Painter, draughtsman and illustrator, born in 1901 in Kharkiv (Russian Empire, now Ukraine), died in 1968 in Paris.
Life
Miron Maurice Baskine, known as Maurice Baskine, came to Paris with his family in 1905. In 1933 he discovered occultism and alchemy, which shaped all his work. In 1944 he escaped from the Todt Organisation camp at Martigues, joined the maquis and enlisted in the French Forces of the Interior.
He began exhibiting in 1945, notably at the Salon des surindépendants. He joined the Surrealist group in 1946. For the exhibition Le Surréalisme en 1947 at the Galerie Maeght he designed the thirteenth altar, L’Athanor, and the same year illustrated André Breton’s Arcane 17. In 1948 he organised the exhibition Comme, for whose catalogue he wrote the preface.
In 1951 he left the group while remaining close to it, and pursued alone his research into what he called Fantasophy, a pictorial thought nourished by alchemy. His large triptych Fantasophe-Roc ou l’édification de la pierre de Fantasophopolis (5 x 2 m) was shown in 1957 at the Galerie Furstenberg.
The work
Hermetically inspired painting, Baskine’s work is built around Fantasophy. For the exhibition Surréalisme (2024), the gallery lent the Centre Pompidou a Sans titre in oil and plaster on panel (116 x 89 cm), from the Arturo Schwarz collection and reproduced in the catalogue.
After his death, Monique and Jean Saucet, custodians of the works, organised several tributes, including a presentation at the Venice Biennale in 1986 and a retrospective at the Grenier du Chapitre in Cahors in 1990. Most of the holding was given to Cordes-sur-Ciel, which devoted a retrospective to him in 2003.
Exhibitions and collections
- Le Surréalisme en 1947, Galerie Maeght, Paris, 1947
- Le Surréalisme, sources, histoire, affinités, 1964
- Trésors du surréalisme, Knokke-le-Zoute, 1967
- Venice Biennale, 1986
- Surréalisme, Centre Pompidou, 2024 (loan from the gallery)
- The Gallery’s 25th Anniversary, Galerie Les Yeux Fertiles, 22 May to 19 June 2026
- Musée national d’art moderne, Centre Pompidou: La Mère folle, 1946-1950, oil on canvas, 86 x 126 cm (gift of Jean Saucet, 2003)
- Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Cordes-sur-Ciel: Fantasophe-Roc and most of the holding