Jamais. Óscar Domínguez & Pablo Picasso

Picasso Museum, from July 15th to October 3rd, 2021

In 1938 André Breton and Paul Éluard organized the Exposition internationale du surrealisme, the most important exhibition ever organized by the Surrealists, at the Galerie des Beaux-Arts in Paris. Works by Dalí, Duchamp, Ernst, Man Ray, Picasso, Magritte and Miró, among many others, were included and had great relevance.

One of the pieces included was Jamais, by the Canarian artist Óscar Domínguez (1906-1957): "the work in question is a silent phonograph painted white whose platter is represented by an abdomen that spins under a hand acting as a needle as a woman’s legs emerge from its speaker."

This object had been considered missing but because of the preparations for the exhibition Picasso, photographer's gaze, some photographs of Nick de Morgoli were rediscovered where Picasso can be seen with the object in his Parisian studio. In this way it was discovered that Domínguez had given the piece to his friend Picasso and, after this, the object was found again in a warehouse of the Picasso family.

In the exhibition you can see, after almost a century without having been exposed, the object restored by Reyes Jiménez, chief restorer of the Museu Picasso, Morgoli photographs and images from the Exposition Internationale du Surréalisme.

Below you will find a bibliographical selection related to the exhibition with books by artists who participated in the same exhibition as the object called Jamais. Some antiquarian editions stand out, such as the second edition of the book A Pablo Picasso (1945) by Paul Éluard, signed by its author, or the first edition of Juan Eduardo Cirlot's El mundo del objeto, from 1953.

Image: Nick de Morgoli. 'Pablo Picasso with the Surrealist object Jamais', by Óscar Domínguez, Paris, 1947. Nick de Morgoli. Bibliothèque Emmanuel Boussard, Paris © Succession Pablo Picasso, VEGAP, Madrid 2020.