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The caprices of Andr� Villeboeuf

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In 1934 the Paris art world was in a ferment of Surrealism. Salvador Dal� was at the height of his powers. Everyone was delving into the subconscious. One artist, Andr� Villeboeuf (1893-1956), published in that year a remarkable album of 16 Surrealist etchings, entitled Lubies (Whims, or Whimsies). 26 copies were published "Aux d�pens des Cinq-Vingt". I have copy 25, which was Villeboeuf's own. Each etching is signed, justified and titled in pencil, but low down the sheet rather than directly below the image. The etchings are printed on Hollande van Gelder wove paper, presumably by the artist himself, as no printer is mentioned. These etchings look beyond the modish self-regard of the Surrealists to locate the surreal in a long artistic tradition. There are touches in them of the grotesqueries of Hieronymous Bosch, the absurd animal/human hybrids of J.J. Grandville, even the fairy fantasies of Richard Doyle. But the artist they reference most is the one Andr� Villeboeuf