Jean Cocteau – Profile with Dedication

Description

Jean Cocteau, Profile with Dedication is an original marker on paper drawing made in 1959.  It is signed and dated in the lower left, and dedicated to Gerard Economos.

Jean Cocteau was an enormously influential French artist and writer known as one of the major figures of Dada and Surrealism. With an oeuvre that spanned painting, novels, poetry, plays, and films, Cocteau established himself as a leading creative force in Paris. A regular member of the avant-garde, he maintained long-term friendships with artists such as Pablo Picasso, Tristan Tzara, Francis Picabia, and Man Ray. “The job of the poet (a job which can’t be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force,” he once mused. Born on July 5, 1889 in Maisons-Laffitte, France, the self-taught Cocteau would regularly draw his friends and acquaintances in a distinctive, fluid style informed by his interests in Cubism, psychoanalysis, and Catholicism.