Lot n° 144
Estimation :
3000 - 4000
EUR
Result with fees
Result
: 7 540EUR
JEAN DUBUFFET.
Twelve letters addressed to André Castel or his wife. Paris, El Goléa, [ca. 1947-1948].
2 signed autograph letters, one of which illustrated with a drawing, and 10 signed typed letters, two of which with autograph additions, of various sizes (10 in-8 and 2 in-4).
Important collection of twelve signed letters, including two autographs, addressed by Jean Dubuffet to André Castel or his wife: one is illustrated with an amusing original drawing showing two camels and a palm tree.
A famous aficionado from Nîmes, André Castel was the bullfighting guide for a generation of painters and writers whom he took to the bullfights. Bataille, Cendrars,
Dubuffet, Leiris, Masson, Paulhan or Picasso met. In 1955, A. Castel left to settle in Spain.
Letters of great freedom of tone and full of humour.
Thus this autograph letter attacking Picasso: "Picasso, oh no thank you. False artist, false painting, false glory. Dirty clown, fake token. Dirty guy. I know some real artists. It doesn't look like that at all." After an allusion to the preparation of the Almanach de l'Art Brut, he resumes his diatribe, explaining that he won't be able to come back to Arles "to go and see these toros and watch Picasso watching them. Surely he'll be photographed stamping his feet, that old macaque. He must be as scared as a fart."
Interesting postscript: "If there is any beautiful bullfighting graffiti on the walls of the arena, have it photographed for me."
In another letter, typed, his anger extends from Picasso to Eluard and Zervos: "It's Picasso who knocks out the world with his toros, he never stops painting toros on canvases, on pots, on plates, and with each toro he paints the Abbé Morel and the Eluard and the Zervos who go on a tour of conferences to explain; in the end, it's torturing the toros with all this talk.
The letter addressed from El Goléa on January 18, 1948, has an amusing drawing at the top. Dubuffet evokes his trip to North Africa "in my diabolical machine high above the land and the sea", his two weeks in the Hoggar enamelled with mishaps and his arrival in El Goléa "where the storm rages, a time of Cap Gris
Nez or Pointe du raz. The palm trees dance in the furious wind."
In another letter, Dubuffet humorously refers to his progress in Arabic, which he says he studies "with outrageous application": "To say his brother is dead it is called metro. See how short it is. And to say 'she's gone' it's 'roti'. And to say bedroom it's: cock.
That's unpleasant."
The autograph addition, with notes for phonetics, ends with: "There are also words easy to remember like toumoubil, triciti, chiminn difir etc."
The other letters deal with everyday life; bullfights, work, the Gallimard publishing house "where I don't know why I don't like to go", books, a trip to Algiers... "Time slips through your fingers like living water."
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