An Angel on Horseback, by Mariette Lydis. Aquatint in colours, 220 X 170mm, signed by the artist and inscribed Paris lower right, undated but mid 1930s.
Aquatint done on BFK Rives on shades of mauve and blue. A few very light spots to the margins. In very good condition.
Mariette, Comtesse Govone, married Jean Lydis in
1922, but left him for the Italian writer Massimo Bontempelli, who took
her to Paris. In 1928. She then married the publisher Comte
Giuseppi Govone. Subsequently, Lydis had a great artistic success in 30s Paris,
starting with a solo show at the Galerie Bernheim Jeune, after which she
became a member and a juror at the Salon d’Automne, she also illustrated the outstand Nonesuch Press Greek Anthology (1935).
In 1940, she left France with her lover Erica Marx, taking refuge
in the sleepy Cotswold town of Winchcombe, subsequently making the wartime voyage to Buenos Aires. Lydis was also close to the aviator Amelia
Earhart. Mariette Lydis lived in Argentina for the rest of her life. Her
style was influenced by that of the Japanese artist Tsuguharu Foujita,
whom she knew in Montmartre. She died in 1970.
