André BRETON, Nicolas CALAS, Remedios VARO, Benjamin PÉRET.

Drawing game communicated. No place or date [late 1938-1939]. 4 black and blue ink drawings on small cardboard cards, all signed (10,2 x 13,2 cm per card). Amusing example of the surrealist game "du dessin communiqué". The game consists in making a drawing which is shown for three seconds to the next person who has to reproduce it from memory; the new drawing is shown for three seconds to a third person, and so on. The first drawing, by André Breton, shows an open box in which there is a portrait of a woman. Nicolas Calas, Remedios Varo and then Benjamin Péret have reproduced the image, distorting it each time The cards are numbered VII1 to VII4. "The game of communicated drawings began towards the end of 1938 and continued during the months of 1939 before the fatal 1st of September when the French and English soldiers decided to attack Hitler's Germany to which they had given all the time to reach the height of its power. It is to Robert Rius, archivist of the communicated drawings, that we owe them" (Noël Arnaud). When, in June 1943, Rius joined the armed resistance (he was to be assassinated on July 21, 1944), he entrusted the file of communicated drawings to Noël Arnaud so that La Main à Plume could dispose of them. They were acquired by Marcel Fleiss, who exhibited them at the Galerie 1900-2000 in the autumn of 1999. (Galerie 1900-2000, Jeu du dessin communiqué, preface by Noël Arnaud and Nadine Lefebure, Paris, 1999, pp. 86-87.)