Les Cercles De La Baronne

Exhibition at Le Minotaure and Alain Le Gaillard galleries, Paris, 10 September - 26 November 2022

At the heart of the creative melting pot of Paris in the 1910s, the flamboyant, extravagant and enigmatic Russian baroness Hélène d'Oettingen attracted the cream of the avant-garde to her salon on Boulevard Raspail. Apollinaire, whose magazine Soirées de Paris she saved from bankruptcy, held his famous "Wednesdays" there, attracting artists such as Pablo Picasso, Robert Delaunay, Louis Marcoussis, Fernand Léger, Alexander Archipenko, Serge Charchoune, Natalia Goncharova, Mikhail Larionov and Francis Picabia.

Through drawings, paintings, sculptures and archival photographs presenting the astonishing personality of Hélène d'Oettingen and her entourage, this exhibition catalogue evokes both the artistic and fusional trio formed in the 1910s with Léopold Survage and Serge Férat, The exhibition catalogue describes the artistic trio formed in 1910 with Léopold Survage and Serge Férat, her love of the Douanier Rousseau's work, her links with the avant-garde - from the Italian Futurists via Ardengo Soffici to the cubists of the Section d'Or, from Survage's abstract research to theatrical and puppet decorations. All aspects of the Baroness's life are evoked, from her relationship with Apollinaire to her work as a poet under the pseudonym Louis Pieu, as a novelist under that of Roch Grey and as a painter under that of François Angiboult.