• For more than 40 years Gervais Jassaud has been publishing artists books, about 150 titles to date, under the banner of Collectif Génération. Moved by a utopian vision, that of an imaginary library, he has patiently and stubbornly constructed a publishing enterprise worthy of his illustrious predecessors, from whom he drew inspiration for his own endeavours.

• It was from Kahnweiler, whose eye for contemporary artists and writers became legendary, that Jassaud drew his passion for art and literature without frontiers.

• In Tériade, whose taste in literature was nothing if not old-fashioned, Jassaud emulated the exceptional visual generosity that this master was able to extract from Matisse, Picasso and Chagall.

• Finally, with Iliazd, Jassaud drew inspiration concerning the architecture of the book. Instead of building good-looking books, Jassaud pushed the idea of book as object even farther until the book became something more than a simple structure for words and illustration.

• Thus, it is squarely within the history of the French livre d'artiste that Gervais Jassaud developed a new concept of the artists book, what he calls the activated book, which puts the body of the book into play, into action, into language.

• Collaborations between relevant contemporary writers and artists brought together in the artists books of Collectif Generation, are proof of a firm stance favouring trans-national culture.

• In so doing Gervais Jassaud has both created and found his rightful place as a publisher who is trying to keep up with its epoch and, at the same time, create it.

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  © Gervais Jassaud 2012