Kurt Seligmann
60.3 × 47.3 cm
Swiss artist, Kurt Seligmann meets Almbert Giacometti at the Academy of Fine Arts in Geneva. Seligmann follows his friend to Paris, and he then adheres to the Surrealist movement as early as 1934. He notably participates to the illustration of André Breton and Georges Bataille's "Minotaure" journal. He will quit Paris for New York in 1939, and will spend the rest of his life in the United States.
Kurt Seligmann is attracted early on by esoterism and Medieval mysticism. The drawing presented here is close to the figure of Maldoror, from the illustrations Seligmann contributed to the Breton and Eluard Complete works of the Count of Lautréamont (1938). This figure of the skeletal silhouette moving through a voidlandscape towards the horizon is a central part of Seligmann's artistic vocabulary. The figure of this ghostly knight is close to both his illustration of Jean Sans Peur, as well as his Phantom of the Past (1943) engravings, being probably a preliminary sketch for the latter.
Provenance
Artist's SuccessionHarold Diamond, through Hooks Epstein gallery, Houston Texas, (est. 1969), which sold works for the benefit of the artist's succession.
Thimoty Baum, New York
Sotheby's, New-York, October 7th 1988, lot. n° 140
Mark Seidenfeld, New York
Sotheby's New York, October 12th 1991, lot n°49
Galerie Natalie Seroussi, Paris
Collection Yves de Fontbrune (former owner of the Cahiers d'art, succeeding Zervos)
Private collection, Paris, through Succession.
Publications
Certificate of authenticity by Dr. Stephan E. Hauser, author of the 1997 monography of the artist, and author of the upcoming Catalogue raisonné of the artist's works. This drawing will be included in the future Catalogue raisonné.Join our mailing list
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