The Museum of Fine Arts of Mulhouse proposed a look at the "Themes and Variations" of Marcelle Cahn in 1986 at the Seventh Biennial Printmaking Exhibition in Mulhouse.
It is within this context that Serge Lemoine, at that time professor of art history at the University of Dijon, "willingly wrote a text about Marcelle Cahn" (Monique Fuchs).
It is reproduced here with the author's approval, which is most greatly appreciated.
Marcelle Cahn, a solitary artist
Seated on the edge of her bed in her single room at the retirement home in Neuilly where she lives, Marcelle Cahn works on her lap, surrounded by her piled up portfolios and the disorder of her personal belongings.
It was in 1970. Her medicine boxes, her used envelopes, the photos of her works become the many new materials, which she metamorphosed by means of a few brush strokes, the highlight of a crayon, some colored stickers. It is by exhibiting these works which are witness to her formidable ability to transform things that the Museum of Fine Arts of Mulhouse pays tribute to the painter Marcelle Cahn. A painter whose life and work continue to raise questions.
From 1914 to 1923 Marcelle Cahn studied in both Berlin and Paris, where Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant had a lasting influence on her since in her linear works of the 50s she herself sees "a purist form of geometric abstraction". She finds in their art, as in that of Willi Baumeister, what she calls an absolute form because the representation is already abstract although it remains human. This would explain the continual shifts she made from the abstract to the figurative, still attending the academies where she drew nudes in the mid -30s.
During this period within the small world of the avant-garde her beginnings were full of promise. Léonce Rosenberg is the first to show her paintings. In 1925 at the Art d’aujourd’Hui exhibition in Paris she presents two paintings, one abstract and the other with a purist iconography. In 1926 she takes part in an exhibition organized by the Société Anonyme at which her painting is chosen by Marcel Duchamp. In 1930, invited by Michel Seuphor, she becomes a member of Cercle et Carré. She likes the eclectism of this group.
However, she did not seem to have any interest in building a career. It is hard to understand why she cut herself off from the world around her, only wanting the recognition of her fellow artists. Her modesty, her solitude due to shyness rather than misanthropy ,her wish not to settle down but to live of the fringes of society; all of these handicap the diffusion of her work, which will never find true recognition in France because of the fact that it is part of the constructive art movement.
Marcelle Cahn remains the elusive character that she no doubt wanted to be. She seems to have always been moving from being someone with passionate intellectual convictions to someone very well brought up. How else can we make sense of her going alone to Berlin at the age of 19 to work in the studio of the German expressionist, Lovis Corinth and her constant "retreats" to her family in Strasbourg , far from groups and schools.
After the war she regularly takes part in the Salon des Réalités Nouvelles and in numerous collective exhibitions. But she often destroys her works, sometimes gives them to visitors and friends with unconscious and marvelous generosity. Moreover, she conceals the few photographs she has kept by using them to create a drawing or a collage. And nowhere has she written down her thoughts on her work, even though her personal correspondence is written with incomparable grace.
The long-lasting friendship of Michel Seuphor, the admiration and care given during the last fifteen years of her life by Gottfried Honegger, Daniel Abadie and the author of this piece have given rise to numerous initiatives and exhibitions , in particular the one which took place in 1973 at the Centre National d'Art Contemporain and which then traveled to many other French museums. Two monumental works were created thanks to commissions from Dijon and Is-sur-Tille at the end of her life; since her death the gallery Cahier d'Art has paid tribute to her. All of these events, however, have not really managed to give her fame.
... a book should be written and a big exhibition should be organized in order to give Marcelle Cahn the standing she deserves . Not in the very top rank, but just a little lower, at a place near to those occupied by painters such as Carel Fabritius or Michael Sweerts, who know how to please artists and real art lovers.
Serge Lemoine
