THE GALLERY AT THE SEALED STAR

par Renée Mabin

The first issue of the Surrealist magazine Medium in November 1952 announces the imminent opening of the gallery À l'Étoile scellée. The magazine Arts, in its issue from December 5 to 11, 1952, picks up the information in a short unsigned article. André Breton, on November 28, had indeed written a presentation text for this new gallery, whose artistic direction he would assume. He recalls that this is not the first time he has held this role. As early as 1926, he was the advisor to the Galerie surréaliste, located at 16 rue Jacques Callot. It opened its doors on March 26, 1926, with Marcel Fourrier as manager and Roland Tual, then Marcel Knoll, as directors. This first showcase for Surrealist painting exhibited Masson, Tanguy, Chirico, Man Ray, Picabia, Miró... until 1928. Breton then, in 1937, was entrusted by Louis Bomsel, a notary in Versailles, with the animation of the Gradiva gallery. He was confronted for the first time with the choice of a sign and took the name of the heroine from a Jensen tale, born from an ancient bas-relief representing a walking woman, whom Freud's analysis had made famous. This gives the work of art great significance, since the image is more important for the hero than the real person. New artists like Leonora Carrington, Esteban Francès, Matta and Onslow Ford, attracted by the gallery, joined the Surrealists there. But financial difficulties did not allow for long-term programming, and liquidation occurred during Breton's trip to Mexico.

A new opportunity presented itself to him, several years after his return from America, in 1952. This time he had been contacted by Félix Labisse. This autodidact who painted erotic canvases was close to the Surrealist movement. Desnos, Prévert, Soupault had taken interest in his paintings, as had Eluard who dedicated the poem l'A b c de la récalcitrante to him in 1947. Labisse, who created numerous sets, knew theater circles well, like Sophie Babet who opened the gallery that Geo Dupin joined. The latter, married to a Parisian notary, knew Surrealist painting, as she had been a very close friend of Paalen 1. Georges Goldfayn came to help them, but earned his living in the evening working in a jazz bar, the Storyville. For the third time, Breton became the artistic advisor of a gallery. This one was located at 11 rue du Pré-aux-clercs, in Saint-Germain-des-Prés. It was certainly cramped, but it offered him, if not remuneration 2, at least the freedom to present his choices, in a new artistic context. In 1951 and 1952, the Surrealists had violently opposed the realist painting supported by the Communists, with Aragon as spokesperson in Lettres françaises, while Abstraction occupied the forefront of the Parisian scene, generating passionate debates.

At the beginning of the article in Arts magazine, Breton explains the choice of the title, À l'Étoile scellée, quite mysterious, in relation to Alchemy 3. Since November 1952, Breton and his friends had been attending, every Sunday, at the Geography Hall, René Alleau's lectures on Classical Texts of Alchemy. René Alleau, a brilliant mind, befriended the Surrealists and participated in some of their debates. Placing the gallery under the sign of Alchemy was first of all to reference all those extraordinary images that illustrate treatises and constitute a challenge for interpreters of our time. It was also to evoke a secret language that has analogies with poetry. René Alleau proposed several enigmatic names for the future sign: À la lune feuillée, Au cœur de Saturne, À l'étoile scellée. According to Jean-Claude Silbermann, it was Julien Gracq who tipped the balance in favor of this last title which allows for multiple readings. The expression can evoke the secret of artistic enterprise, the brilliance of its success, the mystery of the work itself, but, phonetically, it changes meaning. Popular signs thus play on a duality of meaning created by sonorities: Au lion d'or is none other than Au lit on dort. Similarly, À l'Étoile scellée can be heard as Ah les toiles c'est laid, which humorously recalls that Surrealist art does not worship beauty.

This title could only please André Breton, sensitive to the phonetic aspect of language on which the bird language of the Alchemists is also based. Moreover, in 1941, in Marseille where he was waiting at the villa Air-Bel for his departure to the USA, Breton had delved into the symbolism of the star, during the creation of a new card game, the Game of Marseille. He had indeed wanted to renew the traditional symbolism of the tarot. In the Surrealist game, one of the emblems is the star 4. Black in color, it was drawn by the painter Dominguez, present at the villa Air-Bel. The figures associated with it on the cards represent the characters of Lautréamont, Alice and Freud, in relation to the dream, given as a symbol to the star. The gallery's sign thus indeed evokes this interior model to which pictorial work refers. On the other hand, the Surrealists knew the enigmatic images of the famous Tarot of Marseille, whose Star card represents a naked woman kneeling who pours the liquid contained in two jugs she holds in her hands 5. This other representation of the star concords with the gallery's programming, some of whose exhibitions are devoted to eroticism. The title proposed by René Alleau thus finds many resonances among the Surrealists.

Breton closes his article in Arts magazine by evoking the artistic orientation he envisages. He declares indeed that the new gallery will not only show Surrealist works, but that it will open more broadly to young artists, without falling into the pitfalls of Realism, or into the quarrel of Abstraction that opposes proponents of geometry and those of a free form, in relation to nature. He wishes to welcome new talents without really specifying, since he is content to cite Balthus and Clovis Trouille whose works he has often noticed, although both artists are outside the movement. On December 5, 1952, the day of the inauguration, the collective hanging follows Breton's statement of intentions. It indeed shows paintings by painters from the early days of the Surrealist group, like Ernst, Tanguy or Brauner, despite all the dissensions, because the work of the excluded remains representative of Surrealist painting. André Breton receives, says Robert Lebel "with the perfect courtesy of a master of the house who practices forgetting differences and even insults' 6. Furthermore, he also welcomes young people gathered around the poet Jean Pierre Duprey whose manuscript Derrière son double, deposited in 1948 at the La Dragonne gallery, had enthused him, and who now sculpts concrete reliefs. Part of this small group are Mirabelle d'Ors, Fred Deux, Maurice Rapin, Andralis. A young Mexican encouraged by Péret, Gunther Gerzo, and the Hungarian artist Simon Hantaï are also present. New talents are therefore associated with the established painters of the movement.

Simon Hantaï had deposited, on December 7 previous, a painting-object entitled Regarde, in front of the door of Breton's studio, rue Fontaine, without daring to enter. Breton chose to devote an individual exhibition to him immediately, from January 23 to February 10, 1953. He wrote a box in Medium magazine no. 3, to present the artist "to whom the fabulous beings that his breath has endowed with life form a procession and who move like no others, in these early days of 1953, in the light of the never seen" 7. Hantaï shows sixteen large spectacular canvases that seem in the direct line of the movement, just like his reluctance to enter the commercial circuit. The painter who left Hungary for France in 1949 then creates strange characters in a rather dark context. The catalog preface ends with an admiring salute from Breton: "Once more, as perhaps every ten years, a great departure" 8. However, the work is more ambiguous than it appears, as art critic Charles Estienne notes, in l'Observateur of January 29, 1953. He brings Hantaï closer, despite the Surrealist procedures he uses, to Kandinsky, with the intuition of his later evolution.

The second collective hanging, in February, remains in fully Surrealist territory. The works of Tanguy are presented, although he had decided to stay in the United States, to Breton's great displeasure, those of Ernst, Lam, Paalen who had returned to Paris, or again Man Ray and Toyen, one of the historical figures of Czech Surrealism. Some, like Lam and Paalen will leave again, Ernst will move away, his reward in 1954 at the Venice Biennale earning him the wrath of Breton's friends and exclusion from the movement. In fact, in the years to come, only Toyen remains close to Breton, meets him daily at the café, enjoys collective action with the young poets who surround him. Breton who is also interested, more than ever, in the artistic context, in its pictorial manifestations, always on the lookout for new creations, wishes to welcome new artists into the movement. From now on, the gallery ceases to exhibit established Surrealists, except for Toyen.

Breton had met, after the International Exhibition of Surrealism in 1947, Galerie Maeght, the critic Charles Estienne, defender of a tendency of Abstraction that claims Kandinsky, Lyrical Abstraction, which refuses the rigor of geometry, to express emotions, in relation to the natural universe. Despite differences in temperament and artistic orientation, the two men had become quite close, Charles Estienne frequenting café meetings, without adhering to the movement. Estienne does not believe that Surrealist painters can, in the post-war context, renew painting, and he regrets Breton's refusal to take interest in pictorial technique. But a rapprochement seems possible to him between Surrealism and Lyrical Abstraction. The rather provocative nature of the agreement seduces Breton, who had visited Kandinsky in his studio, before the war, who had cordial relations with Mondrian in the USA. He opens, as early as March 1953, the gallery À l'Étoile scellée to a group of young abstract artists that Charles Estienne presents to him. From March 10 to 31, Degottex, Duvillier, Marcelle Louchansky and Messagier, brilliantly mark an unexpected orientation of the gallery, with a preface by Charles Estienne, La Coupe et l'épée. The latter emphasizes, in Combat-Art of March 1, 1954 this paradoxical entry: "thus exhibit at the Surrealists" (great scandal) four abstract or semi-figurative heretics."

This choice therefore does not achieve unanimity. It also results in the departure of the young artists presented during the inauguration, Duprey, Rapin, Deux, Mirabelle D'Ors. But the gallery's programming is now the fruit of collaboration between Breton, Péret returned from Mexico, and Charles Estienne. In 1950, in the Almanach surréaliste du demi-siècle, Péret had first manifested his opposition to Charles Estienne, in a long ironic demonstration, La Soupe déshydratée, where he concludes that Abstract Art does not exist 9. But in fact, between Péret and Estienne, understanding quickly becomes real due to their temperament and their way of life, so much so that they meet in Saint-Cirq-La-Popie. On the other hand, some of the artists supported by Estienne like René Duvillier for example, feel closer to Péret than to Breton. Charles Estienne's presence allows in any case a renewal that will help young painters discover their path, even if they subsequently move away from Surrealism. But Breton does not limit himself to Lyrical Abstraction, and opens the small gallery more broadly.

Indeed, the following exhibition associates Toyen with the Croatian artist Slavco Kopac, passionate about Art Brut collections that he manages. Benjamin Péret, in the catalog preface, emphasizes the profound innocence of his painting, innocence that is that of primitives and children. The painter is already in contact with the Surrealists, since Dubuffet founded the Compagnie de l'Art brut with Breton in 1948. Relations between Breton and Dubuffet deteriorated when the latter moved his collections to the United States, in 1951. But Slavco Kopac who illustrated Robert Lebel's article "La Clivadière" in the Almanach surréaliste du demi-siècle, maintains contact with Breton and Péret. The choice of his works is significant of the Surrealists' interest in the art of primitives, mediums, the mentally ill, which recalls Breton's collection La clé des champs, which appears at about the same time, in August 1953.

From May 5 to 30, the Toyen exhibition takes place. The invitation is made of two cut and connected hands, whose fingers are adorned with phrases composed by members of the group. That of Heisler, her Czech friend, who left Czechoslovakia with her in 1947, says: "A ray of sunlight silently evaporates from small blue enamel pots, forgotten on windows and on facade ledges." Péret's phrase, another of her great friends, faces it: "She does not sleep and sees her dreams in the stones." Péret and Heisler had indeed written with Breton the texts of a monograph devoted to Toyen, published by Sokolova editions, in March, just before the exhibition. Charles Estienne is also very interested in her work and she does not hesitate to follow him in his rapprochement between Abstraction and Surrealism. She explains, in her response to the inquiry Situation of painting in 1954 10, proposed by Charles Estienne and José Pierre to numerous artists, that she had already accepted such an association, when the Czech group Devetsil joined Surrealism. Moreover, she had known an abstract period, as early as 1927, with Artificialism that Styrsky and she practiced then. She exhibits in the small gallery, works inspired by the alchemist signs of old Prague: A l'arbre d'or, Au soleil noir, A la roue d'or, or from her stays in Brittany: Lavandières de nuit, Île de Sein and the cycle of drawings Ni ailes ni pierres, Ailes et pierres. Thanks to her, the rapprochement of Surrealism and Abstraction is in fact.

After an interruption of more than a year, from June 25 to July 12, 1954, the works of the Spaniard Eugenio Fernandez Granell are hung. Born in 1912, Granell goes into exile after Franco's victory and reaches the Caribbean. He is in Santo Domingo in 1941, when Breton, Jacqueline Lamba and their daughter Aube stop there coming from Martinique and Guadeloupe. During these few weeks, they see each other every day in one of the cafés on Count Street in Ciudad Trujillo and make Exquisite Corpses together. Granell then publishes an interview with Breton in La Naciơn, the newspaper of Ciudad Trujillo 11. They meet again in February 1946, during Breton's second passage through Santo Domingo. Great friend of Péret, Granell has endeavored to spread Surrealism in Central America, organizing exhibitions, in Puerto Rico in 1954, for example. Péret wrote the catalog preface, "À la hauteur du cri," to evoke a work in which "original Spain appears, but also a world to discover, populated with rooster-sundials and hen-sewing machines." Péret knows the painter's paintings well, having already prefaced an exhibition of his in Guatemala in 1946. Exhibiting Granell means introducing to France the work of an artist met during American exile. It is not about presenting different tendencies of contemporary art, but on the contrary, a common approach of struggle against the representation of the real.

The gallery's activity really resumes only from the end of 1954, when, from November 18 to December 2, Breton decides to exhibit the work of Judith Reigl, a young Hungarian who arrived in France in 1950, who was introduced to him by Simon Hantaï, her compatriot. Breton is enthusiastic about the large canvas Ils ont soif insatiable d'infini, on which monstrous horsemen illustrate the title, a phrase by Lautréamont. He writes the catalog preface and evokes, to show the success of the fourteen paintings presented, her gaze, her dance, and "the pact she has concluded with two hitherto inflexible powers, Lautréamont and a titan painter, the Hungarian Csontvary." 12 But the painting chosen for the invitation card is an abstract work, Emanation d'opale. Like Hantaï, Judith Reigl has retained the importance of automatism which leads her to a gestural painting in which the Surrealists do not recognize themselves. The separation occurs as early as 1956. Like her, Hantaï leaves Surrealism. From March 7 to 27, 1957, he organizes at the Kléber gallery, with the painter Mathieu and Stéphane Lupasco a series of ceremonies concerning Siger de Brabant, whose religious coloration entails a Coup de semonce 13 from the Surrealists. But for the painters, the event is only a pretext. They have in fact chosen to engage on another pictorial path.

It is among artists close to Art Brut that the young Italian painter is situated, whose paintings, "gardens' full of gaiety, are hung in December 1954 À l'étoile scellée. Giordano Falzoni had participated in the illustration of the Almanach surréaliste du demi-siècle and invited Breton to his exhibition at the dell'Obelisco gallery in Rome in 1952. Breton thanked him for "his little moss green message" which gave him the same pleasure as "the discovery of small masks from Dutch New Guinea, made of grass blades or cut from a plant leaf." ↑ The painter says he starts from chaos, from an explosion of stains that evolve toward symbolic expression. On the back of the invitation card, Breton writes a sentence that plays with the sonorities of his name: "A giorno on the tip of mignonettes toward the source the butterfly of Giordano." The catalog preface is by Robert Benayoun who animates with Ado Kyrou and Georges Goldfayn, the magazine L'Âge du cinéma. It is therefore a friend of Goldfayn, the eighteen-year-old young man who takes care of the gallery with Sophie Babet. Falzoni is therefore close to Surrealism. But the programming remains varied. During the year 1955, it will devote space to Charles Estienne's close associates who have already participated in the group exhibition of March 1953.

The agreement between Breton and Estienne was sealed around the quarrel of Tachism which developed following the second October Salon. Created on Charles Estienne's initiative, this salon brings together abstract artists under the sign of lyricism. Strong from the success of this event, Estienne launches from the tribune of Combat-Art a manifesto: "A revolution, Tachism," with Breton's support in a box, "Leçon d'Octobre" 15. The two men celebrate the union of a certain form of Abstraction and Surrealism, to the great surprise of some exhibited artists, like Alechinsky for example. The malcontents see in it an attempt at recovery by the Surrealists and refuse the word Tachism, too vague. The polemic rages through the press and critics unleash themselves. But Breton and Estienne are indeed in agreement for common action. They have also both been enthusiastic about reading Lancelot Lengyel's book, published in 1954, L'Art gaulois dans les médailles, which establishes a kinship between a form of Celtic expression and contemporary art. Struck by these objects from a non-Mediterranean culture, Breton and Estienne associate with Lancelot Lengyel to organize, from February 18 to April 2, 1955, at the Pedagogical Museum, a very large exhibition, Pérennité de l'art gaulois. It associates Gallic objects with Surrealist paintings, but also abstract and naive works that manifest the same form of sensibility.

The year 1955 therefore quite naturally sees the gallery À l'étoile scellée open to proponents of Lyrical Abstraction. From February 8 to 28, Jean Degottex exhibits recent works, presented by André Breton and Charles Estienne under the title L'épée dans les nuages, which recalls the esoteric image of the flaming sword. These paintings are the result of the artist's confrontation with the sea, during his stay with Charles Estienne, in Argenton in Finistère, during the summer of 1954. This experience was decisive for the painter, as is also the meeting with Breton who introduces him to Eastern thought. In the catalog preface, Breton indeed notes that "without having wanted it, this art reconnects with the highest lesson of Far Eastern painting, that of Zen works of the 19th century." 16 This is a discovery for Degottex who subsequently abandons color to become interested in the expression of the sign. Breton is sensitive to his approach, since, when Degottex offers him a painting, he chooses the most stripped down, Ascendant. Later, above his desk on rue Fontaine, Pollen noir is hung high up, a long dark trace on a white background. Thus, each in his way, Breton and Estienne have revealed to Degottex a path he will follow alone, moving away from both Surrealism and Lyrical Abstraction.

But Breton does not stick to abstract painting, since, from March 18 to April 10, 1955, he exhibits the works of Max Walter Svanberg, a Swedish painter living in Malmö. The Surrealists had admired his works in May 1953, at the Babylone gallery, in the group of Imaginists from which he will soon separate. From then on, Svanberg, from Sweden, collaborates with the Movement. He illustrates issue 3 of Medium magazine and participates in collective exhibitions, like the ÉROS exhibition, Daniel Cordier gallery, in 1959. The painter is essentially interested in the marvelous metamorphoses of woman, sumptuously adorned with pearls. In the catalog preface for the exhibition À l'Étoile scellée, Breton evokes the funeral of a Viking chief, the flaming boats that descend the river, also carrying the concubine and precious objects. Moreover, he clearly marks his desire not to reserve the gallery for the tendency defended by Charles Estienne. 17 In 1961, he will specify that Svanberg's work is "one of the greatest encounters of his life, that the expression of the scabrous fascinates him." 18 Eroticism is in any case one of the orientations of painting that touches him at this time.

This choice does not however constitute a break with Charles Estienne who continues to exhibit lyrical abstract artists at the gallery. From June 2 to 23 takes place the René Duvillier exhibition. Like Degottex, he presents his sea canvases inspired by his stay in the summer of 1954 in Charles Estienne's country. To evoke these abstract works born in nature, Estienne, Péret and Breton start from a maritime metaphor. Duvillier is not really in agreement with Breton, but he obtains from him a preface whose title is: Duvillier au tramail, for a work that transmutes nature under the sign of emotions. The painter sympathizes with Péret who, in the text A gros bouillons insists on the movement that animates the work, and who, typographer by trade, collaborates on the catalog layout. Charles Estienne's text, La grande nage, situates Duvillier's painting facing nature, beyond the quarrel of Realism and Abstraction. The titles of the three texts respond to each other in a community of writing. Not one of the articles describes the blue and violet coils of the canvases, but each expresses its feeling through a multiplication of images: that of generation for Breton, in the form of a pastiche of a scientific article relating the opposition between ovists and spermatists; that of the disintegration of a water drop on a leaf in cinema, under Péret's pen; that of navigation, up to the "lunar and blue jet of Moby Dick," for Estienne. Sometimes close to automatic writing, this criticism is a criticism of mood.

In 1955, Charles Estienne proposes a new abstract painter, André Pouget, for whom he writes the presentation text. Defender of Lyrical Abstraction, he is also a critic open to other artists. Like Breton, he is interested in Art Brut, and particularly in the painting of mediums. Both go together to Montigny-en-Gabelle to choose Crépin's paintings. A plumber-zinc worker, the latter, called by a mysterious voice, began to paint wonderful Temples, meticulous architectures of which Breton had the revelation, in 1948, during the first manifestations of Art Brut organized by Dubuffet. The medium retains Breton's attention because, guided by a voice from beyond, he practices automatic writing to draw symmetrical ornamental motifs. For the exhibition, Estienne writes a presentation text in the form of a calligram that imitates this symmetrical organization. 19 The gallery À l'étoile scellée has therefore explored different forms of the marvelous, in the domain of Surrealism or its surroundings, as shown by Breton's Le Surréalisme et la peinture, whose fourth part entitled Environs reprises the articles devoted to Crépin, as well as to Duvillier or Degottex.

Few Surrealist painters are ultimately exhibited in the small gallery on rue du Pré-aux-clercs, due to exclusions, disagreements with Breton's choices: Ernst refuses Tachism, while Man Ray entitles his exhibition at L'Étoile scellée, Non-abstractions. Besides Man Ray, only two Surrealist women will show their works at the gallery, both close to Charles Estienne. Toyen exhibits for the second time, from May 3 to 24, 1955, fourteen recent paintings, with a preface by Charles Estienne, entitled Granit de la solitude, where he evokes this painter solitary among all, solid like the rocks of the Île de Sein where she has stayed several times. Estienne also knows Méret Oppenheim well, whom he meets with each of her trips from Basel to Paris. She had met Breton through Giacometti and Arp, in 1932, and has, subsequently, presented her spectacular objects at the group's collective exhibitions. She also posed nude for famous photos by Man Ray. For her exhibition at l'Étoile scellée in 1956, it is Péret who writes the catalog preface. These two women, longtime Surrealists, faithful to Breton, are also friends of Charles Estienne. Thanks to them, the programming of the small gallery on rue du Pré-aux-clercs has indeed attempted a union between Surrealism and Lyrical Abstraction.

In March 1955, André Breton begins to correspond with Pierre Molinier who, from Bordeaux, sends him photographs of his works. Breton manifests his enthusiasm for two erotic paintings that Molinier sends him, Les Dames voilées and La Comtesse Midralgar. He therefore invites him, from January 27 to February 10, 1956, à L'Étoile scellée, to present canvases and drawings. He writes the presentation text for these works that show a "thunderbolt woman, standing in superb beast of prey" 20 emerged from the world of dreams. On the opening day, the songs of an unknown, Léo Ferré, are broadcast in the room. Alain Jouffroy writes a laudatory review in Arts 21. Molinier composes the cover of the magazine Le Surréalisme même #2, and shows two canvases at the ÉROS exhibition, at Daniel Cordier gallery, from December 15, 1959 to February 15, 1960, while Charles Estienne's friends were not invited. At this date, Breton has therefore abandoned Lyrical Abstraction, all the more easily as the gallery À l'Étoile scellée no longer exists. His adherence to Molinier's scandalous work also weakens, subsequently, and his letters to the artist become rarer.

Charles Estienne still has the opportunity to show, in March 1956 the works of the Czech Krizek whose sculptures on wood and stone and drawings, close to the works of primitives or Art Brut, have seduced Parisian gallery owners of the 1950s, and have been presented at the exhibition Pérennité de l'Art gaulois. In fact, this is an intellectual who continues to train at the Louvre. Unlike Toyen whom he is close to, he does not integrate Surrealism and engages by letters, in 1959, a polemic with Breton, about automatism. 22 The introductory text of the catalog for the exhibition at the gallery À l'Étoile scellée is written by Charles Estienne, under the title À l'orée du bois, les pierres. The critic evokes his pagan sculptures born from frequenting nature and works of archaic art. In 1956, Breton is still interested in Lyrical Abstraction since he writes the preface for the exhibition of the artist Marcelle Loubchansky, supported by Charles Estienne, for the Kléber gallery. Moreover, the first issue of the magazine Le Surréalisme même, of October 1956, is illustrated by Crépin, Degottex, Duvillier, as well as by Svanberg and Toyen.

The end of this collaboration is due first to the closure of the gallery, after a last exhibition in April, devoted to Man Ray, the friend from the movement's beginnings, who had become Parisian again in his studio on rue Férou. He exhibits paintings and objects, mocking, in approximate French, the Abstraction-Figuration quarrel. The gallery then closes, without Breton even being warned. This is therefore the end of a fruitful rapprochement with Lyrical Abstraction that gave certain dynamism to the Surrealists' activity in the face of the art of their time. Breton was surrounded by very active young critics, Jean Schuster, José Pierre, Gérard Legrand, for example. But Charles Estienne had a decisive influence on the programming and presentation of artists. For a very short duration, (from December 1952 to April 1956, with a closure of almost a year) the activity was intense and varied. It gave recognition to young artists, particularly to lyrical abstract artists who felt close to Surrealist practices of automatism. They drew consequences on the properly pictorial level to practice a gestural automatism that Breton did not recognize, which led to the break with Surrealism. The end of their common activities is therefore not linked to some personal misunderstanding between Breton and Estienne, but to the very practices of painters faced with Breton's firmness.

Ultimately, André Breton kept the promises of the gallery presentation article published in Arts, at the end of 1952. Under the sign of Surrealism represented essentially by Toyen's work, he exhibited young artists whose work is the expression of the imaginary. Breton's interest in Art Brut and primitives is manifested in the choice of artists like Slavco Kopac, Crépin or Krizek, his interest in eroticism in that of Svanberg or Molinier. In a short time, the gallery hung the paintings of numerous interesting painters, like Hantaï and Judith Reigl, rather than those of recognized Surrealists who were the object of a simple reminder, during the two collective exhibitions of the opening. The exhibited artists did not integrate the movement, or did so only for a short time. But Breton's choices allowed Surrealism to situate itself in the debates on Art of the 1950s and to bring an original response to them. He perfectly assumed these choices, since Hantaï, Judith Reigl, Svanberg, Crépin, Duvillier, Degottex and Molinier have their place in Le Surréalisme et la peinture and their works remained in his recently dispersed collection.

The exhibitions at l'Étoile scellée therefore show André Breton's eclecticism in the artistic domain, the acuity of his gaze. The closure of this gallery does not signify the dormancy of Breton's activity regarding painting, on the contrary. His subsequent achievements are numerous: the publication in 1957 of the art book written in collaboration with Gérard Legrand, L'Art magique, precedes that of Signe ascendant, a set of poems facing Miró's Constellations, published by Pierre Matisse in 1958. International exhibitions of Surrealism follow one another in Paris, ÉROS in 1959, l'Ecart absolu in 1965, galerie de l'Oeil, or in Milan, Schwartz gallery in 1961. His passionate discoveries follow one another, particularly that of Filiger for the past, of Enrico Baj, Jorge Camacho and Jean Claude Silbermann for the present. His articles illuminate the aesthetic judgment criteria of our time that he has largely contributed to modifying, by refusing divisions between different tendencies, by highlighting expressions hitherto despised like Oceanic Art or drawings by the insane. More than the Galerie surréaliste or the Gradiva gallery, specifically Surrealist, À l'étoile scellée showed other forms of art, today recognized. Breton's contempt for commercial success gave him little time, but complete freedom of action.

RENÉE MABIN

    1 — Personal interview with Jean Claude Silbermann; January 2007 ↩

    2 — Ibid. ↩

    3 — André Breton Presentation for the opening of the gallery À l'Étoile scellée Complete Works, volume III p. 1080 Pléiade, Gallimard, Paris, 1999. ↩

↑André Breton, Complete Works op.cit. The game of Marseille, in La Clé des champs, p. 708

↑Catalog Le jeu de Marseille, Museums of Marseille, Alors Hors du temps editions, July 2003, p. 97 and 70.

    6 — Robert Lebel Assessment of current art, le Soleil Noir, Paris, 1953 ↩

    7 — André Breton, Complete Works op. cit. Surroundings II, Simon Hantaï, p. 1085 ↩

    8 — André Breton Surrealism and painting, Gallimard, Paris 1965, Simon Hantaï p.2 ↩

    9 — The Surrealist Almanac of the half-century, special issue of la Nef, March-April 1950, Plasma editions, Paris 1978, p. 49. ↩

    10 — Medium new series no. 4, January 1955 ↩

    11 — André Breton, Complete Works, t. III, op.cit Interview with E. F. Granell, p.121. ↩

    12 — André Breton Surrealism and painting, op.cit. Judith Reigl, p. 238 ↩

    13 — Tract of March 25, 1957 ↩

    14 — André Breton, complete works, t. III, A Giordano Falzoni, p. 1073 ↩

    15 — Combat-Art no. 4 March 1, 1954 ↩

    16 — André Breton, Surrealism and painting, op.cit. Degottex, p.341. ↩

    17 — André Breton, Surrealism and painting, op.cit. Svanberg, p.239. ↩

    18 — Ibid, p.243. ↩

    19 — Catalog Charles Estienne et l'art à Paris 1945-1966, national center for Plastic Arts, 11 rue Berryer, Paris 8th, June 21-September 2, 1984. ↩

    20 — André Breton, Surrealism and painting, op.cit. Pierre Molinier, p. 246 ↩

↑Arts, no. 553, February 1-7, 1956.

    22 — Catalog Jan Krizek, Museum of la Cohue, Vannes, March 25-May 29, 1995. Text p. 35, Letters p. 12-15. ↩