Albert GLEIZES (1881–1953).

A collection of notes and reflections on art. These pages, written in purple ink, contain numerous crossings-out and corrections, as well as marginal additions. A clean copy of Chapter V (3 pp.): ‘The laws governing a work of art can only be derived from its very nature. Thus they will appear as the constants of its order. These laws will therefore be natural, unchanging laws—physical laws to which the physics of these materials are subject’… Followed by 16 pages (1–10, 12–17): “From the foregoing, it is easy to deduce that the fundamental principles of aesthetic creation—that which is apparently regarded as the only form capable of satisfying contemporary sensibilities, not only in France but everywhere else—find their counterparts in the works of art of the Renaissance and the Christian medieval past. […] The law we are attempting to formulate will therefore be: All plastic creation is conditioned by the fact of being a rhythmic space. The flat surface reveals its formal properties only through the painter’s hand. The painting is the consequence of the rhythmic space of a flat surface”… Etc. Gleizes then successively examines the concepts of Space, Rhythm, Measure, Colour Values and Colour. A few fragments or draft pages evoke Impressionism, space and rhythm (with marginal sketches), ‘The plastic mechanics of the painting’; plus a document entitled The New Laws. Enclosed: – a handwritten letter (draft) from GLEIZES (Serrières, 15 May 1934), and the end of a letter – 6 handwritten letters and 3 letters addressed to Albert Gleizes and his wife, by 65901

Mainie JELLETT (Dublin 1935), Otto FREUNDLICH and Jeanne KOSNICK-KLOSS FREUNDLICH (1938, review of *L’Homocentrisme*, and on the early career of Gaston Chaissac), Thomas GREENWOOD (2 letters, London 1934, regarding a lecture tour by Gleizes in England), L. MONNIER (discussion with Fernand Léger), Robert POUYAUD (2, 1928–1931, including one with drawings of stencil designs), Léonce ROSENBERG (1945, long letter on his life under the Occupation), Rhoda WELSFORD (1934, letter on behalf of the Courtauld Institute); plus an unidentified fragment of a letter, and a typewritten copy of 2 letters from L. Lavelle; and 3 letters from S. Durai Raja Singam to H. Viaud concerning Gleizes (1974–1975).