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Sat 01 Jun

Angleterre - Cigarette case In 9 K (750‰) yellow gold and metal, the clasp set with a blue stone cabochon Gross weight 95.8 g Provenance: > Collection Andrée Heimann, Paris > By descent "Thank you, Mrs. Heimann" was the title given by painter Edmond Heuzé (1883-1967), then a recent member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, in the spring of 1950 to a newspaper article about the public auction organized on June 9, 1950 at the Musée d'Art Moderne to benefit the fight against cancer. The aim was to help finance the Fourth International Cancer Congress, to be held at the Sorbonne in July 1950, the first event of its kind in Europe since the Second World War. The method was new in France at the time: 150 artists and their heirs - including Marie Laurencin, Braque, Derain, Rouault, Marquet, Utrillo, Matisse and Vlaminck, among many others - were approached and agreed to donate a work to the fight against cancer. The idea came from a pioneer of philanthropic communication, Andrée Heimann, and reflects her commitment to the fight against cancer and her links with the art world. It was she who contacted them and convinced them. The sale was a great success. Andrée Heimann was born in Geneva in 1892, at the time General Delegate of the International Union Against Cancer and President of the Propaganda Committee - now called the Communication and Development Committee - of the French League Against Cancer. During the First World War, she devoted herself wholeheartedly to the service of French soldiers treated, transported or welcomed in Switzerland, earning her the rare French Recognition Medal in 1920. She married in Paris in the early 1920s, but her husband Albert Heimann died of cancer a few years later. She raised her daughter Marise on her own in the 1930s and, having escaped anti-Semitic persecution during the war, became passionate about publicity campaigns in the fight against cancer in memory of her husband. At a time when few women were honored in this way, she was made a Chevalier de la Légion d'Honneur in 1952 and an Officer in 1973. Her portrait by Marie Laurencin, which can be dated to 1950, reflects the friendly ties she forged with many of the artists of the time. Over the course of the 1950s and 1960s, she amassed a collection of works by Marquet, Braque, Gen Paul, Utrillo, Manessier and many others, as well as art books, which she loved to contemplate, in the evening of her life (she passed away in 1983), while reflecting on her resolute commitment to the service of others. Her daughter Marise (1927-2024) took up the torch in her own way, becoming a haematologist and oncologist alongside Professors Jean Bernard and Claude Jacquillat.

Estim. 500 - 800 EUR