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Presentation for the opening of the À l'etoile scellee gallery

Arts

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
People cited Roberto Fernandez Retamar, Wolfgang Paalen, Man Ray, Clovis Trouille, Jean ou Hans Arp, Balthus, Victor Brauner, Max Ernst, Joan Miró, Marie Cerminova, dite Toyen

Description

Manuscript by André Breton dated 28 November 1952 and published anonymously in Arts on 5^th December.

Published anonymously in Arts on 5^th December 1952, these few lines announce the opening of the À l'Étoile scellée gallery, which would be directed by Breton and a few of his friends, including its manager Georges Goldfayn. This occasion marked the return of a more visible surrealist activity; with the gallery’s opening the group also launched Medium, an information bulletin that made up for the absence of an official journal since the Liberation. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005] 

Signed handwritten manuscript, 28 Novermber 1952. 
- 1/2 page in-4° manuscript, dated and signed by Breton, of the presentation text for the opening of the À l'Étoile scellée gallery: 
‘According to André Breton, who will oversee the selection of works on show, the moment has come to construct a bulwark, as much against the risk of a regression to ‘realist’ art as to the danger of its dilution in an ‘abstraction’ whose authenticity is less and less verifiable, one that is broad enough to stretch from Balthus to Paalen, via Max Ernst, Brauner, Toyen, Trouille, Picabia, Man Ray, Giacometti, Miró, Arp and Fernandez. A stand of publications, offering a very specific selection of works (poetry, art, philosophy, sociology, occultism) plans […] to supply a hitherto unparalleled contextual reference.’ 
A few deletions and corrections. [Auction catalogue, 2003]

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition de Marguerite Bonnet avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier, Marie-Claire Dumas, Étienne-Alain Hubert et José Pierre), « [Présentation pour l'ouverture de la galerie "À l'Étoile scellée"] », Alentours II, Œuvres complètes, tome III, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 1999, p. 1080-1081, notice p. 1459-1460