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Image

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Espoir

Painting

Author

By (artist) Georges Malkine

Description

Painting from 1926, reproduced in the review La Révolution surréaliste, issue no. 8 of the same year

Signed and dated on the back: Malkine 1926; Written on the frame: espoir

"Mysterious, secretive, he (Malkine) had the prestige of a bird that flies from nowhere and deigns to lands" remembered Simone Collinet, then Simone Breton. (Paris, Pavillon des arts, Georges Malkine, le vagabond du surrealism, 1999, pg. 9)
When questioned by Patrick Waldberg in the 1940s about Malkine, André Breton answered, "He pushed individualism almost to impertinence! But, when he bothered, what art in his expression of the inexpressible." (Paris, Pavilon des arts, Georges Malkine, le vagabond du surrealism, 1999, p. 11)

"This simple work depicts a man sitting on a chair and seen from behind, and, further, a kind of street lamp. The scene floats freely in a plain light yellow background. The man is roughly drawn and unidentifiable. He is waiting for something or someone and contemplating the lamp—a red light, a beacon?—whose glowing lights point in three different directions. Without any spatial reference—neither earth nor sky—the scene raises endless interpretations. The title—Hope—only accentuates the uncertainty. The painting's mystery is absolute. “ Vincent Gille (Paris, Pavillon des arts, Georges Malkine, le vagabond du surrealism, 1999, p.51)

Expositions.
- Paris, Galerie Surréaliste, Exposition Malkine, 1927, n° 19
- Paris, Pavillon des arts, Georges Malkine, le vagabond du surréalisme, 1999, rep.p.51, n° 7

Bibliography

- La Révolution surréaliste, n° 8, Deuxième année, 1^er décembre 1926, rep. p.27, pp. 23-30