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Jean Cocteau

Retour à l'ordre, Avant-garde, Surrealism

  • Le Chevalier (chevauchant un Lion),  Etude pour le Ballet La Dame à la Licorne (Ballets Russes)

Jean Cocteau

(Maisons-Laffitte, 1889 – Milly-la-Forêt, 1963)

Le Chevalier (chevauchant un Lion), Etude pour le Ballet La Dame à la Licorne (Ballets Russes), Circa 1951-1952

Graphite and bold colored pencils on page of spiral sketchbook
Annotated in a cartel down right Le Chevalier
Many handwritten color annotations in the subject
Signed with initials and star below right JC ☆
42 x 33 cm

Provenance   :
- Heinz Rosen (1908-1972), choreographer and director of the ballet La Dame à la Licorne
- Private collection by descent

Exhibition  :
Jean Cocteau, MuBE (Museo Brasileiro da Escultura), Sao Paulo, from July 7 to August 6, 2009

 

Certificate of authenticity by Annie Guédras, Périgueux on December 30, 2019

La Dame à la Licorne. One-act ballet, argument, models, sets and costumes by Jean Cocteau, music by Jacques Chailley (1910-1999), choreography by Heinz Rosen (1908-1972). Premiered in Munich on May 9, 1953 at the Gärtner Theater. Premiered at the German Opera in Berlin in 1954, in New York and in Argentina in 1957. Premiered at the Paris Opera on January 28, 1959.
The ballet stages the struggle between Strength and Purity and illustrates the link between love and death through the legend of the lady with the unicorn, a symbol of the loss of virginity.

The actors with Jean Cocteau, Jacques Chailley and Heinz Rozen

 

Program from the Ballet Russe de Monte-Carlo in New York, 1957

 

Costume of the Knight in The Lady and the Unicorn, 1953 - Collection National Theater of the Paris Opera

 

 

 

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