Marcel Duchamp, Hommage a Caissa (for the Marcel Duchamp Fund of the American Chess Foundation), 1966

Marcel Duchamp

Hommage a Caissa (for the Marcel Duchamp Fund of the American Chess Foundation), 1966

Silkscreen Poster with Gold Matting

Unsigned

Frame included

Measurements:
Framed:
26.25 x 21.25 x 0.5 inch
Print:
26 x 21 inches

This extremely rare and historic invitation/exhibition poster was designed by Duchamp on the occasion of a group exhibition at New York's Cordier & Ekstrom Gallery for the Marcel Duchamp Fund of the Americas Chess Foundation in 1966. Duchamp used the RSVP cards he sent to various artists as a design for this invitation. Many of these RSVP cards had the artist's autographs, and a few, like the one from Alexander Calder, included personal notes to Duchamp. Some of the more famous of the 36 artists featured in print who participated by donating works to this fundraiser include: Jasper Johns, Karl Gerstner, David Hare, Salvador Dali, Enrico Donati, Roberto Matta, Isamu Noguchi, Alexander Calder, Dorothea Tanning, Jean Tinguely, Niki De St. Phalle, George Segal, Robert Rauschenberg, James Rosenquist, Meret Oppenheim, Alfonso Ossorio, Robert Motherwell, Claes Oldenburg, Man Ray, Joan Miro, Rene Magritte, Richard Lindner, Roy Lichtenstein, Arman, Enrico Baj, Hans Bellmer, Victor Brauner, Alexander Liberman, William Copley, Cleve Gray and several others. However -- did you notice one name was noticeably absent? Andy Warhol! How could that be? Well, it turns out
Andy Warhol has actually expected to be invited to exhibit but for some reason was overlooked. He did, however, attend the opening and filmed Duchamp in one of his famous "Screen Tests."
"At the opening Duchamp plays chess with Dalí . While Niki Ekstrom has invited top model Benedetta Barzini, who is wearing a long, sleeveless, tiger-patterned dress, Andy Warhol has brought Velvet Underground to the opening- "Andy's coming to this show was like a guerrilla attack," comments Nat Finkelstein, who was at the gallery to take photographs while Warhol filmed Duchamp." —"Effemeridi su e intorno a Marcel Duchamp e Rrose Sélavy" Marcos y Marcos, 1993.
"It was very curious; I had a girl on my knees. In short, almost; a very mimosa little actress [Benedetta Barzini] came to sit next to me, rubbing herself, almost lying on me." —spoken by Marcel Duchamp, "Marcel Duchamp" by Bernard Marcadé
As it turned out, Duchamp is said to have raised more than $32,000 for the American Chess Foundation -- quite a lot in 1966 dollars. Duchamp himself created a Readymade named "Chessboard" for this exhibition. It was supposed to be a run or 30 but less than 10 were actually made. (One sold at Sotheby's in 2002 for more than half a million dollars.)