Wifredo Lam

El Ultimo viaje del buque fantasma, Plate I

1976

Les Bijoux Indiscrets (The Indiscreet Jewels) Color lithograph, 1962-3 As published in XXeme Siecle, 1963 From the edition issued by San Lazarro unsigned for the album XXeme Siècle No.22. Printed from the same stones and at the same date as the signed edition of 75 impressions. Printed at the studio of Mourlot, Paris 1963. Signed in the stone (see photo) Titled in the stone (See photo) Edition c. 2000 Reference: Kaplan and Baum: Magritte Graphic Work no 3. Kaplan, Surrealist Prints, Figure 80, page 103 Image size: 9 3/16 x 11 7/8 inches "Executed in 1963, Les bijoux indiscrets (pen and ink drawing) is a work which shows a hand which has a face, its eyes closed, on its wrist. Magritte had originally intended to call the oil version of this work, which he conceived of in 1962 but only finally painted during the following year, the same this work on paper was created, La divine comédie, but according to the catalogue raisonné changed his mind following the suggestion of his friend Paul Scutenaire. Instead of the Dante reference, it was replaced by one to Denis Diderot's first novel, a satire in which a monarch had a magic ring able to make the genitals of women speak. In an old English translation, the bijoux were the 'toys', or genitals, of the women, making the play on the notion of transformative and elusive jewels evoked by Magritte's picture all the more complex. For here, in place of a bracelet, is a human face: this is, indeed, an indiscreet jewel; however, in the eighteenth-century novel the indiscretion was shared by the ring which was able to gain such voluble responses from the women of the fictitious Congo of which the main protagonist was sultan and by those women's no-longer-private parts themselves. This title therefore adds an extra layer of Surrealism to the work, paying homage to one of the movement's predecessors. Les bijoux indiscrets is a preparatory work for a lithograph that Magritte created for XXe Siècle, which was published at Christmas the same year. Clearly, the artist was returning to and embellishing his original composition, which had shown a simple landscape as a backdrop to the articulate hand...

Cahiers d'art, Surrealist Composition 1 Pochoir, 1934 Unsigned as issued in Cahier's edition Published in Cahier's d'art, 1934 Unsigned Edition of 1200 There was also a pencil signed...

This lithograph in colors on Arches paper (with watermark) was created by the artist in 1970. Signed in the stone, (lower right) from the edition of 1000. Available for local pick u...

Myriam Bat-Yosef Surrealist abstract lithograph print in colorful abstract shapes and shades Hand signed and dated 1971. sheet measures 9.25 X 9.25 inches The envelope and the Peter Buch poster is just for provenance and is not included in this sale. Myriam Bat-Yosef, whose real name is Marion Hellerman, born on January 31, 1931 in Berlin, Germany to a Jewish family from Lithuania, she is an Israeli-Icelandic artist who paints on papers, paintings, fabrics, objects and human beings for performances. Myriam Bat-Yosef currently lives and works in Paris. In 1933, her family fleeing the Nazi Holocaust, Miriam Bat-Yosef emigrates to Palestine and settles in Jaffa. In 1936, she suffers a family tragedy, her father, militant Zionist, is called to fight, still recovering from an operation of appendicitis. The incision will become infected, antibiotics did not exist yet, and her father will die in the hospital after 9 months of suffering. Myriam and her mother leave Palestine to live in Paris for three years. French is Myriam's first school language. In 1939, still fleeing Nazism, she returned to Palestine, leaving France by the last boat from Marseille. She moved to Tel Aviv with her mother, aunt and maternal grandmother. In 1940, she began attending the Academy of Fine Arts in Tel Aviv and took her name as an artist, Bat-Yosef, which means Joseph's daughter in Hebrew, as a tribute to her father. In 1946, Myriam graduated as a kindergarten teacher but wanted to be an artist. Her mother enrolled her in an evening school to prepare a diploma of art teacher. At 19, she performs two years of military service in Israel. In 1952, with a pension of $50 a month that her mother allocated, she went to study at the Beaux-Arts in Paris. To survive, she has several activities while studying. In 1955, she had her first solo exhibition, at the Israeli Club on Wagram Avenue in Paris. Many artists, such as Yaacov Agam, Yehuda Neiman Avigdor Arikha, Raffi Kaiser, Dani Karavan and sculptors Achiam and Shlomo Selinger attended the opening . In 1956, she enrolled at the School of Fine Arts in Florence. This is where she meets the painter Errô. They share an icy studio in winter. Myriam moves to Milan with friends. She organizes a joint exhibition with Erro, one room each, at the Montenapoleone gallery. Her works are admired by the sculptor Marino Marini and the painters Renato Birolli and Enrico Prampolini. Myriam and Erro exhibit in Rome, Milan, Florence and meet many personalities: Alain Jouffroy and his wife, the painter Manina, Roberto Matta and his wife Malitte, textile artist who was one of the founders of the Pompidou Center. Back in Paris, Myriam and Erro get married, which allows Myriam to avoid being called into the Israeli army during the Suez Canal War. In 1957, Myriam and her husband went to Iceland. Myriam works in a chocolate factory. Having enough money, she starts producing art again. She exhibited in Reykjavik's first art gallery. She meets the artist Sigridur Bjornsdottir, married to the Swiss painter Dieter Roth . In 1958, Myriam and her husband leave for Israel. They exhibit in Germany, then in Israel. Back in Paris, the couple became friends with artists of the surrealist movement, such as Victor Brauner, Hans Bellmer, the sculptor Philippe Hiquily, Liliane Lijn, future wife of Takis and photographer Nathalie Waag. Erro and Myriam have a daughter on March 15, 1960, named Tura, after the painter Cosmè Tura, but also close to the Icelandic Thora or the Hebrew Torah. Bat-Yosef’s complex trajectory throughout the 20th century is linked as much to the transnational history of what was for a time called the School of Paris as it is to a certain legacy of Surrealism. Her work features the same idea of resolving antinomies that also defined the spirit of surrealism, and is enhanced with her readings of the Kabbalah and her spiritual grounding in Taoism. However, while there are reasons for her approach to be associated with the process of the ready-made, it is important to consider the immediate intrication of these works with her practice of performance, during which the body itself is also painted – a feminist response to Yves Klein’s Anthropometries (1960) and an echo of the happenings which Jean-Jacques Lebel organised at the time in Paris. In 1963, Erró told Myriam that if she wants to be a painter, she can not be his wife. Myriam chose to be a painter and the couple divorced in 1964. Since that time, Myriam Bat-Yosef has exhibited in many countries: Europe, United States, Japan, etc. Although long in the shadows, the work of Myriam Bat-Yosef has been greeted by many artists and personalities: Anaïs Nin, Nancy Huston, André Pieyre of Mandiargues, José Pierre, René de Solier , Jacques Lacarrière, Alain Bosquet, Pierre Restany, Sarane Alexandrian and Surrealist André Breton who, after a visit to her studio, confided to having been intrigued by its phantasmagorical dimension. She was included in the book Pop Art and Beyond: Gender, Race, and Class in the Global Sixties by Mona Hadler and Kalliopi Minioudaki. Extract "World Citizen, Artist of the Pop Era Sarah Wilson; Why do we know so little of Myriam Bat-Yosef, the most important female Israeli artist of the Pop era? Issues of identity and sexuality feature constantly in her work. She exhibited internationally from Reykjavik to Tokyo; she had two shows at Arturo Schwarz’s famous Dada/surrealist gallery in Milan; she participated in feminist art events in Los Angeles. Above all, in 1971, she conceived Total Art, a Pop Gesamtkunstwerk inside and outside the Israel Museum, Jerusalem. Painter, performer, and installation artist, she was also a lover, wife, and mother. Of Lithuanian-Jewish descent, she was close to the family of philosopher Emmanuel Levinas. An émigré in Paris she would repudiate a national passport, participating in Garry Davis’s short-lived “World Citizens” movement. She continues the lineage of women surrealist artists: Valentine Hugo, Leonor Fini, Dorothea Tanning, Leonora Carrington, Unica Zürn, Jane Graverol, Toyen, Alice Rahon...