Marcel-G. Lefrancq, Les onzes Mois de la bonne Année

Marcel-G. Lefrancq

Mons 1916 - 1974 Vaudignies

Les onzes Mois de la bonne Année

1939 - 1945

11 gelatin silver prints, probably printed 1950s. Each 18.8 x 25.9 cm. Photographer's stamp and consecutively numbered '1' - '11' on the verso. Literature

Marcel-G. Lefrancq. Aux Mains de la Lumière, exhib.cat. Musée de la Photographie Charleroi, Charleroi 2003, ill. pp. 140

Today, the œuvre of the Belgian surrealist Marcel-G. Lefrancq has largely faded into obscurity. Trained as an engineer, he began devoting himself to photography autodidactically in the 1930s and became a member of the surrealist artists group 'Rupture' from 1938 onwards. In his experimental works - photo montages, photograms, double exposures as well as staged nude photographs and still lifes in front of and for the camera - he fathomed the potential of the medium of photography. The erotically charged photo collages of his series 'Les onzes Mois de la bonne Année' were created between 1939 and 1945. In 1945, following the end of the Second World War, he participated in the significant exhibition 'Surréalisme' at Galerie des Éditions La Boétie in Brussels. He attracted a great deal of attention with his portfolio 'Aux Mains de la Lumière' (cf. lots 85 - 87), published in 1948, in which he included eight of his poems along with his photographs. The photograph by Lefrancq 'may be mentioned in the same breath with the achievements of, for example, Man Ray or Ubac […], even if Lefrancq never asserted such a claim. […] but the fact remains valid that his works are representative for the various movements within surrealist photography between 1935 and 1975 with regards to their objective value.' (Édouard Jaguer, Surrealistische Photographie. Zwischen Traum und Wirklichkeit, Cologne 1982, p. 118f.)