Postal card to MAN RAY: We are waiting for you!

Mougins, Hotel "Vaste Horizon", August 7, 1937

1 postcard (120 x 160 mm) from the Facteur Cheval's palace in Hauterives, addressed to "Mr. Man Ray, 49 rue Denfert-Rochereau, Paris XIVe",

signed by Pablo Picasso, Dora Maar, Paul, Nusch and Cécile Éluard, - then aged 19.

[the other visuals are given as illustrations of this summer of 1937 and these prints are not for sale.]


Un été à la Garoupe: an exceptional account of the summer of '37, in Mougins, where the Eluard and Picasso couple were waiting for the Man Ray- Ady Fidelin couple.

It's Monday, July 26, 1937: the departure date for Picasso and Dora Maa, who take their friends on the road to the Côte d'Azur: aboard the imposing Hispano-Suiza driven by Marcel, his personal chauffeur, we find Paul Éluard, his daughter Cécile and his wife, Nusch.

Picasso is coming off a fruitful and historic peruide: he has just completed Guernica, in his studio at 7, rue des Grands-Augustins. For the first time, Picasso painted in the presence of an observer: Dora Maar, who took photos of the work as it progressed, which Picasso used to modify the canvas, notably the black and white balance. According to Anne Baldassari, Picasso biographer and President of the Musée Picasso in Paris, Guernica can be partly considered a four-handed work. Guernica was completed in early June and immediately exhibited at the 1937 Universal Exhibition in Paris, in the Spanish Pavilion, from July 12, 1937.

Eluard and Picasso had known each other since the 1920s, and it was through Paul Eluard that Picasso met Dora Maar. The fraternal sympathy and emulation shared by the two men were such that they spent their vacations together, with their companions and friends, in the South of France for three consecutive summers, from 1936 onwards, each time taking up residence in a modest establishment in Mougins - the Hôtel Vaste Horizon. Dora Maar's photographs are as much snapshots of a group of smiling comrades enjoying the beach, sun and sea baths, as they are artistic chiaroscuro portraits. It was during this first summer that Eluard wrote, among other things, "À Pablo Picasso", which was later published in Les Yeux fertiles. The following summer was eagerly awaited, and the group left Paris on July 12, for what Dora Maar described as a "horribly tiring" overnight journey that took them south of the Rhone valley, stopping first at Hauterives, in the Drôme region between Vienne and Valence.

The next day, after a little rest, Picasso moved on to the Palais Idéal, built by the French letter carrier Ferdinand Cheval over a period of more than thirty years. "Under the lens of Dora Maar's medium-format Rolleiflex, whose tripod and satchel can be seen in Picasso's hands - in a photo now in the Centre Pompidou collection - the two couples of friends pose, taking the time to discover the terrace of the Palais Idéal, which they have no doubt just reached by climbing the stairs on the east façade.

A few days later, on August 7, fascinated by the memory of the Palais idéal and its illustrious author, Picasso produced a series of pencil drawings known as the "Carnet du facteur Cheval". "(Dora Maar et Pablo Picasso au Palais idéal, Exhibition, September-March 2023, on the occasion of the presentation of original photographs of Dora Maar on site, during this visit).

Dora Maar immortalized the moment with a photograph of the two friends at the entrance to the "Palais imaginaire". That same day, the Mougin post office sent a postcard of the Palais idéal at 40 rue Denfert-Rochereau in Paris, to the photographer Man Ray:

the card, part of a set purchased from the Palais idéal souvenir store, bears this little note: "on attend vous tous les deux", addressed to Man Ray and his companion Adrienne Fidelin, known as Ady. The card is signed by the five vacationers, with this note in Eluard's handwriting: "Vaste Horizons, Mougins (Alpes Mmes)". Undated, the card bears the Mougins postmark of August 7, 1937, worn three times.Man Ray and Ady would join them a few days later, on August 15, at the same time as the last couple of that summer of 1937. Roland Penrose and Lee Miller, with whom Man Ray, Paul Éluard - who were working on the composition of Les Mains libres, to be published in December - and Nusch had stayed in Cornwall at the beginning of July. Nusch and Dora Maar, photographers in their own right, immortalized many scenes of that summer, as did Picasso, who owned a 35 mm camera that never left his side. And of course Man Ray, who wanted to take advantage of the Côte d'Azur light to test out a new Kodachrome color film. So he filmed the village, his friends and their escapades on the beach at La Garoupe: "It's these tests, recognizable by their color, that director François Lévy-Kuentz takes as his starting point for Un été à la Garoupe.

He combines extracts from Man Ray's short films with numerous photographs from the Man Ray, Miller and Maar collections.

"Charleroi, Musée de la Photographie, Man Ray intime, February 22 - June 1, 2003, p. 82 ; Lucien and Edmonde Treillard Collection, Sotheby's, 2021, no. 101

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