Biography

Childhood and artistic training in Strasbourg (1895-1915)

My family is Alsatian of French descent, although when I was born in Strasbourg in 1895 the city was German at the time. As a result, I was imbued with a dual culture. The fact that I went to a German school and then to Berlin when I was still young had a big impact on me. Hence, I’m a bit of a double-sided person. Arp, incidentally, was in the same situation. 

My father was a businessman, but he was passionately interested in astronomy. He had read countless books on the subject and knew a lot of things that amazed me. One day, when I was very young, he showed me some wood and said: “All this is alive, all this is electricity” – I found that extraordinary. My mother was descended from the family of the Ratisbonne brothers, bankers from Strasbourg who had converted to Catholicism as a result of visions and founded the Congregation of Notre-Dame de Sion. That’s why there’s a very mystical streak in my family on my mother’s side, even now; but I am not mystical. This background perhaps explains the very marked tendency towards spirituality in my work.  My mother was also very musical, like everyone on that side of the family. She played the piano a lot, she could decipher beautifully, and she went to all the concerts.

She took me along with her, and I was blown away by the music, in all its forms: I heard Schönberg when I was very young, for example, and I found it magnificent which was quite astonishing. I think I came into contact with music and painting at the same time. However, while in the field of music, Strasbourg’s culture was very advanced, it was non-existent in terms of painting. I had always loved to draw and I went to a painting and drawing school from a very early age, where they started by making me draw charcoal ellipses to make my hand more supple. Then, very quickly, I started drawing still lifes, heads and even nudes. This school, which was run by a certain Miss Gross, wasn’t bad in hindsight. The painter Émile Schneider did the corrections and, at the time, I managed to work a little with Ritleng and also with Joseph Sattler.

On Sundays, we often went to the Vosges and, passing through Colmar, we went to Unterlinden to see Grünewald’s Crucifixion. It was part of the excursion in a way. For me, it was a tremendous thing, a revelation: the overwhelming humanity and the visual expression together: the finger that extends to infinity… all these things I could feel and see. 

Once, when I was very young, we went to Munich and visited the Pinacotheca. My mother, who had a very artistic temperament, looked at all those crucifixions with a great depth of understanding, whereas I hardly dared to look. I had a kind of reserve, an immense respect. 

When I was nineteen, I had a visit from the painter Simon Levy, who is a remarkable artist in his own right. He talked to me about Van Gogh and Cézanne and opened me up to all these things that I didn’t know anything about at the time. So I searched for books, I looked at them, I studied them, and that’s when I decided I wanted to leave Strasbourg because I realised perfectly well that there would be no opening possible for me and that I couldn’t stay there.

At that time, it was the beginning of the war: you couldn’t go to Paris. You could only go to Germany, to Munich or Berlin. Finally, since I had been told that Berlin was more interesting than Munich, I decided on Berlin. 

Berlin (1915-1918)

It was there that I became a student of Corinth, whose reproductions I had seen in catalogues. I was impressed, it was something different from what one could see in Strasbourg. It wasn’t a real achievement yet, but it was much more open. I sensed that there was a way forward, a possibility of getting started.

In Berlin, I quickly discovered the artists of the Sturm, whose exhibitions I had seen, and that really attracted me. But I was alone and I didn’t have anyone really qualified around me. I was hesitant, I didn’t dare. I thought: “If I do this, is it something I’m really going to succeed at?” I also wanted to learn to draw. When I started out, I was working with patches of colour and people would say to me: “That’s very good, but it’s badly drawn”. So I started drawing, trying to make shapes that corresponded to the shapes of nature and that were, in a way, accurate. 

That’s why, in Berlin, I first drew nudes in the evenings from 5 to 7, then I worked in the morning with the painter Eugène Spiro. He was a portrait painter who was Balthus’ uncle, a cultured, intelligent man, and what he did wasn’t bad all things considered. He was very fashionable in Berlin, living in a beautiful studio, but he didn’t give me what Corinth gave me, because he didn’t have the stature. His work was above all intelligent, whereas Corinth’s was brute force – like Léger, incidentally, in another field. I rather like these artists who have something brutal about them, which expresses itself through the background.

Many painters followed Corinth’s teaching. Basically, there was no teaching. It’s the contact with someone’s personality that makes an impression. You can teach proportion and things like that, but you can never teach art. 

At the time, I saw a lot of expressionist painting. I saw the artists of the Sturm: Jawlenski, Kokoschka, Nolde, Pechstein, Marc, but I don’t think I have that nuance in my work. I am not attributed the label of expressionism, because I think my works are too serene to be expressionist. However, the “tics” of the expressionist artists really interested me. I liked the exaltation of colour and form. This force of expansion is something that I sought out, that is deliberate and conscious in the paintings of the time.  

At the “Secession” exhibitions, there were French painters, Cubists and people like Delaunay – whose painting I found very beautiful but a little disturbing – and Marie Laurencin. That interested me a lot, but I wasn’t yet ready for that kind of painting. Perhaps a certain development was required. I never tried to do anything that I hadn’t fully assimilated.

In 1918, after the end of the war, I returned to Strasbourg and started painting alone, keeping myself to myself. I really enjoyed working alone, having no one around me and doing research. I did some free compositions that I unfortunately no longer have. I painted Christs with vermilion crosses, paintings in which I exalted colour. In short, it was a sort of extension of my contact with expressionist painting. At the same time, I also painted portraits of girls. And I stayed in Strasbourg until 1920. 

Parisian avant-garde (1920-1935)

If it hadn’t been for the war in 1914, I would have quite naturally gone to Paris. So that’s where I went in 1920. I moved into a family boarding house on rue Lauriston, but I spent my days in Montparnasse. I used to go to Arraujo’s studio, whom I had met through a female painter, Jacqueline Baumann, who thought he was a very remarkable artist. Dubuffet, who was very young but very enthusiastic, worked in his studio, as did Souverbie, Suzanne Phocas, who was Metzinger’s wife, and others who are no longer spoken about. We drew and painted. He also had me do little drawings with very geometric shapes. It was very interesting, but he was a bit eccentric. Then he went back to America and was never heard from again.

When I arrived in Paris, I discovered a whole aspect of painting. I went to see Cézanne again and again. Cézanne marked me. For me, he was a summit of modern painting. I also saw Picasso from the blue period, the pink period. Everything I saw by Picasso made a deep impression on me. I always felt the essence of Picasso in his works, something inimitable and unique that is present in every line, that can be found in everything he did. 

After Arraujo, I went to Académie Ranson. The professors Maurice Denis, Vuillard, Latapie and Vallotton did not make corrections… We even had a student protester: Christian Bérard. The atmosphere was interesting and we worked a lot. I didn’t get along with Maurice Denis, but I liked Vuillard and I did what I pleased. However, I only stayed there for two months. Generally speaking, I was just passing through. I stayed in Paris for a year, then I went back to Strasbourg. I started working alone again. I “digested” what I had seen and did new research. My work was evolving. At that time I was intellectualising what I was doing. That’s what I did afterwards when I became a Cubist, then an abstract artist. I remember a huge still life with a lot of apples, and I was looking for the roundness of each apple.

In 1923 I left for Zürich to take some philosophy courses at the University. Lipp, for example, was analysing Kant and I was very interested in that. 

At the hotel where I lived, I saw large canvases leaning against the wall in the lobby, marked with the name of Munch, whose work I already knew and loved. I went to the doorman and asked if Munch was at the hotel. He was there, and I found him in the dining room. When he went out to the forest behind the hotel, I followed him and called out to him. It was all improvised and very funny. I told him I was following him because I knew his painting and loved it very much. After that, we spent an evening together every other day. He was fundamentally human, extremely alive, having experienced a lot and having gone through many things, having known life to the fullest. He too, like Corinth, like Léger, had this kind of brutal force in his expression. There is an incredible force in The Scream. I was quite interested in the artists who had this note. Yet Munch had no influence on my work. He didn’t even know I was painting, I never told him. He thought I was a woman of letters.

After six months in Zürich, I returned to Paris and worked at the Académie moderne, where Othon Friesz was teaching, and the morning the correction took place, I left for Luxembourg. He later became interested in my work. 

 After this period at the Académie moderne, I returned to Strasbourg in 1924. I would withdraw and do my research. I would isolate myself from others. I often wondered if I would have managed to express myself with the same intensity without withdrawing in this way. Obviously, if you isolate yourself too much, you create a solitude that is not conducive. I think that if I were to start again today, I would perhaps act differently. I would try to be more skilful, more knowledgeable, more intelligent. I very easily eliminated things that I could and probably should have done, that would have situated me. The following year, I moved to Paris, where I stayed until 1930. I started by drawing nudes at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière. I really enjoyed working there, I felt free. There were classes with live models, where no one cared about you. We paid by the day and few people did research: almost everybody copied the model. Amongst the painters that came to work there were Loutreuil and a woman, too, Erasmina Bertza, who set up in the middle of the studio and made squares and geometric shapes – with enormous courage. The model disappeared completely; it was very interesting. I admired her strength of character in isolating herself in a crowd. She was wild and didn’t talk to anyone but me. What she was doing was very remarkable. She then worked briefly with Léger and Ozenfant, who were interested in her, and eventually exhibited in Berlin at the Sturm.

I used to work from the model, but I invented things. The model was just a small starting point, they allowed me to escape. In a nude from that period, I detached the body and I did what I wanted. This was the beginning of Cubism in my work. My painting was very free. It caught the attention of Léonce Rosenberg, who was sincerely interested in me. 

I went to his gallery and also to that of his brother, Paul Rosenberg. I also knew Paul Guillaume who introduced me to Barnès, who was very interested in my painting. He introduced me to Soutine, whom he found much more beautiful than Van Gogh. It was also through them that I discovered Negro art. Paul Guillaume autographed a magazine for me: “To Miss Marcelle Cahn who was touched by the Negro grace”.

At the time, my interests in painting were dominated by the works of Picasso, Léger and Juan Gris. I loved Léger. I still love him: I feel in front of his works exactly what I felt at the time, it has never changed. There is something great about Léger. He had a detachment from the things he placed in our daily lives that touches me deeply. I also like his colour. I find it beautiful, absolute. He had a spiritual colour. However spiritual Léger may seem, he went to the heart of things, in depth. 

There was also something that I was preoccupied with, which led me to look backwards in my painting: the Primitives. Their imagery, transposed into something immutable and total, both seduced and preoccupied me. When I see Giotto again, I always see the same thing: this figuration, which is no longer a figuration, which is already an abstract thing, but which always remains extremely human. At heart, I have always loved painters who seek to create an absolute of painting.

Through Léonce Rosenberg, I met Léger, and I went to his academy. Whilst continuing to study nudes at the Grande Chaumière, I worked at the Académie moderne at the same time as Florence Henri, Carlsund, Francesca Clausen, who came from Germany a little later, Christian Berg, a sculptor that Ozenfant loved very much, Grabovski and his wife Nadia Grabovski, who became Nadia Léger. Léger was not authoritarian, but everyone followed his line of thinking. Some of us – including me – were experimenting with abstract painting. But Léger was against it. He told me: “You no longer know where you are going”, whereas Léonce Rosenberg, who had seen the same works, saw me on the contrary as a completely liberated person. 

Léger always tried to bring us back to nature. Using a scaffolding of chairs, we made a model on the podium and each person would choose the element that interested them and create a composition.

A little later, Ozenfant joined Léger at L’Académie moderne. Sometimes one did the corrections, sometimes the other. Ozenfant’s influence was undeniable: he demanded that a background be redone, that a form be developed. He was an educator. He shook me up. At the beginning, I painted very quickly. It was he who made me paint properly. I started to paint very slowly and I have kept this habit ever since. 

Ozenfant had a real influence on me, and I think that purism is present in my abstract work. Incidentally, this is also what I am criticised for. I am marked by this total, absolute stripping down of purism. I think that my linear works since 1952 are a purist form of geometric abstraction. The line is the purest, the most absolute, and that is ultimately what has dominated me.

At that time, I also began to meet painters. I met Baumeister in 1927. He came to Paris that year and had an exhibition at the Galerie d’Art Contemporain, at the top of Boulevard Raspail. He exhibited his athletic figures, together with some abstract paintings. I liked it very much. I talked to him, and he came to see me often with his wife. He gave me a lot of advice. I learned a lot from Baumeister about slenderness ratios, about research that was often theoretical and that I didn’t use; but it was still a contribution for me. A bit like Survage, whom I met at the same time and who came to see me often. He was very interested in me. He was against Léger, opposed to his teaching. He said: “There are no colour relationships in Léger’s work, they are not relationships. You have to look for the relationship”. He corrected me a lot. Léger taught you nothing, whereas Survage criticised in a logical way that appealed to me. At the time, I did not yet understand in his work what I would see later: his spatial research, which is extraordinary. There is a form of spatial research in Survage’s paintings that few spatial artists have. He really felt space in his works, it was very exceptional.

I also met Alfred Reth, whom I found very interesting, Marie Wassilieff, who made dolls for Poiret and who was full of life and very friendly, Tutundjian, who I met at Rosenberg’s, whose work I found very beautiful and who I felt an affinity with, Carlsund, who was furious to see me doing Cubism, and also Zadkine, Suzanne Valadon, Louise Hervieu, Larionov and Gontcharova…

It was Léonce Rosenberg who first exhibited my paintings. In 1926, I took part in the exhibition of the Société Anonyme. I had been told that Duchamp was in charge of collecting the works. I went to see him one morning, with a painting under my arm, at the Hôtel Istria on rue Campagne Première, where he lived. I knocked, I entered. He was still lying down and hadn’t had breakfast. The tray was on the floor. He said, “Would you pass me my tray?”, which I did. I told him I was there because of this exhibition and that I had brought him a painting. He took it.

I also took part in Art d’Aujourd’hui. It was a fundamental exhibition, the first international exhibition of current trends of the time. One can say that with the exception of Braque, all the masters and sub-masters of the period were represented. Poznanski, who had organised the exhibition and written the preface, was certainly very knowledgeable. All these avant-garde forms coexisted very well. At the entrance, there was a room featuring Arp and the Surrealists, then a large room in the centre of which was Léger. In this room, there were two of my paintings: the abstract composition from 1925 and L’Évier, on the other side of the works by Francisca Clausen. The Constructivists were in same room: Vordemberge-Gildewart… and Klee.

Picasso and the Cubists were exhibited in one or two small rooms. I still have a review by Maurice Raynal saying that it must have been Léger who had curated the exhibition and that was why the others were relegated in this way. I was very interested in Arp. For me, the work was something strange, very surreal, not at all like the Arp of later years. What dominated Arp, in my opinion, was poetry. It even predominates in his constructivist works. Poetry prevails over construction and Surrealist expression. There is a totality in his works. He is a poet above all, the poet speaks even when he builds. I was quite classical at the time – in fact, I still am – but it was not as distinct or as clear to me as a painting by Léger.

I was very interested in the Surrealists anyway. I almost went over to the other side. A friend from Strasbourg had suggested that I go to see Breton on my way to Paris. He gave me an introductory note and I went to Breton’s house. They lived on rue Fontaine. Breton was married to Simone Collinet at the time. We got on marvellously. There was Breton, Aragon, and I think Naville. We talked, we looked at paintings. I was completely at ease in that environment. Afterwards, we went to the Café Cyrano where they had their meetings. I stayed a little while, then I left. I was very interested, and even somewhat overwhelmed, because it felt very close to me. I found myself immediately integrated into their environment. But I must admit that I am shy and I did not go back. There was no obstacle to my joining. It was the great period of the Surrealists. The manifesto, the Soluble Fish, was beautiful. For me, Breton, was a great man. He remained so. A wonderful, wonderful man.

In 1926, I took part in two exhibitions with students of Fernand Léger, one at the Galerie d’Art Contemporain, the other at Fernand Aubier’s. Aubier had bought one of my paintings and wanted me to join his gallery. He exhibited me in a group with Suzanne Roger, Metzinger and Chirico. For strictly personal reasons, I could not accept the contract he wanted to make with me. Aubier was enthusiastic though,  and he told me it would work for me. He thought it would be enough to find ten amateurs. 

Walden also thought it was very good. I met him in Paris, at Medjes’, who made models of theatre sets. Walden offered me an exhibition at the Sturm in Berlin, which I refused… You know, I always kept too much of a distance… He published the reproduction of one of my paintings in the Sturm, and he wanted to publish everything, but I would have had to pay for all the photographs, which I did not want to do. I stayed in touch with him afterwards; he fled in 1933, I think he met with a bad end in Russia. He was an extraordinary discoverer.

In 1929, I received an invitation from Michel Seuphor, whom I did not know personally, to take part in Cercle et Carré, and I followed up on it. We initially met at the Café Voltaire, in an atmosphere that was more friendly than theoretical. It must be said that Seuphor was doing fundamental work at the time, despite being a young man. He was able to see far ahead. At the time, he recognised the importance of Mondrian, who was still only the poor relative of Léger, of Ozenfant. 

For doing what he did, for recognising what he recognised, he seemed to me to be an artist. A visual body of work is not always necessary to situate someone. It seems extraordinary to me that he situated Mondrian from the outset because, mixed with Cercle et Carré, Mondrian was considered a poor relative compared to Kandinsky, Léger, Ozenfant, Pevsner, Arp or Sophie Taeuber who had an extraordinary reputation. Vantongerloo was also important at the time. I was very interested in Gorin for his colourful spatial constructions.

I exhibited four paintings: La femme à la raquette, Le Globe, La Rame, and L’Allumette, a small canvas in the same style, which I later destroyed. 

Cercle et Carré was quite eclectic and I think it was not bad. Art Concret was more theoretical, in a sense. The proof is that Hélion and Tutundjian subsequently did something completely different, so theory prevailed over sensory adhesion. I believe that in a sense we were all more or less torn between the two possibilities of abstraction and figuration. I found everything in the magazine Art Concret very beautiful, it interested me a lot. They went further. I wasn’t that far removed from them, but I was a bit withdrawn. I had nevertheless been influenced by Léger who said to me: “You no longer know where you are going”.

After the exhibition at Cercle et Carré, I left Paris, I stayed in touch with Vantongerloo, but I did not keep up a personal relationship with Mondrian, whom I used to speak with a lot at Cercle et Carré and who had been interested in me; we got on very well. I returned to Strasbourg because what I was really interested in was working, painting. Seuphor left in 1930 and the fourth issue of the magazine Cercle et Carré was never published. It is a pity, there was a break, and if it hadn’t been for that I believe that Cercle et Carré would have clarified many things. 

In Strasbourg, I painted, I drew, but I did not keep up with the artistic scene. I returned to Paris in 1932, but I did not reconnect with the people I knew. 

Otto Freundlich had asked me for reproductions for Abstraction-Création, but not to take part in the exhibition. I did not send anything, I didn’t really understand the scope of the thing.

In 1934, I exhibited at Bernheim Jeune with the group of musicalists; Valensi lived not far from my home, he asked me for two paintings and I gave them to him. All that time, I was drawing a lot of nudes. I went to the academies, I worked at Colarossi, at the Grande Chaumière. I made the model by distorting it, because it was in me. I felt things out, I did things that way. 

For personal reasons, I did not see anyone. I did not forget the people I had known, but I did not see them. I did not want to break with the avant-garde, there was no hostility on my part. 

In all likelihood, this influenced my work, because the absence of an environment always influences someone, but it did not destroy it.

Far from Paris (1935-1946)

In 1935, I returned to Strasbourg where I drew children’s heads for almost three years. In 1936, I went back to paintings, because I wanted to paint again. Adam et Ève dates from that time. I tried to bring the subject back to a few essential forms, to a few constants. It was a kind of synthesis, but I am no longer interested in what I was doing at that time. It seems to me that I was on the wrong track, and I concluded that living too much in solitude is a mistake. We cannot live completely alone. This misdirection manifests itself in the work. We are not alone; we are with others. That is my conclusion. Until the war, I made nudes. I might have doubted my severity. It was less rigorous than my other paintings, but it was the result of research. I destroyed a lot of them.

When the war started, I first went with my mother to Blois where we had a pied-à-terre. I drew a lot and painted from models. In 1941, I went to Toulouse until the end of the war. I read extensively, I attended remarkable lectures about philosophy, courses by Abbé Breul, Père Nicolas.

Return to Paris (1946-1981)

At the end of the war, I returned to Paris where I resumed my work. I started exhibiting again. I went to the meetings of the Cercle Paul Valéry, I followed the exhibitions. I saw people again: Gontcharova, Seuphor, Nicolas Schöffer, Arp, too, who was very affected by the death of Sophie Taeuber. 

The first place I exhibited again – aside from a group exhibition of regional painters I took part in at the end of the war in Toulouse – was the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, in 1948. My paintings were part of a kind of imagined reality. What interested me a lot was the colour. I was sort of trying to free myself from the straight line. I made incursions into an area that was not my own.

It was also at this time that I introduced relief, which was beginning to preoccupy me, into the paintings.

1950, I made drawings that I exhibited at the Réalités Nouvelles and at the Galerie Breteau, “erotic” drawings. Unwittingly, whilst working, one often introduces fragments of bodies or something that recalls the body. In Arp’s work, for example, the body always reappears. That stopped in 1952. I then made linear drawings, I returned to my straight line. The break occurred suddenly. It was an impulse to something else, I approached it unconsciously. I had a small exhibition of these drawings at the Voyelles gallery in 1952. Del Marle came to see it, and he was the one who first said to me, “You should do this on boards with white backgrounds”. I tried it, and it fascinated me. However, there was a time lag between drawings and the paintings. The black line is painted directly on the background, one line calls for another and there is a search to balance everything. I look for the painting whilst painting it. As early as 1953, I put in reliefs, because I felt the need to emphasise certain points. It was in 1960 that the spheres arrived, but I had already been thinking about them for some time.

After the black and white paintings of 1952-53, colour returned gently with the “three triangles” in 1954. I quite like faded tones, but what concerns me now is opposing strident tones with faded ones, what concerns me now is an affirmation of myself. I need to be clear and understandable. 

From 1952, I began to make collages. I had made one or two of them before, with a Cubist spirit, in 1925. I therefore came to collage late, but it was a revelation to be able to quickly express a certain sound that a painting cannot have, using different materials. 

Around 1957-1958, I started making photographic collages. I had a picture of a painting on my table and I had fun, without thinking, sticking on small pieces of red paper that I had left lying around. Imre Pan came and found this remarkable. Then it became something else for me: by sticking reliefs on a painting, you reach a new painting, it is “a family”, all my things are families, but each one is totally transposed because of the relief. The photo no longer counts, it becomes something else.

Since 1956, I have been making small lyrical abstract drawings. When I was doing my linear paintings, the work was very hard and I needed to relax: that’s how they came about. I did my first spatial work in 1961. It was, in fact, a collage-relief. I had made it with small moving side panels and I showed Honegger, who was fascinated by it, who took it away, and who brought it back to me on a small pedestal. That was the beginning of the research which then became something different from the rest. At the end of 1962, I had an accident, and I could only see with one eye. I worked all the same but I was forced to stop anyway in 1963. 

I was operated on in 1967. That set me back. It wasn’t until after that that I was able to start my spatial research. I wanted to go much further, towards total space. 

For me, my work now is a departure towards something else.