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Artist or Maker: Hans Bellmer (1902-1975)
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Provenance: Daniel Cordier, by whom acquired from the artist circa 1960.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.
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Exhibited: Hannover, Kestner-Gesellschaft, Hans Bellmer: Zeichnungen und Graphik, 1967, no. 117; this exhibition later travelled to Berlin, Kunstverein, Kunstamt Berlin-Tempelhof and Munich, Galerie Wolfgang Ketterer.
Paris, Centre National d'Art Contemporain, Bellmer, 1971, no. 121.
Chicago, Museum of Contemporary Art, Hans Bellmer, May - June 1975.
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Notes: 'Bellmer's morphology is based on anatomical division and multiplication, on inter-anatomical musing. It is not only a question of inversion or reversal (the head at the foot), of rejecting or transforming human anatomy by mutilating or multiplying the limbs. What Bellmer achieves is an immediate, plastic vision of the simultaneous sensations of the body. "The body is like a sentence which invites dissection in order that its true meaning may be reconstituted in an endless series of anagrams" (Bellmer in Notes au sujet de la jointure à boules). Bellmer's drawings could be termed "anatomical anagrams". He pursued his researches even into the field of language in search of the principles on which he based his discoveries of the "physical unconscious". It is significant that he should be a master of the anagram, in French as well as in German. Are not the permutations of the phrase ROSE AU COEUR VIOLET that he composed with Nora Mitrani the best illustrations of his own drawings?
Se vouer à toi ô cruel
A toi, couleuvre rose
O, vouloir être cause
Couvre-toi, la rue ose,
Ouvre-toi, ô la sucrée
Va où surréel côtoie
O, l'oiseau crève-tour
Vil os écoeura route
Coeur violé osa tuer
Soeur à voile courte - écolier vous a outré
Curé, où Eros t'a voilé - où l'écu osera te voir
Où verte coloriée sua - cou ouvert sera loi'
(C. Jelenski, in A. Grall, Hans Bellmer, London, 1966).
VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price plus buyer's premium.
