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Biographical note

Manuscript

Author

Author André Breton
Person cited Pierre Molinier

Description

Undated manuscript signed by André Breton.

Flowers and thighs: if nature speaks through Molinier's work, it is according to a complex language, woven with images and analogies whose threads Breton enjoys discovering. He got to know this painter, who had been sending him photo albums of his work for some time, in the spring of 1955. He located a ‘magical power’ in this work from the outset, and this impelled him to devote a text to the painter in January 1956, at the time he had a personal exhibition at the Étoile scellée - as if Breton’s admiration necessarily had to go through writing to find its form and partly satisfy the desire to possess the works; a desire that also found satisfaction in his activity as a collector. The text found a place in Surrealism and Painting in 1965. [Atelier André Breton website, 2005]

Handwritten manuscripts signed by André Breton, undated.
2 pages in-4. Manuscript titled ‘Biographical Note’ and signed in ink by Breton, of the final state of this notice devoted to Molinier.
1/2 page in-4 handwritten in ink by Breton, with erasures and corrections of the first draft of the first part of ‘Biographical Note’. [Catalogue of the sale, 2003]

‘Pierre Molinier was born on Good Friday, 13 April 1900 in Agen. He studied with the Jesuit fathers who intended that he should become a priest. His passionate interest in painting made them abandon their project.’
In 1951, Indépendants de Bordeaux considered one of Molinier’s paintings, Le Grand Combat, licentious and censored it. By means of a sheet pinned to the black calico covering it, the artist, addressing the Society’s Committee, raised this protest: ‘The only drama here is one of vanity and opportunism; my independence leaves you embarrassed and afraid. - The artist’s drama lies in proportion to his involvement in the universe, and each individual’s universe is his very self. The painter’s work is the logical result of the intimate drama of the universe he has created. - What do you reproach in my work? That I am myself? Come on, you are dying of conformism! You’re not artists, you’re slaves! You are petrol stations, the red and green traffic signals on street corners.’ [Atelier André Breton website, 2022]

*This entry was translated from the French by Michael Richardson

Bibliography

André Breton (Édition publiée sous la direction d'Étienne-Alain Hubert avec la collaboration de Philippe Bernier et Marie-Claire Dumas), « Note bibliographique [Pierre Molinier] », Alentours, Œuvres complètes, tome IV, Écrits sur l'art et autres textes, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, Paris, Gallimard, 2008, p. 1062, notice p. 1446.

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