Description

Original klecksographic work by Léon Deubel in magenta, brown, green and blue inks on the back of a page of his collection La Lumière natale. Title and signature "Moscow / LD" in pencil at foot.
Inspired by Victor Hugo, who composed landscapes using ink blots, Léon Daubel began producing a series of klecksographic works in 1907, in collaboration with Louis Pergaud and the painter Jean-Paul Laffitte.
"[L]he exercise consisted of writing the name or initials of a painter, philosopher or writer in a broad calligraphy, sometimes using several colours of ink. Once the name was written, while the ink was still wet, the author folded the sheet of paper. As the name disappeared, an image appeared. This image, the result of chance, required the authors to reflect and no doubt to discuss among themselves how it could correspond to the figured signature. [...] These drawings, in which chance plays a large part, are essential elements, new to Surrealism, and predate the publication in 1921 of the Rorschach test, which popularised this game of interpretation in avant-garde circles.." (Belfort Museum, exhibitionn Léon Deubel in chiaroscuro, p. 17)
Deubel and his friends had collected these drawings in two (or four?) notebooks, one of which, presumably prepared for publication, bears the title Illuminations.
"A significant number of ink drawings of this type have been found, most of them monochrome, some more elaborate than others, which suggests that they were exercises for the more elaborate version of the album Illuminations.." (p. 17)