Collages

The reproduced collage dates from 1950 and is typical of her work created using self-adhesive stickers. The shapes seem to float very freely on the blue surface. A dance begins, as if a gentle wind were blowing over the small pieces of paper. However, this tiny collage loses none of the structural rigor that Marcelle Cahn advocated as early as 1925.

Looking closer, one realizes that the background of this collage is a sheet of blue labels. This sheet becomes the very composition of the work, with its tightly packed shapes: diamonds, triangles, squares, circles… It is as if the slight wear inflicted on the paper by the artist further reinforces the structure provided by the joints of the background stickers.

The background plays an important role here; it is already composed and already presents a dominant color palette — this slightly worn blue — but it also serves as a reservoir of shapes. As evidenced by the peeled-off shapes at the bottom right, it would be possible to find these identical stickers in other collages from the same period.

The geometric shapes are in a constant state of displacement, searching for a rhythm that is neither repetitive nor mechanical, but on the contrary, alive, light, and full of whimsy. Within this single collage, certain shapes have moved: the slightly darkened circle at the bottom left seems to originate from the row of circles at the top; a diamond is projected to the top right, overlapping its neighbor and combining with the others to establish a clear direction. A built structure, a mechanical cutting of the labels, combined with a disconcerting freedom in their movements and associations.

A precarious balance, a tension. As Marie Luise Syring writes, Marcelle Cahn “creates a dialectical counterpart to the mere utilitarian value of things. These are reconstructions; it is a reconstructed world.” (1) The artist reconstructs a world with the crumbs of reality; the most minute things become the most vast.

Stéphane Mroczkowski

(1) Marie Luise Syring, “Du purisme à l’abstraction puriste” (From Purism to Purist Abstraction), translation by Inge Hanneforth, catalogue, Paris, Galerie Lahumière, 1997.