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Max ERNST & ( BOUSQUET Joë)

Carte postale autographe inédite signée de Max Ernst adressée à son ami Joë Bousquet

Paris n.d. (circa 1934), 13,8x9,1cm, une carte postale.

Unpublished handwritten and signed postcard from Max Ernst to his friend Joë Bousquet

Unpublished handwritten and signed postcard from Max Ernst, 21 lines written in blue ink in a compact, elegant hand.
Several strikethroughs and underlinings in Max Ernst's hand.
Photograph of the work 68 by Max Ernst on the recto, representing busts of two women and which are painted with two numbers forming the figure “68.” We have not located another copy of this postcard, which does not appear to have been put on sale. Two original photographs representing each of the busts are catalogued in the André Breton collection under the entry “Working photo album for La Révolution surréaliste” and were produced around 1929 (Vente Breton 2003, batch 5085). These photographs do not seem to have been selected to illustrate the periodical.
Important handwritten card signed by Max Ernst addressed to Joë Bousquet, attesting to the unswerving friendship between the two artists over several decades.
During the Battle of Vailly in May 1918, Lieutenant Joë Bousquet, aged 21, was hit by a German bullet in the spinal column; severely paralyzed and bed-ridden for the rest of his life, he set up lodgings at 53 rue de Verdun in Carcassonne. During the interwar period and the Second World War, Joë Bousquet opened his home to the most emblematic intellectual figures of the 20th century: Gide, Valéry, Aragon, Éluard, Michaux, Paulhan, Ponge, Simone Veil... Certain illustrious surrealist painters also made the journey to Carcassonne: Magritte, Ubac, Bellmer... It is estimated that 150 canvases and drawings were gradually affixed to the walls of the “great wooden underwater cabin” (Pierre Guerre), where one could view side by side the work of Arp, Bellmer, Brauner, Chagall, Dali, Derain, Dubuffet, Fautrier, Kandinsky, Klee, Lhote, Magritte, Malkine, Masson, Michaux, Miró and Picabia. But Bousquet reserved pride of place for the works of Ernst, collecting 28 of his canvases, collages and drawings. It was through Gala, then married to Paul Éluard, that Max Ernst first met this recumbent figure in Carcassonne.
From then on Ernst made frequent visits to Bousquet (“I do not yet know if my destiny will take me to the vicinity of Carcassonne this winter”). He had several of his paintings and collages sent to him: “I am sending you two photos of Loplop so that you can see them.” Loplop, the dreamy bird that had haunted Ernst's collages since 1928, was a true poetic double of the artist. This alter ego appeared for the first time in the painter's collage novels La Femme 100 têtes and particularly Une semaine de bonté, a work he evokes here: “I will soon forward, I hope, a book that I have just finished.” He adds: “It is hardly necessary to tell you that I'm looking forward to receiving yours.” The book in question here is Une passante bleue et blonde.
Important unpublished handwritten postcard, and a moving testimony to the intellectual bond and special friendship between Max Ernst and Joë Bousquet until the latter's death.

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