Suzanne DUCHAMP (1889-1963) - Lot 137

Suzanne DUCHAMP (1889-1963) Hilly landscape with a bell tower Graphite, black stone, pastel and ink wash on paper, signed and monogrammed lower left. 48 x 58 cm. Suzanne Duchamp & Jean Crotti, Dada couple - Biographical note Born in a family of six children, Suzanne Duchamp (1889-1963) is the younger sister of the famous Jacques Duchamp, known as Jacques Villon (1875-1963), Raymond Duchamp, known as Raymond Duchamp-Villon (1876-1918) and Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968). Despite an important artistic production and an involvement in the avant-garde movements of the twentieth century, the historiography has overshadowed Suzanne Duchamp in favor of her brothers and her husband Jean Crotti. The few known paintings of Suzanne Duchamp before 1914 show members of her family and scenes around Rouen. As a nurse during the First World War, her production was very sporadic. Her work started again in 1919, with an involvement in the Parisian Dadaist circles. With her husband Jean Crotti, she founded the Tabu-Dada movement, which was presented at the Salon des Indépendants in 1920. Their manifesto presents "Tabu [as] a philosophical religion. We wish by the forms, by the colors, by any means, to express the mystery, the divinity of the universe and of all the mysteries". Suzanne Duchamp's body of work remains very little studied and her production after her Dadaist period uninformed. The drawings and paintings presented in this sale are unpublished. Indeed, for Jean Crotti, a painter "is a magician who makes us see by his magic the things which are not or which are not such as he shows them to us. He is a liar who tells hidden truths". Of Fribourg origin, Jean Crotti arrived in Paris at the beginning of the century where he enrolled at the Académie Julian. Like all young artists of his generation, he was influenced by the new movements that were taking shape. Exhibited among the artists of the Section d'Or (1912), and a close friend of Marcel Duchamp, Albert Gleizes and Jean Metzinger, Jean Crotti's work must however be seen through the prism of the Dada movement. Leader of the Parisian circle (1915-1920), then initiator of the brief Tabu-Dada movement (1921-1922) with his wife Suzanne Duchamp, the anarchist and provocative movement was his philosophical cradle and profoundly marked his artistic production. The year 1923 marks the "Return to order" of Jean Crotti. He exhibited his "Figures with long necks" at the Paul Guillaume Gallery, whose features are sketched in a spare and graphic manner like those of Brancusi's sculptures or Modigliani's paintings. Lot 145 is a significant example. In July 1937, during the Exposition des arts et techniques, Jean Crotti presented a new show: "Les Projections Kalocolor", which fascinated filmmakers and artists. A critic wrote: "It is a question of projecting luminous compositions on a giant screen. By directing a beam of light through transparent and colored bodies, then deformed by various sets of lenses more or less close together according to the principle of zoom, then by moving these same colored substances, Crotti managed to create an infinite stained glass window in perpetual mutation". This stage in the work of Jean Crotti marks the beginning of kinetic art, well before his compatriot Jean Tinguely. The gouache study, number 147 in the sale, seems to be directly related to the graphic research of "Projections Kalocolor".