Réalités Nouvelles No. 1, 1947
A. Frédo Sidés [Président-Fondateur]
[Paris]: Comité du Salon des Réalités Nouvelles, 1947. Original edition. Text in French. Perfect bound and sewn lithographic wrappers. 84 pp. 137 abstract artists represented by halftone reproductions and occasional artists statements. Textblock lightly annotated underlining and circling in red pencil. Journal name penned to spine and former owners name to upper corner of front panel [see scan]. Booksellers ticket inside rear wrapper. Spine uniformly worn and wrappers mildly soiled with a couple of stray marks to rear panel. A very good copy. Rare.
9 x 11.125-inch French art journal with 84 pages devoted to 137 abstract artists represented by halftone reproductions and occasional artists statements. Assembled and published by the Comité du Salon des Réalités Nouvelles as the Postwar continuation of the Abstraction-création Group founded by Georges Vantongerloo, Theo van Doesburg, Auguste Herbin and Jean Hélion in Paris in 1931 to provide self-promotion for non-figurative abstract art and—just as importantly—opposition against the growing force of André Breton’s figurative Surrealism.
As Salon Vice-Président Auguste Herbin directly connected the reconstituted Réalités Nouvelles with the Prewar Abstraction-création Group. Both groups shared two minimal yet clearly articulated criteria needed to be fulfilled in order to claim membership in the associations: one had to be an artist and one had to work non-figuratively. This resulted in a list of members that included long-forgotten artists as well as names such as Kandinsky, Mondrian, Calder, Delaunay, Van Doesburg, and Brancusi.
Réalités Nouvelles No. 1, 1947 featured an eight-page introduction that includes work and text statements by Sonia Delauney, Théo Van Doesburg, Kasimir Maléwitsch, Victor Eggling, O. Freundlich, El Lissitzky, Wassily Kandinsky, Piet Mondrian, and Sophie Taeuber-Arp followed by this alphabetical list of the 137 participants:
Arp, Allner, Astruc, Atlan, Étienne Béothy, Rudolf Bauer, Bérard, Baziotes, Besançon, Birkel, Ilya Bolotowsky, Boumeester, Borbercki, Brener, Perle Fine, Bryen, Burgin, Chartier, Chauvin, Chesnay, Chevalier, Collignon, Clough, Coëffin, Coulon, Colombier, Courtin, Dal Monte, Dauphin, Delahaut, Sonia Delauney, Del Marle, Dewasne, Jean Deyrolle, Domela, Duthoo, Elderen, Emmet Edwards, Engel-Pak, Erzinger, Etiéne, Fontené, Folmer, Gazier, Galli, Gay, Gilisi, Graf, Garretto, Gleizes, Gorin, Gyarmathy, Grant, Hartung, Hamm, Hepworth, Hosteins, Herbin, Janin, Jakovits, Klinger, Klausz, Kupka, Kosnick-Kloss, Laloux, Lanyon, Lardeur, Lebois, Lempereur, Lengyel, Leroy, Leppien, S. Reichmann Lewis, T. Lossonczy, V. Lossonczy, Alberto Magnelli, Malespine, Mandorlo, Marosan, Martin, Martyn, Alice Mason, A.-Louis Mattern, Maur, Mazzon, Misztrik Monda, Wallace Mitchell, L. Moholy-Nagy, Morris, Moss, Motherwell, Munari, Nau, Ney, Noll, Nouveau, Periera, Pevsner, Piaubert, Picabia, Poliakoff, Poujet, Prina, Quentin, Quinet, Radice, Radou, Raibaud, Raymond, Alfred Reth, Hilla Rebay, Rho, Richard, Rouiller, Sanz, Sauer, Rolph Scarlett, Schneider, Servranckx, Sfax, Simonetti, Charles Smith, Sottsass, Springer, Stahly, Streiff, Texier, Valentin, Villeri, Vajda, Vézebay, Warb, Wells, Wendt, Wols, Jean Xercion, and Zemplényi.
Abstraction-Création was an association of abstract artists set up in Paris in 1931 with the aim of promoting abstract art through group exhibitions. The leaders of Abstraction-Création were Auguste Herbin and Georges Vantongerloo, but every major abstract painter took part including such figures as Naum Gabo, Wassily Kandinsky and Piet Mondrian, and it rapidly acquired membership of around four hunded. Abstraction-Création embraced the whole field of abstract art, but tended towards the more austere forms represented by concrete art, constructivism and neo-plasticism. Regular exhibitions were held until 1936 and five annual publications were issued. The most important artists in the Abstraction-Création group were later represented, mostly several times, at the Documenta in Kassel, especially from 1955 to 1964 at documenta 1, documenta II and documenta III, which focused on abstract art.
The Salon des Réalités Nouvelles was established in Paris in 1946 to celebrate abstract art and affirm its place as the predominant aesthetic of the post-war era. The phrase was originally coined by Guillaume Appolinaire, and the association evolved out of the Abstraction Création group of the 1930’s. The first committee was led by Fredo Sidès and included Jean Arp, Sonia Delaunay, and Albert Gleizes, frustrated with the Establishment’s slowness to embrace the abstract movement. By 1948 it had grown to include artists from 17 nations, and Solomon Guggenheim joined the committee. The association marked a bold transition from the Occupation years when the Nazis prohibited Abstract Art as “degenerate.” The Réalités Nouvelles was to define a new era of progressive liberty, not of a singular ideology, but a diversity of “new realities.”