Rouault, Composition, Derrière le miroir (after) 1951

Description

Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From Derrière le miroir, N° 36-37-38, 1951. … more Lithograph on vélin paper. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Good condition. Notes: From Derrière le miroir, N° 36-37-38, 1951. Published by Aimé Maeght, Éditeur, Paris; printed by Éditions Pierre à Feu, Galerie Maeght, Paris. Excerpted from a Christie’s, New York lot essay, The life span of Derrière le Miroir was thirty-five years. Publication began in 1946. Aimé Maeght, initiator of Derrière le Miroir, had already made few attempts to start publications illustrated with fine printed lithographs in colours in the years prior to the launch of Derrière le Miroir. The name, Derrière le Miroir was suggested by Jacques Kober, manager of Galerie Maeght. The gallery had opened in 1945; the first number of Derrière le Miroir was released a year later. For this first issue Geer van Velde was invited to create lithographs to illustrate the publication. The lithographs in the first issue was printed by Mourlot, Paris. The first three issues of Derrière le Miroir were unsuccessful for Maeght as far as the edition size—the initial print-runs were far too large. From 30,000 for the first issue, the number was taken down to 10,000 for numbers two and three, until Derrière le Miroir number four was published in an edition of 1500. Maeght instituted a policy whereby unsold issues were recycled and used for the fabrication of new paper for the coming editions—this served to both conserve resources and also usually result in ultimate edition sizes far less than 1,500. With number four, the permanent format for Derrière le Miroir was established. Lithographs in colours were key; text was limited to comments on the featuring artist's exhibition taking place in the Galerie Maeght, and this catalogue format was defining to Derrière le Miroir. Galerie Maeght took on the leading role in Paris and presented all main artists including Braque, Matisse, Chagall, Léger, Bonnard, Chillida and many more. So too did Derrière le Miroir. The idea of a magazine was meanwhile still on the mind of Aimé Maeght. He found an insert as a solution. Two, and later four, pages of art review were inserted from 1952 onwards. In 1968 this find had ripened to independency and the dream of Aimé Maeght was now a tangible fact named l'Art vivant. Derrière le Miroir was on it's own again. Over 250 issues in a row. At that point publisher Aimé Maeght wished to make a mark with the publication of an hommage to all who once contributed to the magazine which came in the form of issue number 250, but was delayed by the death of Aimé Maeght. It was published after number 253 in 1982 and became a tribute to Aimé and Marguérite Maeght and 35 years of friendship with artists and poets. The era of Derrière le Miroir was closed with that final publication.

GEORGES ROUAULT (1871-1958) French painter, printmaker, ceramicist, and maker of stained glass who, drawing inspiration from French medieval masters, united religious and secular traditions divorced since the Renaissance. Rouault was born in a cellar in Paris during a bombardment of the city by the forces opposed to the Commune. His father was a cabinetmaker. A grandfather took an interest in art and owned a collection of Honoré Daumier’s lithographs; Rouault said later that he “went first to school with Daumier.” In 1885 he enrolled in an evening course at the Paris École des Arts Décoratifs. From 1885 to 1890 he was apprenticed in a glazier’s workshop; his mature style as a painter was undoubtedly influenced by his work on the restoration of medieval stained-glass windows, including those of Chartres cathedral. In 1891 he entered the École des Beaux-Arts, where he soon became one of the favourite pupils of the Symbolist painter Gustave Moreau, in a class that also included the young Henri Matisse and Albert Marquet. After the death of Moreau in 1898, a small Paris museum was created for his pictures, and Rouault became the curator. Among the major artists of the 20th-century school of Paris, Rouault was an isolated figure in at least two respects: he practiced Expressionism, a style that has never found much favour in France, and he was chiefly a religious painter—one of the most convincing in recent centuries. Both statements, however, need qualification. Rouault was not as fiercely Expressionistic as some of his Scandinavian and German contemporaries; in some ways his work is a late flowering of 19th-century Realism and Romanticism. And he was not an official church artist; his concern with sin and redemption was deeply personal. Rouault was in the milieu of Picasso. less