11 - Hans BELLMER & Unica ZÜRN. 12 signed autograph letters to Henri Michaux. La Noue-en-Ré, Paris, Berlin; October 14, 1960–February 20, 1964. 23½ pages, in-4 or in-8 format, written in blue or red ink, with 8 envelopes and 1 telegram.

Hans BELLMER & Unica ZÜRN. 12 signed autograph letters to Henri Michaux. La Noue-en-Ré, Paris, Berlin; October 14, 1960–February 20, 1964. 23½ pages, in-4 or in-8 format, written in blue or red ink, with 8 envelopes and 1 telegram. A deeply moving correspondence from Hans Bellmer to Henri Michaux regarding the mental health of his partner, Unica Zürn, who was then hospitalized at Sainte-Anne for schizophrenia. It also includes two letters from Unica Zürn to Michaux. Hans Bellmer was one of the few contemporary painters whom Michaux knew and admired. He painted two portraits of the poet in the late 1950s. These letters describe the ordeal of Bellmer’s partner, who had been suffering from paranoid schizophrenia since 1960—shortly after she met Henri Michaux at the surrealist exhibition EROS organized by Daniel Cordier in 1959. A first letter, sent by Unica to Michaux, dates from her first hospitalization at the Wittenau Hospital in Berlin: I’m locked up in an asylum for the crazy. […] Please send—if possible—“LM” cigarettes and some of your books. It’s a bit like hell here—what is this—that view over there—For God’s sake! She gives her address in Wittenau using her married name, Ruth Laupenmühlen, but signs as Unica. She had married Erich Laupenmühlen in 1942, with whom she had two children: Katrin, born in 1943, and Christian, born in 1945. She had divorced in 1949. I’m not allowed to receive visitors. Talk to Horst Flinker a bit about this “Wittenau house.” Like every German, he knows the name WITTENAU very well. I’ve had only one visitor—my daughter Katrin; she’s very beautiful and very, very kind to me. U. The following are letters from Bellmer, all written in the fall of 1961 during Unica Zürn’s hospitalization at Sainte-Anne Hospital. It was on September 27, 1961, through a telegram from his friend Vincent Bounoure—while Bellmer himself was staying on the Île de Ré—that Bellmer learned of Unica’s relapse and her hospitalization: The fact is that for several years now, Unica (who no longer loves me) has incorporated into her “inner realm” mythological gods—half-literary, half-personal […]. I finally came to realize (right up until my last week here on the Île de Ré) that everything within her revolved around ‘HENRI MICHAUX,’ the knight-savior, through insights gained from the abysses. He therefore asks Michaux to help his partner by visiting her, giving him the contact information of trustworthy friends who can tell him where Unica is being held. Back in Paris, Bellmer scrambled to resolve administrative issues regarding the situation of Unica, a German citizen. If Unica were to be involuntarily committed in France, there was a risk that, once released, she would be deported to Germany. Bellmer therefore took steps to arrange for her repatriation to the Wittenau Hospital in Berlin—“where she would have a chance of one day returning to a ‘normal’ life. Here: none!”—or else her internment would have to be declared “voluntary.” But his main goal is to restore Unica’s confidence in her work and in herself. Bellmer thus organizes an exhibition of her work at the Le Point Cardinal gallery, alongside Jean Hugues and Jacques Fouquet.