Jean COCTEAU (1889 - 1963)

Lot 41
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120000 - 150000 EUR
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Result : 151 200EUR
Jean COCTEAU (1889 - 1963)
Judith and Holophern, 1948-1949 Gouache on papers signed and dated lower left 302 x 358 cm A certificate of authenticity and an expert's report by Mrs Annick Guedras will be given to the successful bidder Exhibition : "Démarche d'un poète", Musée Jean Cocteau, Menton, 2016 This monumental work is none other than the cardboard of the Tapestry bearing the same name which was woven by the Bouret Manufacture in Aubusson, commissioned by Madame Francine Weisweiller for her villa in Saint Jean Cap Ferat (Villa Santo Sospir). This is why we find the subject upside down, mirrored, as well as the signature and the date. Only two copies of this tapestry were woven. Jean Cocteau took the step from writing to drawing under the impulse of Picasso from the 1920s onwards. Then always guided by him, he starts to paint at the beginning of the 1950s. Jean Cocteau's paintings are rare because they were only produced during the last ten years of his life. The museum's collection has some of the most famous: The Birth of Pegasus, Jacob's Fight and the Angel of Madame Favini... Through this medium, Jean Cocteau considers that he also does poetry. He immediately acknowledges that he is not as comfortable as Picasso in this field, but it is also the attraction of the artistic experience that pushes him to approach pastel and then painting, and through tapestry. One of his most important works is the tapestry Judith and Holofernes (1948) for which he drew many studies. It is a painting translated into a "wool language". At the same time, Jean Cocteau approaches the mural work on the French Riviera, always under the influence of Picasso who completes in 1952 his famous fresco La guerre et la Paix à Vallauris (War and Peace in Vallauris). Thus the poet began by decorating the walls of the Villa Santo Sospir in St Jean-Cap-Ferrat from (1950), then moved on to the St Pierre Chapel in Villefranche-sur-Mer (1956), the wed
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