Handwritten signed postcard addressed to Juan Luis Buñuel
s.d(ca 1967), 15.7 x 10.8 cm, a postcard
Handwritten postcard signed by Alexander Calder addressed to Juan Luis Buñuel on the back of a reproduction of a painting by Georges de La Tour.
Two small perforations in the left margin of the card, as is usual in Juan Luis Buñuel's collection.
"La paix ! la paix ! la paix ! pour 1968
Vanvis - I don't understand why I'm always leaving messages and never getting an answer. I was sorry not to see you in Barcelone. It is a beautiful snow. Love to you and Carmen and children. Sandro"
In 1939, Luis Buñuel, who had just received an offer to work in Hollywood, decided, with his wife and child, to leave the chaotic situation in Europe to go and live the American Dream. The penniless Buñuels initially spent a few precarious months living in New York. Luis Buñuel found himself forced to ask Dali—his longstanding friend in exile, along with Gala, during these years—to lend him some money.
His request was refused in no uncertain terms, putting an end to the two men's friendship. Thus it was Calder, whom Luis had perhaps already met in Paris in the 1920s, who put the whole family up in his Upper Side apartment. Juan Luis Buñuel, the artist's godson, sensed that his interest in sculpture began in this same period: “When Dali told my father he would not lend him any money, he contacted him [Calder]. He offered his house to us and we lived with his family for a time. I can only vaguely remember it, but it was then that I started to become interested in sculpture and he encouraged me” (Anton Casto, Juan Luis una entrevista).
Despite the geographical distance that would come to separate them, Alexander Calder would remain a friend of the Buñuel family. The relationship between the artist and the film-maker is, however, almost entirely absent from the biographies, and this correspondence is a rare testimony to the profound connection between the sculptor and the Buñuel family.