This autumn, in addition to our exceptional highlights of old master through
modern prints, we are especially pleased to offer a select private collection
of prints, related drawings and
livres d’artiste
formerly in the collection of
Salvador Dalí’s foremost publisher, Pierre Argillet. These works were
acquired, over the past 40 years, by Argillet’s main US representative, the
French-born, New York-based Baron Philippe du Noyer de Lescheraine.
Thanks to Baron de Lescheraine’s unparalleled and encyclopedic
collection—from which we were graciously permitted to draw in order to
shape the story of Dalí and Argillet—and his numerous recollections as
Argillet’s representative and Dalí scholar, we have among the most interesting
collections of Dalí’s graphic work to come to the market in many decades.
Though Dalí was by no means inactive as a printmaker prior to the 1960s,
his output in this field easily quadrupled during this decade. No doubt this
was due to his continued rise to fame as one of the world’s best-known
artists and the efforts of a handful of enterprising publishers,Argillet among
them, whom both greatly appreciated Dalí’s art and sensed its commercial
power, honing in on this latter quality through commissions of myriad sets
(
or portfolios) of prints during the 1960s and early 1970s.
Argillet’s interaction with Dalí was perhaps the most fruitful of all Dalí’s
printmaking and publishing activities. Their collaboration produced nearly
200
original prints illustrating texts such as Goethe’s
Faust
(1969),
Guillaume
Apollinaire’s
Poèmes Secrets
(1967)
and Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s
Vénus
aux Fourrures
(1969),
all represented in their entirety in this collection. Dalí’s
work with Argillet, and with print publishers in general during this period,
also called for the creation by Dalí of numerous drawings, or designs for the
prints, in watercolor, ink and pencil or combinations of these media.These
macquettes
are well represented in the current collection, with superb, lively
drawings spanning a wide breadth of Dalí’s career, from prints in the
Chants
de Maldoror
series (1934) to the
Petites Nus
(1973).
We are delighted to be
offering this collection of scarce portfolios and vibrant drawings, and to be
able to showcase the great collaboration of Salvador Dalí and Pierre Argillet.
