Lot Essay
Madame Jacqueline Matisse Monnier and the Association Marcel Duchamp will issue a certificate of authenticity to the buyer of this work, upon request.
The present work was the place card Duchamp made for Henri-Pierre Roché at the artist's 30th birthday dinner held at the Stettheimer sisters' home. When held up to the light, the lines on the recto and verso overlap and combine to spell out the name 'ROCHE.'
Henri-Pierre Roché was an influential journalist and proponent of the avant-garde who introduced Leo and Gertrude Stein to Picasso in 1905, helped the latter search for the enlarged studio he hoped to acquire with the proceeds from the 1924 sale of his Cubist master work, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and advised lawyer John Quinn on his modernist art collection. Roché's semi-autobiographical 1953 novel, Jules et Jim, was made into François Truffaut's celebrated film of the same name shortly after his death in 1959.
The present and following lots were acquired directly from Roché's second wife, Denise.
The present work was the place card Duchamp made for Henri-Pierre Roché at the artist's 30th birthday dinner held at the Stettheimer sisters' home. When held up to the light, the lines on the recto and verso overlap and combine to spell out the name 'ROCHE.'
Henri-Pierre Roché was an influential journalist and proponent of the avant-garde who introduced Leo and Gertrude Stein to Picasso in 1905, helped the latter search for the enlarged studio he hoped to acquire with the proceeds from the 1924 sale of his Cubist master work, Les Demoiselles d'Avignon, and advised lawyer John Quinn on his modernist art collection. Roché's semi-autobiographical 1953 novel, Jules et Jim, was made into François Truffaut's celebrated film of the same name shortly after his death in 1959.
The present and following lots were acquired directly from Roché's second wife, Denise.