Spaightwood Galleries

Since our last show devoted to works of the Surrealist movement, "DADA, Surrealism, and After," we have been thinking about our next one and decided to spotlight the contributions of three women to the movement. Original prints by Leonor Fini (an Argentinian raised in Trieste and active in Paris from the 1930s to the 1990s), Dorothea Tanning (an American active both in Europe and America who later married Max Ernst), and Toyen (a Czech who was forced to work in Paris during both the Nazi and Soviet occupations of her homeland), will be featured, juxtaposed against a backdrop of works by Jean Arp, Lucien Coutaud, Paul Delvaux, Max Ernst, Stanley William Hayter, Hannah Höch, Paul Klee, Wifredo Lam, René Magritte, André Masson, Roberto Matta, Joan Miró, Pablo Picasso, Germaine Richter, Kurt Seligmann, and Paul Wunderlich.

DADA grew up as a reaction to the insanity of the First World War’s casual slaughters of soldiers who obeyed their officers and charged, bayonets fixed, into machine gun barrages or were bombarded with mustard gas and died with seared lungs. DADA adopted an essentially nihilist outlook, rejecting the "reason" that had led to the war and the belief that human beings could ever be rational creatures. Surrealism grew out of the ashes of DADA, moved by artists who were intrigued by DADA’s rejection of formal constraints, but embraced irrationality and the unrestrained prompts of the subconscious as a road to a joyful freedom. André Breton was the theorist of Surrealism, and he quickly proclaimed Joan Miró "the most surrealist of us all." Miró’s example inspired many others, not to imitate his works (as Picasso’s admirers tried to imitate his works), but to incorporate the spirit of freedom and the possibilities of joy in a world filled with totalitarian political triumphs.

The show features works with a taste for the bizarre, the erotic, the unreal, the superreal, the grotesque, and the provoking. If you are not familiar with the works of the surrealists, we invite you to make their acquaintance; if you already know the surrealists, we invite you to come and visit works old and new by old friends, including four new works by Toyen, many new works by Fini and Lam, and new works by Ernst, Magritte, Masson, Miro, Picasso, and Tanning.

Jean Arp (French, 1887-1966), Constellations (G. Kaplan, fig. 15). Original color linocut, 1938. Edition unknown (c. 1200 unsigned impressions published in the Christmas 1938 issue of the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle. Arp was a member of the Blaue Reither movement and one of the founders of DADA. He was also one of the leaders of the abstract art movement from the teens on. This work is illustrated in Gilbert Kaplan, The Surrealist Print. New York: Abrams, 1997, plate 15, catalog 1. Image size: 318x249mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Jean Arp (French, 1887-1966), Moustaches et squellete / mustache and skeketon. Pochoir, 1956. Edition unknown (c. 1200 unsigned impressions published in January 1957 issue in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle. Arp was a member of the Blaue Reither group and one of the founders of DADA. He was also one of the leaders of the abstract art movement from the teens on. Reproduced on the cover of a 1958 MoMA book on Arp. Image size: 318x249mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Jean Arp (French, 1887-1966), Constellations (G. Kaplan, fig. 15). Original color linocut, 1938. Edition unknown (c. 1200 unsigned impressions published in January 1957 issue in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle. Some fading in the gray background at top and along the right side. Arp was a member of the Blaue Reither group and one of the founders of DADA. He was also one of the leaders of the abstract art movement from the teens on. Image size: 318x249mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Leonor Fini (Argentinian, 1908-1996), Ileria. Original color lithograph, 1972. Edition unknown (c. 150-275). Ours is an artist's proof annotated "E.A. 7/30" (epreuve d'artiste). There were also 175 signed and numbered impressions. Image size: 754x555mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901-1966), Objets mobiles et muet / Moving mute objects (Lust 1). Original lithograph, 1931. 30 impressions published by the Revue de surrealisme in 1931. In 1951 a second edition (c. 1500 unsigned impressions, of which ours is one) was published in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle. One of the most important Surrealist prints and Giacometti's first: a very rare and important work. Our impression shows faint traces of the usual centerfold. This work was featured in the Centre Pompidou's giant Giacometti retrospective of works from te Alberto and Annette Giacometti Foundation during the winter of 2007-2008. Image size: 320x470mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Alberto Giacometti (Swiss, 1901-1966), "Man Walking" in the Studio (Lust 94). Original lithograph, 1951. Published in the deluxe art review, Derrière le Miroir. Edition unknown (c. 1000 impressions signed in the stone; there are no pencil-signed impressions.) With the usual centerfold. The browning is only in the photograph; all images are on uniformly white paper. Image size: 380x560mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

René Magritte (Belgian, 1896-1967), Les bijoux indiscrets / The talkative jewels. Original color lithograph, 1963. 75 signed and numbered impressions, 20 HC impressions, and an edition of c. 2000 impressions published in the deluxe art review, XXe Siecle in 1963. This is his first lithograph, one of twenty lithographs and etcings he finished before his unexpected death in 1966. The work is illustrated in Gilbert Kaplan, ed. Surrealist Prints (NY: Abrams, 1997) and reproduced on the front cover of the catalogue raisonné of Magritte's prints, The Graphic Work of René Magritte, 1982. A very important print. Image size: 244x310mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

René Magritte (Belgian, 1896-1967), Le Viol / The Rape. Original etching, 1934. 950 numbered impressions signed in the plate lower right plus 50 HC impressions. All are also signed with the blind stamp of the Succession Magritte (The Magritte Estate). Printed at Atelier Dutrou in Paris on Velin de Rives. This is the original publication of this etching. Image size: 155x137mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Joan Miró (Spain, 1893-1983), Personnages devant la mer / Figures by the sea shore (Dupin 13). Original color pochoir, 1934. Published in December 1934 in the art journal D'Aci i D'Alla; printed by J. Mateu, Pochoir Publicity Art, barcelona, 1934. The number impressions of this prochoir is unknown, as is the number that might have been destroyed during the Spanish Civil War soon to follow, What we do know is that impressions of this piee are rarely aavailable in the art market (this is only the second impression of this that we have seen since 1975). This is one of Miró's most surreal prints showing a male and a female figure reaching out for each other in lust or terror while the leg of the female figure on the right seems to interpenetrate the leg of the male figure on the left. A rare and beautiful print with the surface texture of a gouache slightly marred by two small flaws in the shape of spots in the lower left corner by the heel of the male figure and on the right side of the white torso of the male figure. The spot on the torso is not red but gray; the spot by the heel is a discoloration slightly darker than the yellow where it occurs. Image size: 315x245mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Joan Miró (Spain, 1893-1983), Cahiers d'art II / Surrealist Composition II (Dupin 15). Original color pochoir, 1934. 40 signed and numbered impressions plus c. 1200 unsigned impressions . There is a full-page color reproduction of this work in Gilbert Kaplan's Surrealist Prints (NY: Abrams, 1997). It is also reproduced on the dust jacket of the book. A rare and beautiful print with the surface texture of a gouache. Image size: 315x245mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Joan Miró (Spain, 1893-1983), L'ete / Summer (Dupin 1310, Benhoura 396). Original color pochoir, 1938. Edition size unknown; published in the deluxe art review, Verve, in 1938. The technique of this work has just been reevaluated. It was included as a lithograph in the catalogue of Miro's complete prints made for the print retrospective held at the Musee D'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris in 1974 and published by the museum. Miro participated actively in the show and created an original etching for the deluxe version of the catalogue itself. This work was reproduced on the cover of Guy Weedon's 1988 monograph on Miro where it was also identified as a lithograph. It is also featured as a full-page illustration in Amy Dempsey's Art in the Modern Era: A Guide to Styles, Schools & Movements 1860 to the Present (Abrams, 2002) in the chapter on Surrealism. It was not included in volume 1 of the catalogue raisonne of Miró's lithographs. It has now been included in the final volume of Jacques Dupin's Miró Graveur as a pochoir executed not by Mourlot but by Daniel Jacomet. Careful examination reveals that this is indeed hand-painted. Signed in the plate. Another impression of this work sold at auction in September 2004 for Please call or email for current pricing information. Image size: 350x260mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Dorothea Tanning (American, b. 1910), Composition pour le CNAC (T. 304). Original color lithograph, 1974. 500 signed and numbered impressions. This print was commissioned by the Centre National de l'Art Contemporain in Paris for her 1974 retrospective. Image size: 480x380mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Toyen (Czech, 1902–1980), Tir / The Shooting Gallery (Srp 194), Lithograph after a drawing, 1939-1940. Edition: 575 impressions on various papres (ours is on Rives wove) for a numbered portfolio published in 1973, of which the first 10 impressions were hand-colored by the artist and in addition contained two original drypoints by Toyen. The series shows Alice in a wonderland turned into a shooting gallery by the Nazi invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938. Image size: 320x440mm. Price: Please call or email for current pricing information.

Spaightwood Galleries, Inc.

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