Jean Cocteau, Vis À Vis, 1963, Mixed Media on Paper

Mixed media (marker, watercolor) on paper. signed and dated lower right. Jean Cocteau was a multifaceted artist: writer, playwright, playwright, he also dabbled in visual arts, loving to experiment with all the avant-gardes of his century. Cocteau published his first book of drawings in 1923, at just 36 years old. In it the poet portrayed his friends Raymond Radiguet, Pablo Picasso, Erik Satie, Francis Poulenc, but also numerous scenes of daily life in Paris, Nijinski's Russian ballets, allegories, caricatures, poetic images. Cocteau revealed himself to be a talented sketcher, but above all an artist capable of capturing the essence of faces, behaviors, human weaknesses. The theme of the face, or rather of faces, often two profiles facing each other, vis à vis, recurs in his pictorial production. In 1962 the artist completed the construction of the open-air theatre in Cap d'Ail, on the French Mediterranean coast, whose flooring is decorated with this subject, two faces with a Greek profile facing each other, with an eye in between; the subject was then re-proposed by him in the following period - moreover the one imminent to his sudden death -, with different variations. In the drawing presented here we find the two Greek profiles, separated by the third eye but also by two twisted snakes, while in the drawing of the theatre we find leaves. The work is presented in a frame.