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534 - Enigmatic woman's glove. Bronze with brown patina, 10.
See original version (French)

Estimate €5,000 - €6,000

Description

Enigmatic woman's glove. Bronze with brown patina, 10.4 x 21.0 x 2.8 cm. - This bronze glove is as famous as it is mysterious. It became famous thanks to André Breton, who described it and reproduced a similar example in his book "Nadja" in 1928. The leader of Parisian surrealism evoked, without naming her, the poetess Lise Deharme (1898-1980), who was represented by Man Ray as a Queen of Spades and wrote "Le Coeur de pic", illustrated by Claude Cahun. Lise Deharme wore light blue gloves that struck Breton. He recounts that when she visited him at the "Centrale surréaliste", one of the Surrealists asked her to give them one of her gloves as a present. Breton begged her to refuse: "I don't know what, at that moment, could have been so frighteningly, wonderfully decisive for me in the thought of that glove leaving that hand forever". The bronze glove gives this episode its full meaning: The bronze glove gives full relief to this episode: "And yet it only took on its greatest, its true proportions, I mean the ones it has kept, from the moment this lady planned to come back and put on the table, in the place where I had so hoped she would not leave the blue glove, a bronze glove that she owned and that I have since seen in her house, A woman's glove too, with a bent wrist, fingers without thickness, a glove that I have never been able to stop myself from lifting, always surprised by its weight and not caring about anything so much, it seems, as measuring the exact force with which it presses on what the other would not have pressed". Because of its proximity to the female body, the glove has always been an object of fantasy; the Surrealists celebrated it in poems, photographs and so on. This bronze glove is unusual in that it embodies a paradox. The bronze alters the way it is perceived: this thin object, devoid of human presence, is astonishingly heavy, as if it materialised the heaviness of absence. - Lise Deharme gave Breton her bronze glove, which is now in the Centre Pompidou. Eight other examples have been identified by the André Breton Archives, some with different patinas. This copy has a brown patina like the copy of "Nadja". - Prov. Gertrude Kinkelin, who is said to have owned 3 copies of the glove, one of which she gave to Jacques Ferrand, a Parisian painter, illustrator and decorator (1911-2003). - From the latter, by inheritance, in a private Belgian collection.

See original version (French)

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About the sale Prints & Drawings, Photographs & Comics, Rare Books, Atlases & Manuscripts, Surrealism, Congo, Erotica & Ballets russes

Auction location

Auction time 06/25/2026 at 1:00 PM

Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House

534 - Enigmatic woman's glove. Bronze with brown patina, 10. See original version (French)

534 - Enigmatic woman's glove. Bronze with brown patina, 10.
See original version (French)