
Cécile Reims
Artworks
Exhibitions(principal)
Personal
1950 « Cécile Reims », Galerie Pelletan-Helleu, Paris
1950 « Line Engravings by Cécile Reims », Musée national Bezalel, Jérusalem
1952 « Cécile Reims », Galerie Le Fanal, Paris
1979 « Cécile Deux, L’Atelier du graveur », Galerie Obliques, Paris
1986 « Cécile Reims-Deux », Galerie La Hune, Paris
Collective
Biographie
1927 Born in Paris. Child is left to be cared by her maternal grandparents in Lituania.
1933 Returns to Paris.
1942 The Vél’d’hiv’ rafle splits out the family.
1943 Connects with the Fighting Jewish Organisation.
1945 Joins the Underground Army for the existence of a Jewish state.
Bibliography
– « Cécile Reims, graveur et interprète de Hans Bellmer et de Fred Deux », Préface de Jean-Noël Jeanneney, textes de Pierre Watt, Maxime Préaud et Pascal Torres Guardiola (édition Bibliothèque nationale de France), 2004
– « Cécile Reims, une vie à la pointe du Burin », texte de Alexandre Grenier (Alain Margaron Editeur), 2011, épuisé
– « Cécile Reims, l’œuvre gravé 1945-2011», catalogue raisonné, avant propos de Dominique, Radrizzani, textes de Lauren Laz, Laurence Schmidlin, Lydie Schmutz, Laure Beaumont-Maillet, Rainer Michael Mason, Emmanuel Pernoud, Cécile Reims et Pierre Watt, (édition Musée Jenisch Vevey), 2012
– « Cécile Reims, Livres d’artiste », (Alain Margaron Editeur), 2014
Livres d’artiste (dernières parutions)
– « Forteresse de paille », 2006
Recueil tiré à 28 exemplaires
10 estampes originales réalisées au Burin et à la pointe sèche
– « Elan Vital », 2013
Recueil tiré à 20 exemplaires
11 Gravures réalisées au Burin et à la pointe sèche
Toutes les gravures sont signées de l’artiste et tirées sur papier Japon appliqué sur les
presses des Ateliers Moret
Livres d’artistes, gravures d’interprétation de Fred Deux
– « L’Être éphémère », 2003
Recueil tiré à 30 exemplaires sur papier BFK Rives
15 gravures réalisées au Burin et à la pointe sèche
Les textes et dessins sont signés de Fred Deux
– « Liqueur sacrée », 2005
Recueil tiré à 40 exemplaires sur papier BFK Rives
14 gravures réalisées au Burin et à la pointe sèche
Les dessins de Fred Deux réalisés au crayon graphite et rehaussés de couleur datent de 1974. Cécile Reims décide alors de graver cet ensemble de dessins entre 2003 et 2004 à la Châtre. Fred Deux a écrit les textes accompagnant les gravures.
Public Collections
Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch, Issoudun
Bibliothèque nationale de France, Paris
Cabinet cantonal des estampes, Musée Jenisch à Vevey, Suisse
Chalcographie du Musée du Louvre, Paris
Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme, Paris
Presentation
Cécile Reims learned burin engraving in Paris at the age of 22 with Joseph Hecht, a demanding master. Between 1950 and 1960, she produced some sixty original works which attracted notice. “It was a very tough discipline”, the artist admits, “an arduous discipline. But once I’d mastered the tool (the burin), I was confronted with the creative gesture.”*
At the very beginning, in 1950, Cécile Reims’s first burins were figurative, with very realistic subjects: the Seine, Spanish fishermen, work and days in the Psalms. Then came the production of “Métaphomorphoses d’Ovide” and “Bestiaire de la mort”.
“We lived in the moutains, I drew rocks, animals. Before, I used to go often to the Jardin des Plantes of the Musée d’Histoire Naturelle. That’s what made it possible for me, starting from totally realistic drawings, to transform them into something that went beyond them. If I hadn’t encountered Ovid’s book, these drawings would have never been born. Since I always need something from the outside to let what I am carrying inside me germinate. I’d just come out of the sanatorium, I engraved these Metamorphoses, and kept going with the Bestiaire de la mort: animals in a mineral world which have been recurrent in my etchings ever since.”*
(Interview with Marie Cécile Miessner for the exhibition “Cécile Reims graveur” at the Bibliothèque nationale de France).
Cécile Reims’s meeting with Hans Bellmer would be decisive : between 1967 and 1975, she brilliantly interpreted some two hundred of his drawings with burin and drypoint. Today, there is no doubt her work widely contributed to Bellmer’s universal success.
“Bellmer opened for me, in etchings, a path I would never have found alone. It’s obvious he offered me a vocabulary but I never borrowed his, nor Fred’s (Deux) for that matter.” *
In the same way, starting in 1971, Reims engraved many of her husband Fred Dreux’s drawings – about 400 – as well as Leonor Fini’s.
About “interpretative” etchings, in which Reims translates “into an etching” an artist’s drawings, she acknowledges there is “a challenge: how far can I go into becoming the other”… The metaphor is subtle: “Maybe an actor feels the same way when he plays a character that is the opposite of him.” *
Then came the moment when Reims decided to explore new territories: “With ‘La chenille’, engraved in 1986, I allowed myself to engrave simply because I felt like it, to truly become an engraver”, she explains. “I went back, as I used to do, to the Museum of Natural History, but since it was closed for renovation, I went into the library and stumble on a book whose title struck me, a treatise on a caterpillar that eats willow wood. The illustrations were surprising, and the text, in old French, even more so: ‘Most people speak (…) of illustrious things, and I will speak of a miserable caterpillar.’ I started with elements from this caterpillar, making slight changes, plate after plate, until it was transfigured. For me, this was a decisive gesture, akin to the birth of the Metamorphoses. Starting from an existing reality that someone else had already treated – there was an extra zigzag – I had managed to transcend this miserable caterpillar. (…) This was a truly happy moment.” *
For the past few years, Reims has resumed engraving from her own compositions. “Her quality as an interpreter, first secret, then disclosed, connects her to a splendid tradition, too often forgotten these days, even if there are harbingers of a rehabilitation of this art. But her own talent as an inventor, playing on virtuosity and elegance, also deserves to be saluted.”
(Jean-Noël Jeanneney, President of the Bibliothèque nationale de France)