ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ (1906-1957) TELEPHONE AND... Lot 10

ÓSCAR DOMÍNGUEZ (1906-1957) TELEPHONE AND GUN, 1944 Oil on canvas Signed and dated '[19]44' lower left Sketch on back Oil on canvas; signed and dated [19]'44' lower left; sketch on the reverse 81 X 54 CM - 31 7/8 X 21 1/4 IN. A certificate from La Asociación de Expertos y Herederos en Defensa de Óscar Domínguez, dated 25 March 2021, will be given to the buyer. PROVENANCE Madrid, Guillermo de Osma Gallery. Private collection, Spain. Sale, Christie's London, 21 June 2006, lot 354. Acquired in this sale by the current owner. Private collection, Spain. EXHIBITION Marseille, Musée Cantini, La part du jeu et du rêve, 25 June-2 October 2005, no. 74. BIBLIOGRAPHY Fernando Castro, Óscar Domínguez y el surrealismo, Ediciones Cátedra, Madrid: 1978, p. 153 (reproduced). La part du jeu et du rêve: Óscar Domínguez et le surréalisme 1906-1957, cat. exhibition, Marseille, Musée Cantini, 25 June-2 October 2005, Hazan, Paris: 2005, pp. 150 and 219 (reproduced in colour). Despuès de la alambrada: el arte español en el exilio 1939-1960, cat. expo, Zaragoza, Paraninfo de la Universidad, October-December 2009; Córdoba, Museo de Bellas Artes y Palacio de la Merced, December 2009-February 2010; Valencia, Centro Cultural 'La Neu' de la Universidad de Valencia, February-April 2010; Badajoz, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Extremadura y América Latina (Museum of Contemporary Art of Extremadura and Latin America), May-July 2010, p. 252 (reproduced in colour). "In the months before the outbreak of the Second World War, Domínguez's painting evolves towards a kind of crystallization. He presents us with a surprisingly structured space, which nevertheless retains all the properties of spontaneity that it owes to 'gestural' automatism. The signs of aridity multiply, angular networks, proliferating armatures, prismatic clusters, strange polygonal brushwork that finally suffocate the whole space of the canvas, as if the anguish of catastrophe had crept into his painting, as if it seemed to manifest the presentiment of events ready to precipitate the world into chaos. But again, his style changes. In 1941-1942, most of his paintings show strange deformations, especially in the form of elongated female nudes characterized by tiny heads in the shape of horns or cleavers, and considerably overdeveloped limbs, such as feet or hands from which nipples emerge (Calculo, 1941-1942; Mujer sobre un Canapé, 1942; La Main passe, 1942). In 1943, he returned to some of the figurative elements of his obsessive world: an hourglass, a sundial, an inkwell and a box full of pinned butterflies in Le Plus clair du temps, a sewing machine in Beau comme and La Couturière, and a revolver in La Fin du Voyage. The metaphysical breath has never been so active in Domínguez's work, but he does not retain the disquieting muses, the mannequins or the arcades that haunt the mysterious urban landscapes of his elder. From December 1 to 14, 1943, he presented his first solo exhibition in Paris at Louis Carré. Éluard wrote the text of the booklet published on this occasion. [...] A new phase began with the liberation of Paris in the summer of 1944. For many artists, the experience of war had transformed the way in which the modern world could be apprehended. The violence of the conflict, the scale of the destruction, the revelation of the horror of the concentration camps left the world in a state of shock, prey to a trauma without equal. A world had ended. For Domínguez, the immediate post-war period was nevertheless one of the richest. He took part in the Salon d'Automne in 1944 (it was, as André Lhote wrote, "the Salon of liberated painting"), held several solo exhibitions in the best galleries in a few years, published a poetic narrative, Les Deux qui se croisent (1947), and collaborated in fashion magazines. He travels to Germany with the first French theatre tour, as the author of the sets and costumes for Jean-Paul Sartre's play, Les Mouches. He also participated in all the exhibitions of the "Spaniards of Paris" that took place throughout Europe. Who are these 'Spanish Artists of the School of Paris'? There is a certain family resemblance between them, including the ever-present shadow of Picasso. On the artistic level, we readily attribute to them an excessive temperament, 'an organic passion', an 'outburst of the being bent over his canvas' [Jean Cassou]. From the evocat