Christie's is privileged to present this lot, as well as lots 212-223, from the collection of the renowned Dada and Surrealist expert, Hans Bolliger of Zürich. Mr. Bolliger's varied career as a bibliopole, auctioneer and collector has been well documented through his long association with Kornfeld & Klipstein in Berne from 1955 to 1970. His efforts in the series of sales known as Dokumentationsbibliothek zur Kunst und Literatur des 20. Jahrhunderts were successful enough to warrant the catalogues being reprinted later in the United States. Prior to that his experiences in studying in Paris in the mid-1930s and then working at the Zentralbibliothek, Zürich helped fuel his friendships with some of the more notable figures of the European avant-garde: Hans Arp, Sonja Delauney, Max Ernst, Gottfried Honegger, Jean Tinquely and of course, Man Ray. In 1980 Mr. Bolliger completed the sale of portions of his important collection of Dadaist art to the Kunsthaus, Zürich where years before he had also been employed. This acquisition by the Kunsthaus has become the basis for their well established collection of Dada - a most appropriate locale as Zürich was the birthplace of Dada.

The source of this multi-dimensional title reveals Man Ray's wit and knowledge of painting. Arturo Schwarz, in The Rigour of Imagination wrote: "[Another] Ingres painting - Nude from the back (1807) - inspired the famous Man Ray photograph Le Violon d'Ingres (1924), where Kiki was photographed in the same pose as Ingres' model. To suggest the French idiomatic expression 'Ingres' violin' (one's 'violon d'Ingres' is one's hobby, as playing the violin was Ingres'), Man Ray transferred the image of the f-shaped sound-holes of the violin by contact photography (this is questionable - ed. note) on to the photograph of Kiki's back. A photograph thus became an exciting Surrealist image 'by the coupling of two distant realities' that transformed the woman's torso into the body of a violin. In addition - and this was probably what mattered to Man Ray - he was hinting at the fact that photography was for him merely his violon d'Ingres; his real interests lay elsewhere." (op. cit., p. 281).

The print of Le Violon d'Ingres offered here is a contact print of Man Ray's copy negative of the original portrait of Kiki on which he first painted treble clefs. In 1971, approximately twenty years after this print was created, Man Ray produced an edition of eight and three Artist's Proofs. These prints were all made from the copy negative which produced the lot offered here.