Created in March 1941 by a remarkable gathering of Surrealist artists taking refuge at the Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, Le Jeu de Marseille is a strange and beautiful artifact of wartime collaboration, exile, and imagination. Among those gathered were André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Oscar Dominguez, Jacques Hérold, and Benjamin Péret, brought together through the rescue network of American journalist Varian Fry, who helped thousands of artists, writers, and intellectuals escape Nazi-occupied Europe.
The idea for the deck emerged during gatherings at Au Brûleur de Loups, a café on Marseille's Old Port, where the Surrealists set out to reinvent the familiar playing card. The traditional king, queen, and knave were stripped of their old social hierarchy and transformed into the Genius, Siren, and Magus, while the four suits became the Flame of Love, Star of Dreams, Wheel of Revolution, and Lock of Knowledge. Twenty-two designs were then drawn by eight members of the group, with the resulting imagery becoming a collective exercise in Surrealist symbolism, chance, and resistance.
First published in the Surrealist magazine VVV in 1943 and later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Jeu de Marseille occupies an unusual place between playing cards, Surrealist art, and proto-oracular imagery. More than a deck, it is a small portable monument to a group of artists who, in the midst of war and displacement, responded to catastrophe by inventing new symbols for love, dreams, revolution, and knowledge.
54 cards. French import.
Created in March 1941 by a remarkable gathering of Surrealist artists taking refuge at the Villa Air-Bel in Marseille, Le Jeu de Marseille is a strange and beautiful artifact of wartime collaboration, exile, and imagination. Among those gathered were André Breton, Jacqueline Lamba, Max Ernst, Victor Brauner, Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Oscar Dominguez, Jacques Hérold, and Benjamin Péret, brought together through the rescue network of American journalist Varian Fry, who helped thousands of artists, writers, and intellectuals escape Nazi-occupied Europe.
The idea for the deck emerged during gatherings at Au Brûleur de Loups, a café on Marseille's Old Port, where the Surrealists set out to reinvent the familiar playing card. The traditional king, queen, and knave were stripped of their old social hierarchy and transformed into the Genius, Siren, and Magus, while the four suits became the Flame of Love, Star of Dreams, Wheel of Revolution, and Lock of Knowledge. Twenty-two designs were then drawn by eight members of the group, with the resulting imagery becoming a collective exercise in Surrealist symbolism, chance, and resistance.
First published in the Surrealist magazine VVV in 1943 and later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Le Jeu de Marseille occupies an unusual place between playing cards, Surrealist art, and proto-oracular imagery. More than a deck, it is a small portable monument to a group of artists who, in the midst of war and displacement, responded to catastrophe by inventing new symbols for love, dreams, revolution, and knowledge.
54 cards. French import.
