Despite outcry, heirs selling poet’s legacy

Some 5,500 objects considered talismans of the French Surrealist movement from Andre Breton to Rene Magritte will go on sale in Paris this month despite an outcry from artists opposed to splitting up the works.

The entire contents of poet Breton’s 231-square-foot workshop, except for a wall of “primitive” art objects that has been donated to Paris’ Pompidou Center, are going under the hammer because his descendants can no longer manage the legacy.

The sale at famed auction house Drouot is expected to fetch as much as $33 million.

Breton’s family have made a number of requests for help over the 37 years since the poet’s death, including support for a planned Surrealism foundation, but no project to preserve the collection came to fruition.

Breton’s daughter Aube, now in her 70s, has decided to place the entire collection on a sophisticated Web site and sell off the objects at Drouot.

“She is selling because she can’t do otherwise: It’s impossible to throw the collection open to the public in 70 square meters,” said Amy Pinel, spokeswoman for the CalmelsCohen auctioneers, who are carrying out the sale.

Breton’s studio at 42 Rue Fontaine, near the Paris district of Montmartre, was so small and so packed with objects that “there would have been room for about three people,” Pinel said. “People forget how heavy an intellectual heritage can be,” she added, as art lovers and buyers flocked to the auction house on the first day of public viewing Tuesday.

A small group of demonstrators gathered outside Drouot’s entrance Tuesday to condemn the sale.

Critics deplore the lack of state aid to preserve so rich a collection -- on sale are works by Magritte, Pablo Picasso, Joan Miro, Jean Arpand Hector Hippolite. It also includes photographs of Mexican artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera with Leon Trotsky.

Some 3,000 signatories have backed a petition by artists and writers urging the collection be saved in its entirety.

“No to the Andre Breton bargain sale,” they said in leaflets handed out outside the auction building.

The sale is due to take place over several days between Friday and April 17.