On the occasion of the "100 Years of Surrealism" sale, organized by Bonhams in Paris in March 2024, the Musée d'arts de Nantes has acquired three new works, pre-empted by Claire Lebossé, curator and head of the museum's modern art collection, to complement the more than 14,000 works already in its collections. These three surrealist works by Jane Graverol and Léonor Fini reinforce the highlights of the modern art collection.
Focus on...
Jane Graverol, Le Tombeau de Mallarmé (1958).
Jane Graverol's tribute to Stéphane Mallarmé underlines what Surrealism owes to poetry. A literary movement before it was plastic, Surrealism found in Mallarmé one of its tutelary figures.
Here, the painter delivers a message in the form of a painting: Mallarmé's poetry, whose works, set on a pedestal, resist the force of the waves, acts as a unique landmark in the bare immensity of the sea.
Jane Graverol, Mallarmé's Tomb, 1958. Oil on panel, 42 x 55 cm.
Jane Graverol, Le Bon Bout de la raison, 1962. Oil on canvas, 65 x 81 cm.
Jane Graverol, Le Bon Bout de la raison (1962)
Jane Graverol's attachment to the animal world is central to her story and iconography.
Le Bon Bout de la raison is a captivating and enigmatic work, emblematic of the poetic and mysterious nature of Jane Graverol's art. Her canvases, which she describes as "waking dreams", offer an infinite number of interpretations, leaving it up to the viewer to take part in the dream.
Leonor Fini, Imaginary Portrait (1950)
In 2022, the Musée d'arts de Nantes acquired a mask by Leonor Fini(Untitled, known as Masque aux mouches). The acquisition of this work on paper reveals the diversity of the artist's practices. It also illustrates Leonor Fini's focus on the human figure and the self-portrait, characteristic of her work on canvas and paper.
"In February 1954, Yves Taillandier wrote in Connaissance des arts : "In her portraits, she focuses on resemblance, adding a slightly strange charm inspired by her surrealist sensibility. In this portrait drawn from her imagination, Fini shows the fright on the face, the half-open mouth as if seized by surprise.
Leonor Fini, Portrait imaginaire, 1950. Oil and Indian ink on cartoline, 65.2 x 50.3 cm.
Surrealist women in Nantes
From the 1980s onwards, the Musée d'art de Nantes developed a substantial surrealist collection, which has become one of the museum's hallmarks.
At the same time, the museum has for several years been seeking to demonstrate the fundamental contribution of women artists to this movement. Claude Cahun, born in Nantes, is the most obvious example, but the MNAM's deposit of a work by Toyen and the purchase of works by Meret Oppenheim, Dorothea Tanning and Leonor Fini are tangible traces of this in the collections and in the exhibition.
The acquisition of these three works fits naturally into these two axes.