Press Kit Blaise Cendrars at the Heart of Arts 16

PRESS KIT

BLAISE CENDRARS AT THE HEART OF ARTS 16th November 2014 to 1st March 2015 Opening night Saturday 15th November 2014 at 6pm

INTRODUCTION...... 2 EXHIBITION PLAN ...... 4 EXHIBITION GUIDE ...... 5 VISUALS FOR THE PRESS ...... 12 PRACTICAL INFORMATION ...... 19 CONCEPTION AND DEVELOPPEMENT ...... 20 AROUND THE EXHIBITION ...... 23 A SEASON AT THE HEART OF ARTS WITH BLAISE CENDRARS……………. 25

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INTRODUCTION

Novels and books of memories like L'or (Gold) or Bourlinguer established Blaise Cendrars (1887 – 1961) as the ultimate writer of adventures and travels. But few people know he was also one of the great adventurers of modern art. Amongst the thousand life stories he has told, the least extraordinary were not those he dedicated to painting, music, cinema, graphic design, ballet, advertising or African art. This well-kept secret has remained so for years, mostly because Cendrars always preferred the excitement and fire of new beginnings to patient developments: he let others tap the opportunities he pioneered. In accordance with the name he chose for himself, his desire was always to rise again where one least expected him to, where a new breath could revive the embers (braises) of creation hidden beneath the cinders (cendres).

Each of the twelve sections of the exhibition is tied to one of these successive or parallel lives of Blaise Cendrars: first of all we meet a young writer in the process of learning, tormented and haunted by Symbolism. In order to tell his story of travel and exile, he invented a new lyricism and revolutionised the art of the book with Sonia Delaunay. A prolific poet, his "elastic poems" appeared in avant-garde journals all over Europe. They enter in a dialogue with the works of Chagall, Robert Delaunay, La Fresnaye or Modigliani. Following the trauma of war, in which he enlisted as a volunteer. He returned in 1915 with his right arm amputated. Yet like a phoenix he rose again, this time a "left handed writer", the prophet of a "profound today" in which the magic of primitive art and the wonders of the modern world coexist.

Always one to pick up on new trends, Blaise Cendrars became an elusive actor of the art world, a catalyst for talents and ideas that seemed to wait for him alone to bring them out into the light. He dreamt of music with Honegger, Milhaud, Satie and Stravinsky, of cinema with Fernand Léger and Abel Gance, or even advertising and typography with poster designer Cassandre. However this vibrant artistic activity became paradoxically less significant as the writer and reporter achieved more and more success in the 1930s; until a new metamorphosis of the writer into an author of memoirs that are "memoirs without being memoirs" brought it back to life as subject material for literary work, transfigured in "the dark room of imagination".

The exhibition is thus a rich journey, a crossroads of the arts and proposes through the more than 400 works, audiovisual extracts and rare documents exposed, a constant dialogue with Cendrars' writings.

EXHIBITION CURATOR Gabriel Umstätter

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With the partnership of the Swiss Literary Archives (Swiss National Library) and Miriam Cendrars.

LENDERS Bibliothèque Nationale Suisse ( Fonds Blaise Cendrars, Archives littéraires suisses), Berne; Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie (Musées d’art et d’histoire), Genève ; Bibliothèque du Conservatoire de musique, Genève ; Bibliothèque Jean Bonna, Genève ; Bibliothèque de la Ville, La Chaux-de-Fonds; Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, Neuchâtel ; Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle, Paris; Cinémathèque française, Paris; Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne ; Collections d’art de la Confédération, Berne ; Collection François Ditesheim, Neuchâtel; Dansmuseet, Stockholm; Fondation Beyeler, Bâle; Fluxum Foundation, Genève ; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Kunstmuseum, Soleure; Kunstmuseum – Fondation Im Obersteg, Bâle; Lobsters Films ; Matik SA, Etagnières; Merzbacher Kunststiftung; MK2, Paris ; M.T. Abraham Foundation, Paris ; Musées d’art et d’histoire, Genève; Musée d’histoire naturelle, La Chaux-de-Fonds ; Musée du Petit Palais, Genève; Musée Picasso, Paris; Pathé, Paris ; SKF Machine Tools Competence Center, Fribourg; Société des amis du Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de- Fonds; Collections et fondations privées

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EXHIBITION PLAN

Room 8 – Introduction: Lives and faces of Blaise Cendrars Room 9 – 1. Before Cendrars Room 10/11 – 2. In the cage of the meridians Room 12 – 3. Publishing and the avant-garde Room 13 – 4. Elastic poems – the poet and his painters Room 14 – 5. I Killed 6. The Eubage and the birth of the left-handed writer 7. The ABC of Cinema 8. Unnatural Sonnets Room 15 – 9. The Creation of the World 10. A dangerous life 11. Seven Wonders of the Modern World 12. The dark room of the imagination Epilogue. By zero latitude

Entrance Hall – Under Orion's Sign

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EXHIBITION GUIDE 1. Before Cendrars In his childhood, Frederic Sauser, who was yet to become Blaise Cendrars, moved frequently between La Chaux-de- Fonds, Naples, Bern and Neuchatel, following his father, whose career as an entrepreneur fluctuated in diversity as much as in success. Such instability affected his mother's health. She found solace in teaching her youngest to read and play the piano. A gifted organist, he dreamt for a while of becoming a composer. But his passion for books soon took over: taking root in the illustrated natural history albums of his mother, it was set ablaze when he discovered his father's library and, later, the Imperial Library of Saint Petersburg. Three years spent in the Russian city doing an apprenticeship with a Swiss jeweller put the finishing touches to a cosmopolitan and disorganised education.

He returned from Russia in 1907 with a will to write and study medicine, amongst other subjects, at the University of Bern. Did his interest in psychiatry lead him to visit the Waldau Institute and to meet outsider artist Adolf Wolfli, still unknown at the time, and who bears a striking resemblance with the hero of future novel Moravagine? What we do know for sure, is that he met Fela Poznanska while at university. The young Polish student would become his companion in the first Bohemian years of his life, and inspired a few poems still very marked by Symbolism. This influence is also notable in his tastes regarding visual arts, as testified by the description of the theatre sets for a play that was never published.

2. In the cage of the merdidians After several months of misery and wanderings between Brussels, Paris and Saint Petersburg, he met up with his partner Fela in New York. This is where one can truly say that Blaise Cendrars was born. The isolating and discouraging night of Easter 1912 inspired a new poem, Les Pâques. (Easter in New York), published upon his return to Paris that same year, under the name Blaise Cendrars. The doors to the Parisian avant-garde rapidly opened up to him. He met painters Robert and Sonia Delaunay while visiting the poet Apollinaire. Their friendship and passionate discussions led to the writing of La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France (The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne of France), "first simultaneous book", a two metre long dialogue of free verse and colourful rhythms. Did Cendrars ever travel on the Trans-Siberian? His famous retort to Pierre Lazareff avoided him both to answer and to be asked further questions: "why do you care ? Didn't you all take the trip thanks to me?" Nobody ever asked him, however, whether he and his parents had visited the famous "Trans-Siberian Panorama" of the Exposition Universelle held in Paris in 1900 … Either way, Cendrars was still dreaming about the railway ten years later in America: he brought back timetables and line maps from his trip, which he used to illustrate his third great poem, Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles (Panama - Or The Adventures Of My Seven Uncles) – a work that expands his travelling legend to his family and the whole world. 5

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3. Publishing and the avant-garde The fame of Cendrars soon expanded to reach an international avant-gardist audience: thanks to the connections of Apollinaire and the Delaunay, La Prose du Transsibérien is presented in Saint Petersburg and Berlin; articles and poems are featured in Montjoie! and Les Soirees de Paris, as well as German expressionist periodicals (Der Sturm, Die Aktion). The war did not stop the international circulation of his work: sometimes unbeknownst to him, his poems continued to appear in various movement periodicals: Dadaist (Cabaret Voltaire), expressionist (Der Sturm), futurist or post-futurist (Noi, Valori Plastici). These are the same Italian futurists that Cendrars taunts in Le lotissement du ciel (Sky: memoirs) in 1949. Even then he is far from having forgotten the rivalries between the various avant-garde movements of the time …

After the war, however, Cendrars grew increasingly wary of organised group adventures. In 1919, in his artistic column in La Rose Rouge, he praises those he calls "his" painters – all of them individualists or irregulars – but announces the end of the main surviving movement from before the War ("the Cube is crumbling "). Despite his friendship with Cocteau, Soupault and Picabia he stayed out of the conflicts of influence that tore up Dadaists and Surrealists. In the Twenties he carried on giving texts to young independent periodicals. However he did not neglect income from the more luxurious publications that came with his success as a novelist.

4. Elastic Poems The 19 poems of Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques were almost without exception written between 1913 and 1914. They are poems of circumstance, written to make a stand in an avant-garde debate, as well as to react to the discovery of a work of art, to express the immediacy of an emotion or to seize the spirit of the times. They appeared at first in periodicals or exhibition catalogues, and were subsequently reunited in 1919. The title emphasises their plastic quality in purpose and form, ranging from intimate confession to experimental literary collage. When taken together they can also be read as a logbook. This is suggested in the title of one poem, in which Cendrars confesses having himself "wanted to be a painter". Cendrars has indeed left us some surprising oil paintings, which demonstrate knowledge of the latest trends in the avant-garde. However this escapade into painting was short lived, despite the encouragements of Robert Delaunay.

Painters are a central subject of these poems: the Delaunay, La Fresnaye, Léger and especially Chagall, who was one of the very first artists that the novelist met in La Ruche (literally The Beehive) in Montparnasse. The young painter, who only spoke Russian at this point in time, asked Cendrars to give French titles to his first large paintings. However the poems do not neglect more popular art forms: posters for Fantômas, adapted for cinema by Louis Feuillade and released in 1913, as well as giant advertising signs that were taking over

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the walls of the city. The latter reminded him of the Calligrammes composed by Guillaume Apollinaire, his friend and rival in terms of modernity.

5. I Killed Cendrars signed a call to foreign artists to enlist in the French army. He took part in the war, its atrocity and absurdities until 1915, when he was severely wounded and his right arm amputated. 1916 was a "terrible year", made of frequent drunken roaming in the company of Modigliani. La Guerre au Luxembourg, a poem about children playing war, of disenchanted irony in tone, was released in the autumn of that year. It is illustrated by another survivor of the Front, Moise Kisling. Had Cendrars seen the photographs published by Leon Gimpel in Lectures pour tous, in 1915? They shared a similar theme. Whatever the truth may be, Cendrars was indeed interested in photography. According to his own autobiographical book La main coupée (The Bloody Hand, 1949), he sent some pictures back from the front to periodical Le Miroir. He also appreciated cinema and learnt about film making while appearing as an extra in J'accuse (1918 – 1919) and assisting director Abel Gance in shooting the war film.

It would take Cendrars 30 years to write La main coupée, started in the 1910s. His first publication about his war experience however is J'ai tué (I Killed), in 1918. Fernand Léger illustrated the book with drawings inspired by those he brought back from the front. A raging and disturbing text, halfway between lucidity and hallucination, it is in a same vein as Profond Aujourd’hui (Profound Today, 1917), another work of the period written in poetic prose. It ends with these words "I have a feel for reality. I am a poet. I took action. I killed. As does he who wants to live."

6. The Eubage Cendrars' "most beautiful night of writing" occurred in September 1917: he wrote La Fin du monde filmée par l'Ange N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame) in one go and was reborn as a "left handed writer". Several doubles of the author lurk around this text: one is the disquieting Moravagine, who had haunted him ever since the war, and to whom Cendrars attributes authorship of the text for a time; another is The Eubage, a mysterious druid, poet of modern times. He invents for the latter an interstellar journey "to the antipodes of Unity", thus responding to a commission from fashion designer and patron Jacques Doucet. The source material for this tale is extremely diverse; it combines alchemy and scientific imagination, and blurs the distinction between microcosm and macrocosm. This story also describes a stationary journey, a psychedelic or mystic trip, the place of birth of new contradictory identity.

One source of reverie is the recent art of cinema. In it everything still seems possible: time can be inverted, a new perception or even a new reality can be born from the art of editing. L'Eubage is thus in part a collage containing several fragments taken from other sources. One of these is an article by Cendrars describing an astonishing film: the Colored 7

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Rhythms by painter Leopold Survage. This project for an abstract motion picture was passed on to the Académie des Sciences in 1914, but the war definitively put an end to it. And yet many key drawings survive today, scattered around the world. Cendrar's description is based on the drawings Survage presented to him in the correct order. They could therefore be one of the main sources of information were an animated version of the film to be made today.

7. The ABC of Cinema Cinema was one of Cendrars' great passions. It was a source of new graphic and literary forms, for example La Fin du monde filmée par l’ange N.-D. (The End of the World Filmed by the Angel of Notre Dame), published in 1919 and illustrated by Fernand Léger. Cendrars' messianic vision of an experimental cinema susceptible to revolutionise art and life is expressed in a manifesto, L'ABC du cinema (1919 – 1926). Where should one look for tangible traces of these very high ambitions? Perhaps in the Ballet mécanique, the famous film by Léger, with whom he shared so many aesthetic convictions; or perhaps in the more innovative scenes in La Roue (The Wheel, 1920 – 21). The writer assisted director Abel Gance in shooting this film, but it is tricky to determine his precise role or the extent of his influence. What we do know for sure though is that he convinced Gance to entrust Arthur Honegger with arranging the musical accompaniment for the film. The young composer would later draw on this experience to write Pacific 231, one of his most famous compositions. Cendrars also shot a short film about the making of the film.

In addition, Cendrars also shot a film in Rome. La Venus noire was only briefly released and no copies seem to have survived. However, and despite many other projects, the writer would never accomplish his dream of the 1920s: to become a film director. Gold is adapted in Hollywood in 1936 (Sutter’s Gold), without his assistance. In the end, his paper doubles, in Dan Yack or Une nuit dans la Forêt (A Night in the Forest), will best embody his dreams about cinema, too beautiful and disturbing to accommodate the contingencies of reality.

8. Unnatural Sonnets However central literature may have been to his artistic life, only on rare occasions did it enable him to make ends meet. He frequently invested his time in side activities which, despite being more about subsistence, were never condemned to mediocrity. For example upon his return from the front lines in 1916: Cendrars took part in various undertakings that designated him as one of the central figures acting in the background of the artistic scene, in which the trends that appeared after the war were already being prepared. Thus he was literary and artistic director of the Editions de la Sirène, republishing the works of Lautreamont and releasing musical scores by Satie and Stravinsky. He and Moise Kisling also organised concerts, readings and exhibitions for the association "Lyre et Palette”. These took place in an artist's studio, located № 6 Huyghens Street in Montparnasse.

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There he met and encouraged a group of young musicians united by an admiration for his friend Eric Satie. Jean Cocteau, then following in Cendrars' footsteps in more than one way (he also succeeded him at La Sirène), soon promoted them under the name Groupe des Six: Auric, Honegger, Milhaud, Poulenc, Tailleferre and the very reserved Louis Durey, who wrote a musical score for Cendrars' poem Le Musickissme. It is one of three Sonnets dénaturés (Unnatural Sonnets) written by Cendrars in a similar vein to the Dadaists. Like a last reminder of the Poèmes élastiques from before the war, they celebrate "Jean Cocto”, Erik Satie or the Medrano circus, a place Cendrars liked to go to with poet Max Jacob or his accomplice Fernand Léger, who had only just returned from the front lines.

9. The Creation of the World Cendrars' profond aujourd’hui (Profound Today) not only celebrates the technical progress of the modern world, it also incorporates a more unexpected aspect: the sudden proximity of a fascinating otherness, from Africa to America and the Mayan civilisation, accessible to the Western public like never before. This paradoxical new world needed intercessors, and Cendrars became one for Africa : the stories and legends gathered in his Anthologie nègre (African Folk Tales, 1921) reveal the richness of African culture beyond the visual shock of the “great fetishes ”. He was of course himself sensitive to it, as some poems from 1916 testify. He might have written them on the occasion of a show at Salle Huyghens, which presented to the public for the first time side by side works by Western artists and Negro sculptures lent by art dealer Paul Guillaume.

The latter called upon Cendrars to organise a "negro party" in his gallery in 1919. Its purpose was to promote the new market that he had chosen as his specialty. The programme included a Negro dance, the first draft of a show that would cause a scandal later in 1923. It was put together by the Ballets Suèdois (Swedish Ballets) of Rolf de Mare : La Creation du monde (The Creation of the World), which brought together choreographer Jean Borlin, musician Darius Milhaud and Fernand Léger, in charge of sets and costumes, around Cendrars and his argument drawn from "an African legend of origins ”. Hence it should not come as a surprise that Marie Vassilieff chose to represent Cendrars as an African fetish when she added him to her gallery of doll-portraits of friends and leading artistic figures.

10. A dangerous life In the first half of the 1920s Cendrars felt more and more constricted in the Parisian artistic circles. His cinematographic experiments had been half-failures. The surrealist movement had taken an ideological turn not to the liking of the staunch individualist that he was by getting closer to the communist party. Rather, Cendrars dreamt of becoming a businessman, like his Brazilian friend Paolo Prado, who had just invited him over – why not start afresh in a new place? He embarked for Brazil in 1924. Far from the Parisian coterie, he was welcomed as a hero by a generation of young and ebullient artists on a quest for a specifically Brazilian form of modern art. He embarked on an initiatory trip, transformative for himself as well as

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his hosts. Testimonies to this are two books of obvious kinship. One is the modernist manifesto Pau Brasil, by poet Oswald de Andrade, and the other is Cendrars' last book of poetry, Feuilles de route. Both are illustrated by Tarsila do Amaral, a painter whose career Cendrars helped to launch.

For Brazilians, this is the beginning of an original artistic revolution, which would eventually lead to the "Anthropophagic movement”; for Cendrars, it was both the beginning of a long love story with Brazil, a country he would visit twice more later in his life and which would inspire many texts, and a moment when things click into place. Upon his return from his first trip he wrote and published L’or (Gold, 1925), and began a new career in writing. This book revealed him to the general public and helped launch his career as a novelist and a reporter crowned with the prestige of adventure and faraway lands.

11. The seven wonders of the modern world No works of art appear in Cendrars' 1927 listing of the seven wonders of the modern world, with the exception of "the music of Satie which one can at last listen to without holding one's head in one's hands”. In Aujourd'hui, a collection of works from the previous decade published in 1931, he added an appendix to his articles of 1919 on modern painting. "Pour prendre congé des peintres” expresses his disappointment in the development of the art of his day. According to him it does not live up to modernity and its innovations: "Is there, amongst all the Salon, Cenacle or School painters, their collectors and art dealers, is there one person, a single person, who is able not to set foot rue La Boetie, and take a boat or a plane instead?”

On the other hand Cendrars' enthusiasm for advertising was still strong, in particular for the posters and typographic creations of Cassandre. In 1935 he entrusted him with the design of the cover of Panorama de la pègre and praised him in Le spectacle est dans la rue, a luxurious album of advertising posters edited by Draeger. Another advertising project, linked to a printing type unknown to Cassandre, the Prestige, may date from this time. There exists little documentation of their collaborative work, which must have started at the end of the 1920s at least: Cendrars had indeed played a part in the design of the Bifur specimen (1929) for the Deberny & Peignot type foundry. The Bifur typeface is the emblem of Cassandre, and a modernist manifesto of French typography

12. The dark room of the imagination At the end of the 1930s Cendrars became more and more trapped in his adventurer persona. He wrote novellas and Press reports, and was afraid of having missed out on his greater work. With the debacle of 1940 he moved to Aix-en-Provence, where he led a discrete life and did not write for three years, at the end of which he was reborn once again as a writer of "memoirs that are memoirs without being memoirs”. These four volumes occupied him thoroughly from 1943 to 1949. Inspiration came from many past artistic experiences, as well as new visual art works. They include prints by painter Valdo Barbey, which acted as a 10

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springboard to the writing of Bourlinguer (1948), and the pictures of Robert Doisneau, who photographed the writer at work and later worked closely with him on the album La Banlieue de Paris (1949), a collaborative effort.

But these "memoirs” are especially a vast laboratory in which memories, time and places merge and mutate into another literary reality that claims to be more "real” than the original one. This process is manifest in an episode of Le lotissement du ciel (Sky: Memoirs). In it Cendrars tells the story of how he used, when he was still a jeweller's apprentice in Saint Petersburg, precious stones to compose a sparkling image modelled after a 15th century miniature painting by Jean Fouquet… Yet this experience secretly brings up others: a second Jean Fouquet for example, an Art Deco jeweller who assembled gems as well, for his friend Cassandre … This game of associations can be dizzying, but the crucial point is the astonishing power of this image, which can be brought up for us in the work of contemporary Brazilian artist Vik Muniz.

Epilogue This historic journey centres on the various artistic collaborations and direct influences in the life of Blaise Cendrars. A major part of the imagery of Cendrars has been left in the shadows, and could one day be the subject of another exhibition: it would focus on the many works of artists that he knew only a little, or not at all and that were inspired by his books. The "Saison Cendrars” that runs alongside the show offers a glimpse of it. Young artists were given the opportunity to tackle the extremely varied texts left to us by the writer. One work should however stand in for the others: here the vast polyptich by Pierre Alechinsky plays the role of ambassador for the rest.

The drawings gathered in this cycle enables both to open up the field and close the loop: they are inspired by Le Volturno, a poem of 1912 recorded in a booklet alongside a few sketches by Cendrars then crossing back from America. It tells the story of a "single boat” lost in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. On board, a young writer with a brand new name, still unknown, reinvents himself for the first time as a poet of modernity. These drawings may also echo one of Cendrars' first poems, Epitaphe, which brings him back once again to the blue of the ocean.

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Images for the press

1. FERNAND LÉGER

Deux disques dans la ville, 1919 Gouache and charcoal Merzacher Kunststiftung ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

2. MARIE VASSILIEFF

Le Banquet Braque (le 14 janvier 1917), 1929 Mixed technique on cardboard Private collection © Marie Vassilieff

3. BLAISE CENDRARS SONIA DELAUNAY

La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, Ed. Hommes Nouveaux, 1913, advertising banner Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de- Fonds, Suisse © Miriam Cendrars / Pracusa S.A. 2014

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4. BLAISE CENDRARS SONIA DELAUNAY

La Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jehanne de France, Ed. Hommes Nouveaux, 1913, detail Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de- Fonds, Suisse © Miriam Cendrars / Pracusa S.A. 2014

5 ÉTIENNE DELESSERT

Portrait de Blaise Cendrars, série "Suisse flamboyante", 1997 Acrylic on wood Kunstsammlung des Bundes, Bern © ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

6. MARC CHAGALL

La Naissance, 1910 Oil on canvas Kunsthaus, Zurich ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

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7. AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

Portait de Blaise Cendrars, 1918 Oil on cardboard Reproduction ©photoaisa, Esplugues de Llobregat

8. AMEDEO MODIGLIANI

Portrait de jeune femme, 1918-1919 Oil on canvas Collection Madeleine and René Junod Musée des beaux-arts La Chaux-de-Fonds

9. MAX JACOB

Au cirque, 1912 Oil on canvas Musée du Petit Palais, Genève Collection Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Genève Photo credits : Studio Monique Bernaz, Genève ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

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10. MOÏSE KISLING

Nature morte aux fruits, 1913 Oil on canvas Musée du Petit Palais Collection Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Genève Photo credits : Studio Monique Bernaz, Genève ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

11. SONIA DELAUNAY

Maquette originale du catalogue de l'exposition "Sonia Delaunay-Terk, Paris- Stockholm", 1916 Private collection © Pracusa S.A. 2014

12. LÉOPOLD SURVAGE

Etude des tons, premier Rythme coloré, 1912 Ink on paper Private collection © Right holder L. Survage

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13. HENRI HAYDEN

Portrait de Kisling, 1914 Oil on Canvas Musée du Petit Palais, Genève Collection Association des Amis du Petit Palais, Genève Photo credits : Studio Monique Bernaz, Genève ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

14. VIK MUNIZ

Louise Brooks (Pictures of Diamonds), 2005 Photography Photo credits: Galerie Xippas, Paris / Vik Muniz Studio, New-York ©ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

15. LEONETTO CAPPIELLO

OXO 1911 Poster © Musée des arts décoratifs, Paris

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16. LÉON GIMPEL

La guerre des gosses : Les troupes prennent un repos bien gagné tout en savourant les sucres d'orge distribués par l'opérateur, Paris, 5 septembre 1915 Autochrome Société française de photographie, Paris © ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014 ONLY FOR PRINTED PRESS (NO INTERNET DIFFUSION)

17. PIERRE ALECHINSKY

Le Volturno, 1989 Ink on paper mounted on canvas Detailed ©Archives P.A.

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18. PIERRE ALECHINSKY

Le Volturno, 1989 Ink on paper mounted on canvas Detail ©Archives P.A.

19. FERNAND LÉGER

L'Horloge, 1918 Oil on rough cloth Collection de la Fondation Beyeler, Riehen (Bâle) © ProLitteris, Zurich, 2014

20. BLAISE CENDRARS FERNAND LÉGER

J'ai tué, Paris, La Belle Edition, illustrations by F. Léger, 1918

The press kit and free to use images are available on the museum website (www.mbac.ch) or by request.

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

PRACTICAL INFORMATION

Museum of fine-arts of La Chaux-de-Fonds

Opening hours: Tuesday to Sunday from 10am to 5pm (Free entry every Sunday from 10am to 12pm)

Rue des Musées 33, CH - 2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds www.mbac.ch e-mail : [email protected] Tel. + 41 32 967 60 76 (Head office, Tue-Sun 8h30-12h00) Tel. + 41 32 967 60 77 (Reception desk, Tue-Sun 10h00-17h00) Fax +41 32 722 07 63

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

CONCEPTION AND DEVELOPPEMENT

MUSEUM OF FINE-ARTS OF LA CHAUX-DE-FONDS

Gabriel Umstätter (exhibition curator and project manager)

Sophie Vantieghem, Lada Umstätter (associated curators: management, research, co- ordination);

Nicole Hovorka (management departement, administrative management, research); Joël Rappan (research, proofreading) ; Jonathan Carballo, Léa Marie d'Avigneau, Jason Huther, Tristan Lüthi, (research, proofreading); Alexandra Zuccolotto, Joël Rappan, Jason Huther (public relations, website) ; Mathias a Marca and his team : Laurent Güdel (multimedia installation), Jean-Marie Antenen, Yannick Lambelet, Beat Matti, Benjamin Monnard, Victor Savanyu (framing, set-up, transport) ; Anouk Gehrig Jaggi (condition reports); Maria Walhström (documentation); Pierre Bohrer, (photography) ; Loyse Renaud (proofreading) ; Priska Gutjahr, Joël Rappan, Alexandra Zuccolotto (opening night organisation) ; Tatiana Armuna, Francine Barth, Irène Brossard, Wolfgang Carrier, Stéphanie Chambettaz, Philippe Droz, Ivana Gvozdenovic, Priska Gutjahr, Daniel Hostettler, Marikit Taylor (cultural mediation) ; Gabriel Umstätter (texts) ; Cédric Brossard and his team : Maryvonne Kolly, Laurence Schmid, Vanni Stifani (maintenance) ;Tatiana Armuna, Florestan Berset, Priska Gutjahr, Daniel Hostettler, Beat Matti, Daniela Moretti, Jean-Pablo Mühlestein, Romi Cattin, Joël Rappan, Yves Regamey, Thomas Trippet, Bruno Wittmer, Alexandra Zuccolotto (reception/ surveillance)

SPONSOR PARTNER Pascal Couchepin

SCENOGRAPHY Onlab, La Chaux-de-Fonds/Berlin (Thibaud Tissot and his team)

EXTERNAL MANDATES Daniel Abadie (L. Survage project); AXA art Winterthur, Kessler (insurance) ; Hervé Boulliane (framing) ; Département audiovisuel de la Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de- Fonds, Hubert Cortat ; Galerie Triumph, Moscou (Pyassetski panorama project ) ; Marie- Thérèse Holzer (translation / German) ; Imprimerie des Montagnes (IDM), La Chaux-de- Fonds ; Institut suisse pour la conservation de la photographie, Neuchâtel, Christophe Brandt and his team (photo prints); F. Locatelli Sàrl, La Chaux-de-Fonds (painting) ; Philip Maire (translation/ English) ; Menuiserie-Ebénisterie Walzer SA, La Chaux-de-Fonds, Rénald Langel et son équipe (carpenters); Publigraph Zybach & Cie, La Chaux-de-Fonds, (serigraphy and wall texts); Ted Support (prints); SGA ; Studio 444/ La Chaux-de-Fonds (label printing); Via Mat Artcare AG, Anouk Cateland, Kloten (transport). 20

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

LENDERS Bibliothèque Nationale Suisse ( Fonds Blaise Cendrars, Archives littéraires suisses), Berne; Bibliothèque d’art et d’archéologie (Musées d’art et d’histoire), Genève ; Bibliothèque du Conservatoire de musique, Genève ; Bibliothèque Jean Bonna, Genève ; Bibliothèque de la Ville, La Chaux-de-Fonds; Bibliothèque publique et universitaire, Neuchâtel ; Centre Pompidou, Musée national d’art moderne / Centre de création industrielle, Paris; Cinémathèque française, Paris; Collection de l’Art Brut, Lausanne ; Collections d’art de la Confédération, Berne ; Collection François Ditesheim, Neuchâtel; Dansmuseet, Stockholm; Fondation Beyeler, Bâle; Fluxum Foundation, Genève ; Kunsthaus, Zurich; Kunstmuseum, Soleure; Kunstmuseum –Fondation Im Obersteg, Bâle; Lobsters Films ; Matik SA, Etagnières; Merzbacher Kunststiftung; MK2, Paris ; M.T. Abraham Foundation, Paris ; Musées d’art et d’histoire, Genève; Musée d’histoire naturelle, La Chaux-de-Fonds ; Musée du Petit Palais, Genève; Musée Picasso, Paris; Pathé, Paris ; SKF Machine Tools Competence Center, Fribourg; Société des amis du Musée des beaux-arts, La Chaux-de- Fonds; Collections et fondations privées

SUPPORTING PARTNERS City of La Chaux-de-Fonds: Jean-Pierre Veya (head of departement and communal representative of cultural affairs, sport and youth of the City of La Chaux-de-Fonds) Xavier Huther (administrator of the departement of cultural affairs, sport and youth of the City of La Chaux-de-Fonds) ; Giovanni Sammali (head of communication and media relations) ; Cyril Tissot (cultural delegate) ; Éric Tissot (head of external communication and promotion) ; Société des amis du Musée des beaux-arts : Valérie Mathez, Angelo Melcarne, Claude- André Moser and his comitee. Loterie romande Fondation Jan Michalski Fondation Ernest Göner Fondation culturelle BCN Payot Libraire

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

MEDIA PARTNERS L’Hebdo RTS Radio Télévisons suisse Nascha gazeta

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

AROUND THE EXHIBITION

GUIDED VISITS By Sophie Vantieghem, museum curator and Gabriel Umstätter, exhibition curator:

Thursday 27.11.2014, 5.15pm Reserved for teachers

Saturday 13.12.2014, 2.15pm Only for members of the association Amis des Musées des beaux-arts de La Chaux- de-Fonds et du Locle and members of the Club 44

Sunday 01.02.2015, 11.15am Followed by a public presentation of the catalogue and drinks.

Sunday 01.03.2015, 11.15am Closing of the exhibition and drinks

By Tatiana Armuna: Free entry upon presentation of an entry ticket (Saturday) Free entry (Sunday)

When art reveals its author Sunday 07.12.2014, 11.15am and Saturday 14.02.2015, 11.15am

From one art to another Sunday 21.12.2014, 11.15am and Saturday 24.01.2015, 2.15pm

READINGS AND PERFORMANCES Readings, readings with images, performances Complete programme: www.mbac.ch and in the programme "Blaise Cendrars. A season at the heart of arts".

FOR YOUNG PUBLIC Children's workshops (6-12 years old) by Priska Gutjahr and for teenagers (12-16 years old) by Tatiana Armuna. Readings for children (5-12 years old) of African folk tales Complete programme: www.mbac.ch and in the programme "Blaise Cendrars. A season at the heart of arts"

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

PUBLICATIONS "Blaise Cendrars au cœur des arts", Musée des beaux-arts de La Chaux-de-Fonds, Silvana Editoriale, publication early 2015 Public presentation followed by drinks Sunday 01.02.2015 at 12.15pm (followed by drinks) "Visitor's guide": available in three languages (French, German, English), comes free upon purchase of an entry ticket

OTHER EXHIBITIONS AT THE MUSEUM L’or Exhibition of the 2nd years in jewellery of the Ecole d’arts appliqués de La Chaux-de- Fonds 7.12 – 23.12. 2014. Opening: Saturday 6.12 at 5pm

Around the collection – New acquisitions. 1st part Until the 1.03.2015

BLAISE CENDRARS A SEASON AT THE HEART OF ARTS Exhibitions, concerts, shows, film projections, lectures, performances, conferences, visits, workshops et and shows for children and teenagers : so many ways to be suprised by the unexpected, and to (re)discover classic or unknown texts. More than 80 happenings around Blaise Cendrars organised by partners of the museum in La Chaux-de-Fonds, Neuchâtel and Le Locle. Complete programme: www.mbac.ch and in the programme "Blaise Cendrars. A season at the heart of arts"

For the exhibitions "L'art se livre" and "Blaise Cendrars at the heart of arts", the Museums of fine-arts of La Chaux-de-Fonds and Le Locle collaborate: a reduction is offered upon presentation of an entry ticket from the partner museum

GUIDED VISITS AROUND THE COLLECTION Guided visits for adults and children: discover the museum's permanent collection in another way! Detailed programme on website (www.mbac.ch)

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch

A SEASON AT THE HEART OF ARTS WITH BLAISE CENDRARS

A lone exhibition, however important it may be would not suffice to evoke the thousands of lives and echo the writings and words of Blaise Cendrars. This is why the Museum is infinitely grateful towards all the institutions and artists who chose to participate, either by accepting to join in the events around Cendrars or by developing an original project themselves. Until the very last minute, exciting projects and propositions came in from La Chaux-de-Fonds, Le Locle or Neuchâtel helping us make this a genuine "Season Blaise Cendrars"

Exhibitions, concerts, shows, film screenings, readings, performances, conferences, visits, workshops and shows for children and teenagers: so many opportunities to let oneself be surprised by unexpected propositions, to (re)discover classic or unknown texts and, maybe for some, give another chance to an author perhaps too often associated with an intimidating school setting. The numerous young artists who spontaneously offered to participate in this event show that Cendrars' texts can still attract and inspire a young generation; let us hope that their enthusiasm will spread and that Blaise Cendrars will find a renewed public.

INSTITUNTIONAL PARTNERS OF THE SEASON (LA CHAUX-DE-FONDS, LE LOCLE, NEUCHÂTEL) Association « La Nuit de la photo » ; Association « Maison blanche » ; Bibliothèque de la Ville de La Chaux-de-Fonds; Centre de culture ABC, Club 44; Ecole d’arts appliqués ; Ensemble symphonique neuchâtelois ; Galerie « Cabinet le labyrinthe »; Galerie La Locomotive, Lycée Blaise-Cendrars ; Théâtre atelier de marionnettes La Turlutaine; Théâtre populaire romand / l’heure bleue; Musée des beaux-arts du Locle; Librairie « Le cabinet d’amateur. Complete programme: www.mbac.ch and in the programme "Blaise Cendrars. A season at the heart of arts"

Rue des Musées 33 CH-2300 La Chaux-de-Fonds T + 41 32 967 60 77 F + 41 32 722 07 63 [email protected] www.mbac.ch