
Description
Lithograph on velin paper. Paper Size: 15 x 22 inches, with centerfold, as issued. Inscription: Unsigned and unnumbered, as issued. Notes: From the folio, Derriere le miroir, N deg 250, Hommage a Aime et Marguerite Maeght, 1982. Published by Galerie Maeght S.A., Paris; printed by l'Imprimerie moderne du Lion, Paris, 1963. Excerpted from the folio (translated from French), This special issue of Derriere le miroir was designed and defined by Aime Maeght in the fall of 1980. He envisioned its publication as a celebration with which artists and writers published since 1946 were to be associated. He also chose Francois Chapon, president of the Reverdy Committee, to write the presentation. This Derriere le miroir number 250 took the form, after its disappearance on September 5, 198I, of a tribute to Aime Maeght and his wife Marguerite Maeght who died four years earlier. XXIV artists agreed to create an original graphic work for this issue which includes the general table of all issues as well as excerpts from texts by XXXII writers. Finished printing on June 2, 1982 on the presses of the l'Imprimerie moderne du Lion in Paris. CL examples were printed on Arches vellum, numbered from I to CL, and some non-commercial examples constituting the original edition. Additional notes: Excerpted from a Christie's, New York lot essay, The life span of Derriere le Miroir was thirty-five years. Publication began in 1946. Aime Maeght, initiator of Derriere le Miroir, had already made few attempts to start publications illustrated with fine printed lithographs in colours in the years prior to the launch of Derriere le Miroir. The name, Derriere le Miroir was suggested by Jacques Kober, manager of Galerie Maeght. The gallery had opened in 1945; the first number of Derriere le Miroir was released a year later. For this first issue Geer van Velde was invited to create lithographs to illustrate the publication. The lithographs in the first issue was printed by Mourlot, Paris. The first three issues of Derriere le Miroir were unsuccessful for Maeght as far as the edition size-the initial print-runs were far too large. From 30,000 for the first issue, the number was taken down to 10,000 for numbers two and three, until Derriere le Miroir number four was published in an edition of 1500. Maeght instituted a policy whereby unsold issues were recycled and used for the fabrication of new paper for the coming editions-this served to both conserve resources and also usually result in ultimate edition sizes far less than 1,500. With number four, the permanent format for Derriere le Miroir was established. Lithographs in colours were key; text was limited to comments on the featuring artist's exhibition taking place in the Galerie Maeght, and this catalogue format was defining to Derriere le Miroir. Galerie Maeght took on the leading role in Paris and presented all main artists including Braque, Matisse, Chagall, Leger, Bonnard, Chillida and many more. So too did Derriere le Miroir. The idea of a magazine was meanwhile still on the mind of Aime Maeght. He found an insert as a solution. Two, and later four, pages of art review were inserted from 1952 onwards. In 1968 this find had ripened to independency and the dream of Aime Maeght was now a tangible fact named l'Art vivant. Derriere le Miroir was on it's own again. Over 250 issues in a row. At that point publisher Aime Maeght wished to make a mark with the publication of an hommage to all who once contributed to the magazine which came in the form of issue number 250, but was delayed by the death of Aime Maeght. It was published after number 253 in 1982 and became a tribute to Aime and Marguerite Maeght and 35 years of friendship with artists and poets. The era of Derriere le Miroir was closed with that final publication. POL BURY (1922-2005) was a Belgian sculptor who began his artistic career as a painter in the Jeune Peintre Belge and COBRA groups. After attending the Academie des Beaux-Arts in Mons in 1938-39, he joined a group of Surrealist poets that included Achille Chavee. Bury's early artistic endeavors suggest the influence of Rene Magritte and Yves Tanguy, and paintings he produced in the late 1930s and first half of the '40s were included in the 1945 Exposition Internationale du Surrealisme held in Brussels. The focus of Bury's art shifted in 1952 after he visited an exhibition featuring Alexander Calder's work. The movement of Calder's mobiles captivated Bury, and he began producing sculptures with moving components. These early kinetic sculptures were exhibited in the 1955 group exhibition Le Mouvement at Galerie Denise Rene in Paris. The exhibition proved particularly influential for the international ZERO network (active in the late 1950s and early '60s), and Bury went on to participate in ZERO exhibitions and contribute to Heinz Mack and Otto Piene's ZERO journal. Bury began to include electric motors in many of his sculptures in 1957. The concealed motors activate the works, prompting elements to twist, tilt, or spin. Around 1964, the artist started creating his Cinetizations: photographs and prints depicting well-known monuments, but with the architectural structure fundamentally altered. In a Cinetization featuring the Eiffel Tower, the iron structure appears to wobble as if on the brink of collapse. Bury's sculptures and Cinetizations both demonstrate moments of physical contingency that belie gravity's certain pull. In a 1969 interview, the artist explained: "I am searching for the point which exists between the moving and the non-moving."2 In the late 1960s, Bury began working with stainless and Cor-Ten steel, polished brass, and copper. By 1969 he had created his first public fountain, at the University of Iowa Museum of Art. Similar in many ways to his kinetic sculptures, the numerous fountains that Bury designed throughout his lifetime involve arrangements of cylinders and spheres that move slowly and irregularly. In these works, he embraced the reflections and light effects produced by the interaction of metal and water in the open air. In the late 1950s and early '60s, Bury exhibited his work alongside that of other ZERO artists in Vision in Motion-Motion in Vision at Antwerp's Hessenhuis (1959); Bewogen Beweging (Moving Movement, 1961), which traveled from Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum to the Moderna Museet, Stockholm, and the Louisiana Museum, Humlebæk, Denmark; tentoonstelling nul (known as Nul 62) and nul negentienhonderd vijf en zestig (Nul 65), both at Amsterdam's Stedelijk Museum (1962 and 1965, respectively); and Documenta 3 (1964) in Kassel, Germany. Retrospectives featuring the artist's work have been organized by the University Art Museum, University of California, Berkeley, in collaboration with the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (1970); Museo de Arte Moderno in Mexico City (1977-78); Musee d'art moderne de la Ville de Paris (1982); and Josef Albers Museum in Bottrop, Germany (1990). In 2017, Pol Bury's artwork, Fontaine, sold for $288,143 USD, at Cornette de Saint Cyr, setting a world record for the artist.
Buyer's Premium
5%
Dimensions
15 x 22 in
Pol Bury, Ramollissement de Mondrian, Hommage a Aime et Marguerite Maeght, Derriere le miroir,
Estimate $1,000-$1,300
Starting Price
$720
$720
$740
$760
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Masters of Modern Art
Mar 25, 2026 1:00 PM EDTNorwalk, CT, United States
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