Alexandre de Salzmann

(1874-1934)
Un grand artiste oublié du 21e siècle

Basarab Nicolescu
Halle Saint Pierre, Paris
24 octobre 2009
Joseph Sima, Portrait d’Alexandre de
Salzmann, 1930 (huile sur toile)
Carl Zigrosser, My Own Shall Come to Me, Casa Laura,
USA, 1971 (300 copies)
1932 - Photograph by Edward Steichen (1879-1973), Museum of
Modern Art, New York
 Carl Zigrosser (1891-1975)
• 1919 – 1940 – Directeur de Weyhe Gallery, New
York
• 1937 – Six Centuries of Fine Prints, Covici-Friede,
New York
• 1941 – 1963 – Conservateur de Philadelphia
Museum of Art Prints
• 1952 – Administrateur de Solomon Guggenheim
Museum
• 1955 – Vice-directeur de Solomon Guggenheim
Museum
« In the summer of 1927 I spent several long weekends and a
few days in between at the Château du Prieuré near
Fontainebleau where Gurdjieff had set up his Institute… There
was one person among the original initiates at the Prieuré with
whom I quickly established some kind of understanding. He
was Alexandre de Salzmann. Because he was an artist we had
a common interest. Likewise because we both spoke German I
was able to communicate more freely with him. I spent much
time with him at Fontainebleau and also saw him in Paris on
weekdays. I bought drawings and decorative screens from him
for my gallery in New York. He had great talent as an artist,
though he modestly called himself a craftsman. He reserved
the name of artist for those who had achieved what he called
major works of art such as the Sphinx or the Pyramids. These
objects, he felt, had a deep significance which modern works
lacked.»
« He had perfected a method of mural painting, a kind of
sgraffito technique, in which he worked with incredible speed.
An assistant would cover a wall, a square yard at a time, with a
quick-drying medium such as tempera or gouache, and the
artist would model the forms by scraping them out with several
rubber tools of his own invention. I remember visiting him
when he was at work decorating a room with a wall surlace of
about three hundred square feet. He had started work that
morning, and when I arrived at four o'clock it was about three
quarters finished. He stopped and went out with me for a coffee
and a cognac. I asked him about his preliminary studies. He
replied there were none, everything was in his head. It was an
amazing feet of concentration since the whole composition was
very complicated. He had an extraordinary visual memory:
natural forms, animals, human beings, historic ornament, all
took shape under his hands with effortless ease»
« His face with its weather-beaten skin, sunken cheeks, and gaps
and stumps of teeth, was not easily forgotten. He told me that
he had lost his teeth through a fall from a cliff in the Caucasus
Mountains when he was chief forest ranger to some Russian
grand duke. Fortunately he fell into a tree and saved his life. In
spite of his artistic sophistication, there was something wild
and savage in him, a breath of his native Caucasus perhaps, in
his taste in food, in the primitiveness of his personal wants. His
method of shaving was simpiicity itself: he took a dry razor and
scraped his face. Even this was a concession, for as he said
the tribesmen of Asia Minor use their regular knives. Oriental,
too, was his gift for storytelling. His sallies, delivered
sometimes with the expressionless monotone of
understatement, sometimes with a Rabelaisian sense of the
ridiculous, would always arouse gales of laughter.»
LE TEMOIGNAGE D’ANTONIN ARTAUD
JUGEND, 1900 - 1919
 INSTITUT DALCROZE, Hellerau,
1911 - 1915

Emile Jaques-Dalcroze
(1865-1950)
Alexandre de Salzmann, Notes From the Theater, Far West
Press, USA, 1972
TIFLIS, 1917 - 1920
Le Fouet du Diable, 14 décembre 1919
LA LUTTE DES MAGES

Tiflis, 22 juin 1919

 1-11 décembre 1921
Théâtre des Champs-Elysées

PELLEAS ET MELISANDE
H.-R. Lenormand, Pelléas et Mélisande au Théâtre
des Champs-Elysées, Choses de Théâtre, no 4,
Paris, janvier 1922, p. 234-235
(+Benjamin Fondane/B. Fundoïanu, Roumanie – Un siècle de théâtre,
p. 225-227)
 H.-R. Lenormand
• « Un triomphe complet a récompensé l’original effort du
metteur en scène, M. Salzmann, grâce à qui nous avons
vu pour la première fois le poème de Maeterlink baigné
dans l’atmosphère qui lui convient. Cette forêt de rêves
dont les troncs d’arbre ne sont que des bandes de toile
tombant de frises, ces lointains qui vibrent d’une
luminosité transparente et fondue, ces intérieurs limités
par la muraille frissonnante de l’étoffe, ces scènes du
premier plan encadrées par deux merveilleuses
colonnes de clarté, autant d’inventions décelant la pureté
du goût et la maîtrise technique de M. Salzmann. »
• « Ce chercheur, frère spirituel des Gordon Craig, des
Gémier, des Pitoëff, des Baty, nous a fait mesurer une
fois de plus combien la tradition réaliste dessert les
ouvrages des poètes. Le jour où les opéras de Wagner
seront montés dans cet esprit-là – ils pourraient l’être
demain, si l’on consentait à exécuter les maquettes
d’Adolphe Appia, - nous assisterons à une résurrection
du même ordre… »
• « … un des plus remarquable artisans de la rénovation
scénique… »

• (voir aussi Carla di Donato, "Alexandre Salzmann

et Pelléas et Mélisande au Théâtre des
Champs-Elysées", Revue d'histoire du théâtre,
no 2, 2008.)
AVON, 1922
13 juillet 1933
(+ 3 mai 1934)