Reuben Mednikoff (1906-1976)

This work is a pretty "composed" and certainly not entirely as "automatic" a piece as most of his works. It is of a definitely surrealist spirit but more controlled than all his other works. The organic element is present, the torn-away body, the two dislocated hands in some sort of pleading gesture, the obsessive piercing and tearing apart of the limbs are to be seen but the introduction, on the bottom right hand side, of arrow-like angles takes away some of the edge of Mednikoff's usual psychoanalytical compositions. The whole work is haunted by a very interesting and stimulating tension and contrast between the organic and the geometrical, the rational and the irrational.

We are very grateful to Michel Remy for his assistance in cataloguing the present lot.