Jean-Pierre DUPREY (1930-1959) - Lot 21

Jean-Pierre DUPREY (1930-1959) Untitled Mixed media, charcoal, stump and scratch on pre-embossed paper. 32.5 x 42.5 cm PROVENANCE: D.B.C. [Daniel Bouyjou-Cordier] collection, handwritten on the back with reference number. A mythical and cursed figure of surrealism, "archangel of rebellious youth" Jean-Pierre Duprey, who committed suicide at the age of 29, was a poet, painter and sculptor, painter and sculptor. Born in Rouen, he arrived in Paris at the age of 18 at the invitation of André Breton, who prefaced his first book. support him, organizing his first exhibition at his gallery, l'Étoile scellée, from February 16 to March 13, 1954. If Jean-Pierre Duprey initially devoted himself to poetry until the early 1950s, he then developed a passion for plastic art and sculpture, which he he discovered with ironmonger René Hanesse. A dark, elusive and fascinating personality, he was interned at Saint-Anne Hospital during the in the summer of 1959, after his brutal arrest for urinating on the tomb of the Unknown Soldier, an "objective" act of protest against the Algerian war. war. Having returned to poetry, on October 2, 1959, he sent his wife to mail André Breton his latest manuscript, La Fin et la Manière, and hanged himself from the main beam of his studio.