BERTHET-AITTOUARES

To celebrate the centenary of Surrealism, the Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès is offering an immersion into the collection of Georges Goldfayn (1933-2019), assistant and friend of André Breton.

​

In Pierre Loeb's former gallery, now Galerie Berthet-Aittouarès, the collection of a lifetime will take shape, with a selection of works by Wolfgang Paalen, Simon Hantaï, Konrad Klapheck, Jindrich Styrsky, Jindrich Heisler, Aloys Zötl, an exceptional box-object made by Jindrich Heisler for Toyen, and Toyen herself, particularly well represented in this ensemble.

​

Surrealist specialists know Goldfayn as the 17-year-old poet who, at the end of the war, joined the group in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie. He became a friend of Benjamin Péret and Toyen, and Breton's assistant at the gallery A l'Etoie Scellée. In this exhibition, we discover the world of Georges Goldfayn: a singular, non-museum-like way of arranging works which otherness is sharpened by these connections. For Goldfayn, every gesture, every chosen thing, makes sense as a trace of life and a confession of a bond forged with his chose surrealist family.

 

On the occasion of this exhibition, the gallery is publishing a book in tribute to their friend Georges, who died in 2019. Two perspectives will illuminate the memory of one of the last Surrealists: that of Annie Lebrun, writer and Surrealist poet a friend of Goldfayn with whom she shared an essential relationship with Toyen, and that of art historian Pierre Wat, who didn’t know him but will offer another view, attempting to create a portrait based on the collected objects of someone who loved, gathered, and arranged this collection.