Composition

Composition was originally a gift from the artist to the esteemed collector Paul Duchein (1930 – 2024). The work was acquired by Firestorm Foundation at the renowned sale, The Paul and Jacqueline Duchein Collection, held in Paris on the 24th of September 2024. The sale, celebrating the lives of dedicated art collectors – for more than 60 years - Paul and Jacqueline Duchein, included 152 works of art by artists like André Breton (1896 - 1966), Max Ernst (1891 - 1976), Man Ray (1890 - 1976), Joan Miró (1893 - 1983), Salvador Dalí (1904 - 1989), Dorothea Tanning (1910 - 2012) and Serge Poliakoff (1900 - 1969).

The couple met in 1938 in the town of Montauban, where they would remain for the rest of their lives. Paul, a pharmacist, and Jacqueline, a biologist, shared a passion for art – an enthusiastic, indefatigable passion that gave rise to a moving and eclectic collection combining Surrealism with folk art, Art Brut, and tribal art. Their home would become a cabinet of curiosities, rapidly earning a reputation as the city’s second major museum alongside the Musée Ingres Bourdelle.

Paul Duchein, a jack-of-all-trades, successfully embarked on a series of careers, becoming by turn an exhibition curator, an art critic and an artist in his own right close to the Surrealists (for instance he created, inspired by André Breton’s box adorned with beetles in the Duchein collection, Surrealist-style ensembles of objects. Unleashing his boundless creativity, Paul Duchein designed Théâtres de l’imaginaire that were displayed in Montpellier’s Musée d’art Brut in 2017). Paul Duchein left a lasting impression on the art world with an influence that far exceeded the confines of Montauban. The articles he published in a professional pharmaceutical journal led generations of art enthusiasts and collectors to discover Pablo Picasso (1881 – 1973), Albert Gleizes (1881 – 1953), André Masson (1896 – 1987) and Serge Poliakoff.

Paul and Jacqueline Duchein preferred meeting artists rather than visiting galleries, and forged close ties with several figures, notably Georges Braque (1882 - 1963), Henri Michaux (1899 - 1984), Josef Šíma (1891 – 1971), Maria Helena Vieira da Silva (1908 - 1992) and Sam Francis (1923 - 1994). In the 1970s Paul Duchein invited Georges Mathieu (1921 - 2012), Jean Hélion (1904 - 1987), Olivier Debré (1920 - 1999) and Leonor Fini (1907 – 1996) to design apothecary jars made of Limoges porcelain. These were exhibited at the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in 1980.

Remarkable, in every way, the Collection Paul et Jacqueline Duchein was part of the Passions privées exhibition at the Musée d’art Moderne de Paris, curated by Suzanne Pagé, in 1995.

Signed (lower center) ‘Leonor Fini’.

Signed and inscribed (on a label at the back of the frame) ‘Pour Paul Duchein Leonor Fini’.

Provenance

Paul Duchein (a gift from the artist in the 1980s).

Christie’s, Paris, Collection Paul et Jacqueline Duchein. Le Théâtre de L’Imaginaire, 24 September 2024, lot 126.

Firestorm Foundation (acquired from the above).

Copyright Firestorm Foundation