JEAN FAUTRIER (1898-1964) Lot n° 44

JEAN FAUTRIER (1898-1964) LES FEUILLES VERTES, 1934 Oil on canvas Signed lower left Oil on canvas; signed lower left 73 x 60 CM - 28 3/4 x 23 5/8 in. PROVENANCE Collection Jean Paulhan, France Collection Dominique Aury, France By descent to the present owner EXHIBITION Paris, Galeries nationales du Grand Palais, Jean Paulhan à travers ses peintres, 1 February-15 April 1974, described under no. 563 p. 218 of the exhibition catalog BIBLIOGRAPHY Palma Bucarelli, Jean Fautrier, Pittura e materia, edition Il Saggiatore, Milan, 1960, reproduced under n° 107 p. 306 This work will be included in the catalog raisonné of Jean Fautrier's painted work being prepared by Madame Marie-José Lefort. "There is a very rich temperament here, with an almost constant tragic resonance, no doubt due to the very nature of the artist, but also to a double search: to push the intensity of color to the extreme, and to reach the essential by dint of sacrifices. Each of these paintings seems violently spontaneous, and those that preceded it show that its strength is made up of deletions, refusals, the will to keep only the strongest or the most acute. Hence the power of affirmation of this painting. Because each canvas is made of "what is left", there is a world of Fautrier, a purely plastic world, where the subject does not count, where the means of suggestion are as distant from thought as those of music. It is not because he has a "material" that Fautrier has a world, it is because he has an eye, a tragic vision. In front of his best paintings, I think of Eisenstein, and sometimes, although they are flowers, landscapes, of an intense and lyrical world, of Goya's etchings" (André Malraux in NRF, 1933) Les feuilles vertes by Jean Fautrier comes from the former collection of Dominique Aury, née Anne Desclos, and has remained in the same family since then. Editorial secretary of the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), directed by Jean Paulhan, whose mistress she was, and the first woman to sit on the Gallimard reading committee in 1951, she was also known as Pauline Réage, the author of Histoire d'O, a masterpiece of the erotic novel which caused a scandal when it was published in 1954. Although it was soon rumored that Pauline Réage was only a pseudonym behind which Dominique Aury was hiding, many were convinced, like Albert Camus, that only a man could have written such a book. Today considered a classic of the genre, translated into many languages and sold more than a million copies worldwide, Dominique Aury waited until she was 87 years old, in a confession to the "New Yorker" in 1994, to assume the maternity of this work. It is undoubtedly to please her lover, Jean Paulhan, that Dominique Aury wrote Histoire d'O, for which he signed the preface. Essayist and art critic, he has a considerable influence on the world of letters and arts. Their relationship, secret, sometimes painful, is not less marked by a great freedom. Dominique Aury had other lovers, mistresses, including Janine Aeply, the wife of Jean Fautrier, a great friend of Paulhan, with whom she had a turbulent affair, and who some say inspired the character of O. Painted in 1934, this painting belonged to Jean Paulhan who probably gave it to Dominique Aury before 1960. It was also included in the exhibition paying tribute to Paulhan's artistic reflections, organized a few years after his death, in 1974 at the Grand Palais. Les feuilles vertes by Jean Fautrier, was part of the former collection of Dominique Aury, née Anne Desclos, and has remained in the same family ever since. As an editorial secretary of the Nouvelle Revue Française (NRF), directed by Jean Paulhan, her lover, and as the first woman to sit on the Gallimard reading committee in 1951, she was also known as Pauline Réage, the author of Story of O, a masterpiece of erotic fiction that caused a scandal when it was published in 1954. Although the rumor soon spread that Pauline Réage was only a pseudonym concealing Dominique Aury's identity, many -like Albert Camus for instance- were convinced that only a man could have written such a book. Now considered a classic of the genre, translated into many languages and having sold over a million copies worldwide, it wasn't until Dominique Aury turned 87 that she confessed to being the author of the book in an interview to the New Yorker in 1994. It was undoubtedly to please her lover, Jean Paulhan, that Dominique Aury wrote Story of O, for which he also wrote a foreword. An essayist and art critic in his own right, he exerted considerable influence on the literary and artistic world. Their relationship, a secret and sometimes painful affair, was no less imbued with