JEAN COCTEAU (1889-1963) Lot n° 92

Homage to Paul Klee, Epigone Lithograph on Arches paper, numbered in pencil XXXXIX (49) / 50 on the lower left and stamped in the lower right. Good condition, slightly yellowed on the edges. Size : 64,5 x 49,5 cm The poet of the dance of Sophocles, the novelist of Les Enfants Terribles, the playwright and filmmaker of Orpheus and Beauty and the Beast drew a lot throughout his life and painted in his last years. Author of mythological subjects, genre, portraits, landscapes and frescoes, he was also a creator of tapestry cartoons, theater sets, ceramics, lithographs, posters and various illustrations. Cocteau began by creating a poster for Serge Diaghilev's Ballets Russes, which fascinated him, as it did Léon Bakst, and brought him closer to the cubist and futurist avant-garde. Above all, he becomes the hub of all artistic impressions, whether pictorial with Picasso, musical with Satie and the group "Les Six", or poetic with Guillaume Apollinaire. Jean Cocteau created a first series of drawings in 1923, followed by others such as "Le Mystère de Jean L'Oiseleur" in 1925 and "Le dormeur" in 1929. In his dedication of drawings to Picasso, he wrote: "The farting do not draw, they untie the writing and renew it in another way. In his early years, his drawings are divided into two groups: the humorous, charged, abundant and sharp, and the disturbing and deep more or less inspired by the use of hallucinogens. In both cases, their authenticity is a guarantee of their quality. On the contrary, thereafter, he will make a stereotyped, unchanging, mannered graphics, hanging in the volutes of a single uninterrupted line all the elements of the representation, often a profile of ephebe, with the graces of fashion model. At the end of his days, Cocteau left evidence of his graphic skills, drawing some tapestry cartoons and decorating with drawings in a sketchy cartoon style the Chapelle des Pêcheurs in Villefranche, the Salle des Mariages in the town hall of Menton and lastly, the Chapelle Sainte-Blaise des Simples in Milly-la-Forêt, where he was buried. Public collections: We note first the recent Espace Jean Cocteau in Menton with the donation of 1800 works offered by the collector Severin Wunderman and also in many museums such as The Pompidou Center Paris, Metropolitan Museum New York, Art Institute Chicago, National Gallery Washington, Pushkin Museum Moscow, Peggy Guggenheim Collection Venice, Courtauld Institute London, Albertin Graphic Art Vienna, etc. Bibliography: Dominique Marny: Jean Cocteau ou le roman d'un funambule, Ed. du Rocher, 2013. Carole Weisweiller : Jean Cocteau, les années Francine, 1950-1963, Ed. du Seuil 2003.