GISÈLE PRASSINOS COLLECTION

par Annie Richard

Bibliothèque historique de la ville de Paris, 24 rue Pavée 75004 Paris
Tel: Marie-Françoise Garion ↑1 44 59.29 59. bhvp@paris.fr

With the kind permission of the BHVP director, the dissemination of the inventory of manuscripts and iconographic documents is possible before its online publication. The printed books of the collection are catalogued in the collective catalogue of the specialized libraries of the City of Paris and consultable at the Historical Library.

Gisèle Prassinos, of Greek origin, born in 1920 in Istanbul and exiled to France in 1922 with her family, was officially inducted into surrealism by a famous photo by Man Ray (document featuring André Breton, Paul Eluard, Benjamin Péret, René Char with her introducers: Mario Prassinos and Henri Parisot) in 1934, when she herself was 14 years old, as the incarnation of "automatic writing": she is Alice II of the movement in the Dictionnaire abrégé du Surréalisme of 1938, hence editions in prestigious reviews like Documents 34 and Minotaure and rare publishers, notably G.L.M (including La Sauterelle arthritique with the reproduction of the famous photo and a preface by Paul Éluard) and the "L'Âge d'Or" collection by Henri Parisot. She is the only woman retained by André Breton in the very first edition of the Anthologie de l'Humour noir and maintains an eminent position in the history of surrealism.

After her return to literature in 1958, she invests in various genres where a very personal surrealist spirit is expressed that takes its source essentially in the companionship of an exceptional creative childhood with the beloved brother, the future painter Mario Prassinos, which leads her to transgress very early the gendered roles of her oriental family where women are devoted to domestic activities more than to those of the mind.

It is first the novelistic form until 1966, then a period of about twenty years where an intense poetic production is doubled by the fabrication of felt hangings: Gisèle Prassinos has always drawn, illustrated her own texts and, in 1946, La Chasse au snark by Lewis Carroll but from 1967, she begins to compose, with preliminary drawing and mock-up, real paintings full of humor and audacity taking up in particular the themes of great History painting. A book, of which the Prassinos collection possesses the entirety, testifies to an astonishing exchange between Gisèle Prassinos, poet and G.P. plastic artist (signature of her hangings): Brelin le Frou, Paris, Belfond, 1975, burlesque narrative inseparable from a series of 12 hangings and drawings which transposes the childhood narrative Le Temps n'est rien of 1958 and results in the register of poetic humor that characterizes her in the "Ideal Portrait of the Artist".

She then returns to the short story and very recently to drawing.

Gisèle Prassinos occupies a very original place among "surrealist women" and in the collective imagination by her assimilation to Alice who never ceases to be reborn in the contemporary cultural landscape trying to imagine her maturity: Gisèle Prassinos's work gives a version that is both sublime and jubilatory.

Acknowledgments

To Emmanuelle Toulet, Director of the Historical Library of the City of Paris, for the constitution of a Gisèle Prassinos collection, an achievement for which all those and all those who have supported me in admiration and friendship of the work and the artist are infinitely indebted so that the creative maturity of Alice II of André Breton's group may live and be recognized in her rightful place: Jean Derens who welcomed at the BHVP the retrospective "Le Monde suspendu de Gisèle Prassinos' from March 13 to May 3, 1998 (curators: Claudine Boulouque and Annie Richard), Annie Boige and the art bookbinders who contributed to this exhibition.

To the Manuscripts Department, notably to Marie-Françoise Garion-Roche, who carried out the immense work of realization of the inventory initiated by Claudine Boulouque and myself.

Thank you for Gisèle Prassinos whose deep wish is thus realized.