Robert Lebel (; January 5, 1901 – February 28, 1986) was a French art historian, specializing in modern French art. He was also an essayist, poet, novelist, and art collector. He wrote the first fundamental essay on Marcel Duchamp Marcel Duchamp Lectures in The Museum of Modern Art Archives and remained close to the artists and poets of Surrealism. Lebel was the friend and advisor of André Breton and close to Max Ernst, Jacques Lacan, André Masson and Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Biography Lebel was born in Paris, where he would later raise Jean-Jacques Lebel with his wife Nina.
He was exiled to New York City from 1940 to 1944 due to the Second World War, where he and his family lived in Greenwich Village on West 11th Street. During this time, Lebel regularly met with Marcel Duchamp"The artist and his critic stripped bare : the correspondence of Marcel Duchamp and Robert Lebel, Bibliothèque Kandinsky" and other artistic intellectuals who had fled Europe for New York. With them, he discovered Native American art.
On his return to Paris, Lebel worked as an expert in classical paintings. In 1950 he launched the magazine "Encyclopaedia Da Costa" with Patrick Waldberg, published by Jean Aubier.
Lebel died in Paris at the age of 85.
Published works Courbet. Tenth Anniversary Exhibition, New York, Marie Harriman Gallery, 1940 Fauvism, New York, Marie Harriman Gallery, 1941 Mask with a blade, New York, Éditions Hémisphères, 1943 Leonardo da Vinci or the end of humility, Paris, 1952 First assessment of current art (s / d Robert Lebel), The Black Sun - Positions n ° 3-4, 1953 Blackmail of beauty. Small initial conference by André Breton, Paris, Editions de Beaune, coll. "The New Manifestos", 1955 On Marcel Duchamp, with texts by Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and Henri-Pierre Roché, Paris and London, Éditions du Trianon, 1959. Géricault, his monumental ambitions and Italian inspiration, Paris, R. Legueltel, 1961 Anthology of invented forms. Half a century of sculpture, Paris, Ed. of the Circle Gallery, 1962 What is art criticism, suppl. to the magazine Preuves, Paris, 1962 The back of the painting. Morals and customs of the tableauistes, Monaco, Le Rocher, 1964 (only volume I has been published) Dorothea Tanning. Recent paintings, small gold sculptures , Paris, Le Point Cardinal, 1966 Magritte. Paintings, Paris, Fernand Hazan, 1969 Traite des passions par personne interposée, Paris, Eric Losfeld, coll. "The Mess", 1972 Dada - Surrealism with Patrick Waldberg & Michel Sanouillet, Paris, ed. Left Bank, 1981 Marcel Duchamp, Paris, Belfond, 1985 The Surreal Adventure Around André Breton with José Pierre, Paris, Filipacchi, 1986
Fiction The Double View followed by The Inventor of Free Time, cover illustrated by Alberto Giacometti, with the inset 'The Clock in Profile' by Marcel Duchamp, Paris, The Black Sun, 1964, repr. 1977 L'Oiseau-caramel, cover illustrated by Max Ernst, with a lithograph of Erró, Paris, Le Soleil Noir, 1969 Saint-Charlemagne, cover illustrated by Marx Ernst, Paris, The Black Sun, 1976
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