Item Details:

ORDRE D'EXÉCUTION

JANE GRAVEROL (1905-1984)

MID-CENTURY SURREALISM, 1965

Oil & Collage on Panel

Size: 21 5/8 x 24 7/16 in; 55 x 62 cm

Signed & dated: Recto, bottom right

Known for her recurring theme exploring feminist surrealism, Graverol's painting here is faithful to the artist's unique brand.   Graverol, a compatriot and contemporary of Belgian surrealist, Rene Magritte, shares with him the common goal of creating the mysterious and the inexplicable, sometimes referred-to as magical realism which merged elements of realism with the fantastical, disturbing, mythological and dream-like.

In the present work, from a 1960 French film of the same title, Graverol appropriates a film noir-like image of man with machine gun whose target the artist has identified by adding, in paint, a diaphonous negligeed jellyfish, which might be dismissed as random incongruity and mere absudity... or possibly one can glean an intended Freudian association between the phallic gun muzzle and its silky female counterpart.   The title "Order of Execution" and the painting's visual imagery unquestionably suggest a violent act ending in death, consistent with la petite mort (the "little death"), the French term for orgasm.

This work will be included in the catalog raisonné currently being prepared by the Marcel Mariën Foundation.

Origin
André Blavier Collection, Belgium.
Private collection, Belgium (by descent).

Exhibitions
Brussels, Galerie Isy Brachot, Jane Graverol, 40 years of painting, May 31 - June 24, 1968, no. 100. (dated 1964)
Brussels, Galerie La Rose des Vents, Jane Graverol, March 5-18, 1965.
Paris, Galerie Le Ranelagh, Jane Graverol, May 10 - 31, 1967, no. 22.

Private Collection, New York City