20. 20AR MARCEL MARIËN (1920-1993) The servant with the big heart 1969 Signed and dated lower right 'Mariën nov.1969'. Titled 'La servante au grand cœur' lower left Collage and ink on black card 68 x 48 cm Provenance Sergio Dangelo and Carla Bordoni Collection, Milan By descent to the present owners Exhibition Galerie Saint-Laurent, 'Paradise Never', 10-29 January 1970 , no. 2 Bruxelles Galleria dei Bibliofili, 'Simbolismo e Surrealismo, La poesia onirica', 2-30 May 1972, ill. p.22, Milan Galleria Pilota, Marcel Mariën, 31 January - 21 February 1974, no. 22, Milan Galleria Zarathustra, 'La condizione eccentrica', December 1978, Milan A certificate (photograph) signed by the artist will be given to the buyer. "Mon frère de lait condensé, au nom de tous les chats de Belgique salut! (Beginning of a letter from Marcel Mariën to Sergio Dangelo dated 14/4/1972 on the letterhead of the Club Félin de Belgique A.S.S.L.) To find out who Marcel Mariën was, all you have to do today is ask Artificial Intelligence or any other search engine, which will tell us about one of the protagonists of Surrealism, and I would add: true Surrealism. The AI will tell us about his great friendship (and his arguments) with Magritte, his quality as an artist, a poet, a photographer, someone we would describe today as 'versatile'. But no one can tell us more about Mariën than his own work, who described himself on one of his business cards as an "old beginner". Essays, writings and interpretations must objectively give way to his 'artefacts', his 'games' and his images. We will then be inexorably struck by his subtle, incisive humour, his expressive manner, his provocative imagination, his inventions that often started from reality but moved forward on the wings of the subconscious, without filters, without 'accommodating' hypocrisies. The elective affinity that underpinned the intense and prolific friendship between my father - Sergio Dangelo - and Marcel is reflected in a phrase I often heard my father say: "I'm a surrealist who paints, not the other way round". This axiom applies perfectly to Mariën, who was also an 'absolute surrealist' before anything else. Here, then, is the 'normality' of Mariën writing a registered letter to Isidore Ducasse - alias Comte de Lautréamont - who had died a hundred years earlier ('La version Vivienne' - 1967); here is the absolute synthesis of eros and the everyday in a collage ('La servante au grand cœur' - 1969); here is the play of a pin that perhaps pricks our thoughts more than our flesh, accompanying a passionate dedication ('Un dimanche du Marquis de Sade' - 1975); here is Belgium.... topos of surrealism ("The Message"). Mariën's relationship with Dangelo, which has been very intense since the 1960s, is also something I remember as a child, and then as a young boy. It's the laughter, the jokes, the gags between the two of them, often with my mother's complicity... But above all, even today, so many years later, I remember the energy that, as if in a dream, I could feel, touch, intensely, like a physical presence... in a surreal way! Simone Carlo Alberto Reggiori Dangelo