MAX ERNST (1891-1976) LEVELEZO-LAP, 1959 PAINTING - POSTCARD Oil on panel, double-sided Signed lower right Dedicated on the back 'Dear Jean thank you for the beautiful preface and our best wishes for all the Cassous max ernst'. Double-sided oil on panel; signed lower right; dedicated on the reserve 'Cher Jean merci pour la belle préface et nos meilleurs vœux pour tous les Cassous max ernst' 21,8 X 27 CM - 8 5/8 X 10 5/8 IN. PROVENANCE Collection Jean Cassou (offered by the artist), Paris. Then by descent to the present owner. BIBLIOGRAPHY Werner Spies, Gunter and Sigrid Metken, Max Ernst: Oeuvre-katalog: Werke 1954-1963 / Hrsg. von Werner Spies; Bearbeitet von Werner Spies, Sigrid und Günter Metken, Houston (Tex.): Menil Foundation Köln: DuMont Buchverlag, 1998, no. 3466, p. 215 (described and reproduced in black and white) Florence de Lussy, Jean Cassou (1897-1986): un musée imaginé, cat. expo, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 17 March-18 June 1995, Paris: 1995, no. 343, p. 216 (described and reproduced in color). EXHIBITION Jean Cassou (1897-1986): Un musée imaginé, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France, 17 March-18 June 1995, no. 343. "Surrealism is based on the belief in the superior reality of certain forms of association neglected until now, in the omnipotence of dreams, in the disinterested play of thought. It tends to ruin definitively all other psychic mechanisms and to substitute itself for them in the solution of the main problems of life." André Breton, Manifesto of Surrealism [1924] Initiated by the writers André Breton, Paul Éluard and Pierre Reverdy, Surrealism drew its aspirations from the greats: Bosch, Brueghel, Füssli, Goya or Moreau. Many artists took part in this great movement at the beginning of the 20th century, and some writers such as Aragon, Desnos and Soupault even made an act of absolute surrealism. In 1922-1923, shortly after his arrival in Paris, Max Ernst painted the picture Au rendez-vous des amis, which shows part of the Surrealist group composed of Dadaists, writers and painters. It shows Philippe Soupault, Hans Arp, Max Ernst, Paul Éluard, Louis Aragon, André Breton, Giorgio De Chirico, Gala Éluard and Robert Desnos. This was the breeding ground for surrealism, whose manifesto, signed by André Breton, was published in 1924. Ernst evolved in this very particular atmosphere where artists reinvented reality with the irrational, the paradoxical and the absurd. They relied on psychoanalytical theories, proclaiming the importance of the unconscious, the hallucinatory, the dream and the intoxication, as real, according to them, as the experience of conscious life. One should not look for the representation of nature, the imitation of the real or the visible in the work of Max Ernst. The viewer remains free (...) Max Ernst does not want the viewer to stick to a given solution, but to set his imagination in motion: the imaginative process that animated him must also occur in the viewer and lead him beyond the provisional "result" of a particular painting; it is therefore quite legitimate that the viewer discovers more in his paintings than he has been consciously fixed. Max Ernst makes visible dreamlike representations without logical connection, associations of the unconscious. He does not paint symbols, but magical signs. The work we are presenting, Levelezo-Lap, dated 1959, was created by Max Ernst as a thank you to his friend Jean Cassou, then director of the Musée National d'Art Moderne and author of the preface to the catalogue of the exhibition devoted to him from November to December 1959. It is a work-object, a double-sided postcard painting that perfectly illustrates the surrealist character. Indeed, the front side clearly and simply testifies to Ernst's onirico-romantic universe, the central figure, which is at the same time a flower, a shell, a fossil, a sun, stands out from this radiant, luminous and warm background. Nothing seems to be happening, yet the warmth and light radiate out to the viewer. This flower-shell element, recurrent in the work of Max Ernst, and whose decomposed construction creates movement, continues in the sunlight of the background. It is a burning, infinite and impassive sensation. The reverse side, on the other hand, shows something more tangible, albeit with a childlike stamp. This nod to the postcard brings a playful, playful and authentic aspect. Moreover, the message addressed to Jean Cassou takes us back to the end of 1959, into a form of intimacy, into the correspondence of these two men. In the age of smartphones, this work bears the mark of an ancient, simple communication, evocative of memories.