André BRETON. Lot n° 42

Unwilling Hero. Undated [1926]. Photographic collage (274 x 221 mm) with autograph poem signed by Paul Éluard on verso; under glass, stained wood frame. Large original photographic collage by André Breton. It shows a couple sitting on a couch; behind, a barn is burning. Autograph poem signed by Paul Éluard on the back: by André Breton Ce ménage qui s'embête. His house can burn down, he is as dumb as he is bored. My companion is a star Me I let down my sails Paul Éluard "The first collages of Max Ernst, of an extraordinary power of suggestion, have been welcomed among us as a revelation" confessed, fascinated, André Breton: he himself has produced about thirty pictorial collages according to Henri Béhar. This one, of large dimensions, is remarkable. (Béhar, Dictionary André Breton, p. 240.) Provenance: Paul Éluard - René Rasmussen. The collage appeared in the exhibition Fifty Years of Collages in 1964 at the Musée d'art et d'industrie de Saint-Étienne (no. 109 in the catalogue), then in 1982-1983 at the exhibition Éluard et ses amis peintres at the Centre Georges Pompidou, in 1989 at the Palazzo Reale in Milan in the exhibition I Surrealisti, then in 1995 in the exhibition Passions privées at the Musée d'Art moderne de la ville de Paris (p. 192, no. 12).