MUSEUM QUALITY ARTIFACTS
Private Collection Estate Sale
Extremely rare and precious
Signed original watercolor study
on creamy structured watermark paper
by
Jean Cocteau
'Profiles Entrelacés aux Etoiles'
Not dated but estimated from around 1950
Signed by the artist
Size : 25,5 cm x 19,5 cm (10.2" x 7.8")
Comes with a COA from the Anubis Gallery (Coral Gables - Florida)
where this artifact was purchased, dated 09/1996
+
a COA tag from the Fine Art Registry Association USA
bearing the number 40969
Info on Jean Cocteau :
Jean Maurice
Eugène Clément Cocteau (5 July 1889 – 11 October 1963) was a French poet,
novelist, dramatist, designer, playwrighter, artist and filmmaker. Cocteau is
best known for his novel Les Enfants terribles (1929), and the filmsBloof
of a poet (1930), Les Parents terribles (1948), Beauty and the Beast
(1946), and Orpheuss (1949). His circle of associates, friends and
lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Modigliani, Diego Rivera, Jean
Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie,
María Félix, Édith Piaf and Raymond Radiguet.
Cocteau was born
in Maisons-Laffitte, Yvelines, a village near Paris, to Georges Cocteau and his
wife, Eugénie Lecomte; a socially prominent Parisian family. His father was a
lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. He left
home at fifteen. He published his first volume of poems, Aladdin's Lamp,
at nineteen. Cocteau soon became known in Bohemian artistic circles as The
Frivolous Prince, the title of a volume he published at twenty-two. Edith
Wharton described him as a man "to whom every great line of poetry was a
sunrise, every sunset the foundation of the Heavenly City.
In his early
twenties, Cocteau became associated with the writers Marcel Proust, André Gide,
and Maurice Barrès. In 1912, he collaborated with Léon Bakst on Le Dieu bleu
for the Ballets Russes; the principal dancers being Tamara Karsavina and Vaslav
Nijinsky. During World War I Cocteau served in the Red Cross as an ambulance
driver. This was the period in which he met the poet Guillaume Apollinaire,
artists Pablo Picasso and Amedeo Modigliani, and numerous other writers and
artists with whom he later collaborated.
In the 1930s,
Cocteau had an affair with Princess Natalie Paley, the beautiful daughter of a Romanov
grand duke and herself a sometimes actress, model, and former wife of couturier
Lucien Lelong. She became pregnant. To Cocteau's distress and Paley's life-long
regret, the baby was aborted. Cocteau's longest-lasting relationships were with
the French actors Jean Marais and Édouard Dermit, whom Cocteau formally
adopted.
In 1940, Le
Bel Indifférent, Cocteau's play written for and starring Édith Piaf, was
enormously successful. He also worked with Pablo Picasso on several projects
and was friends with most of the European art community. Cocteau's films, most
of which he both wrote and directed, were particularly important in introducing
the avant-garde into French cinema and influenced to a certain degree the
upcoming French New Wave genre.
Cocteau was
openly gay. His muse and lover for over 25 years was actor Jean Marais.
Cocteau died of
a heart attack at his chateau in Milly-la-Forêt, Essonne, France, on 11 October
1963 at the age of 74. It is said that upon hearing of the death of his friend,
the French singer Édith Piaf the same day, he choked so badly that his heart
failed. He is buried beneath the floor of the Chapelle Saint Blaise Des Simples
in Milly-la-Forêt. The epitaph on his gravestone set in the floor of the chapel
reads: "I stay with you" ("Je reste avec vous").
In 1955 Cocteau
was made a member of the Académie française and The Royal Academy of Belgium.
During his life
Cocteau was commander of the Legion of Honor, Member of the Mallarmé Academy,
German Academy (Berlin), American Academy, Mark Twain (U.S.A) Academy, Honorary
President of the Cannes film festival, Honorary President of the France-Hungary
Association and President of the Jazz Academy and of the Academy of the Disc.
A few citations by Jean Cocteau, reflecting his state of mind and his way of living, creating and performing :
Il n’y a pas de précurseurs, il n’existe que des retardataires (Potomak)
Ce que le public te reproche, cultive-le : c’est toi (Potomak)
La source désapprouve presque toujours l’itinéraire du fleuve (Rappel à l’ordre)
Rien d’audacieux n’existe sans la désobéissance à des règles (Poésie critique)
Les miroirs feraient bien de réfléchir un peu plus avant de renvoyer les images (Le sang d’un poète)
Il est indispensable de se sacrifier quelquefois. C'est l'hygiène de l'âme (Les parents terribles)
Puisque ces mystères me dépassent, feignons d'en être l'organisateur (Les mariés de la Tour Eiffel)
Tout ce qui n'est pas cru reste décoratif (Opium)
Combien d'hommes profondément distraits pénétrèrent dans des trompe-l'oeil et ne sont pas revenus (Les enfants terribles)
A l'impossible je suis tenu (Orphée)
Le rêve est la forme sous laquelle toute créature vivante possède le droit au génie, à ses imaginations bizarres, à ses magnifiques extravagances (
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