engraved and painted work approximately three meters long. Created on 270 g Moulin du Gué rag paper, this long composition forms the book's matrix, simultaneously a surface for inscription, a territory, and a landscape.
BERNARD ALLIGAND DEVELOPS AN ARTISTIC VOCABULARY DIRECTLY DERIVED FROM HIS EXPERIENCE WITH THE ICELANDIC SOIL.
Using dry stamping techniques similar to carborundum, the surface is worked in relief, hollowed out, and structured, like a geological cross-section. Jets of black sand, collected by the artist in Iceland, adhere to it, lending the material a mineral density and a tactile presence. Washes of black ink, highlights of white acrylic, and the introduction of a mineral red—a durable pigment traditionally used on the frames of Scandinavian houses, Falun red—punctuate the composition.
The whole is conveyed with a lyrical, expansive, and controlled gesture, where the painting does not describe the landscape but embodies it. Matter becomes memory, a repository of telluric forces, wind, lava, and light.
In this silent dialogue with Michel Butor's handwritten poem, the artwork does not simply accompany the text: it extends its intensity, in a relationship of balance and resonance. Book design in leporello format, photograph of Michel Butor and Bernard Alligand in Geysir, Iceland, May 2014, mounted on the opening of the cloth-covered slipcase © Éditions d'art FMA 2026
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
Closed leporello: 18 × 18 cm - Unfolded leporello: 15 panels + cover (2 panels and spine), approx. 3 meters long
Text set in Bodoni type and printed on 270 g white Moulin du Gué paper.
Typographic printing completed on the presses of the Atelier d’Art des Montquartiers, Issy-les-Moulineaux.
Engraved and painted artwork covering the entire book (each book of the original edition is unique): dry stamping (carborundum engraving technique), black sand from Iceland, black ink washes, mineral red paint (Falun red), white acrylic.
Red cloth-covered slipcase made by the Reliure du Centre workshop, Limoges.
The slipcase includes:
– The artist's book is signed in the colophon by the artist and bears the artist's blind stamp.
– A color photographic print by Michel Butor and Bernard Alligand in Iceland, at Geysir
Original edition of 21 numbered copies + 1 hors commerce (HC) copy reserved for the presentation of the edition
RETAIL PRICE (VAT included) 2026 : €1,450 for the original copy
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