Digging Daura pt. 1

This is the first in an ongoing series of blog posts that I dreamt up yesterday afternoon as I was digging through the Pierre Daura archives once again in preparation for my visits to museums in Spain and France with significant collections of Daura’s art. I was thinking about all of the great finds I hope to make and share, and it occurred to me that I should be sharing some of the exciting things I come across in our archives.

My choice for this first post was easy, as this drawing has been omnipresent in my mind since before I even got this job: Daura’s preliminary designs for the Cercle et Carré (Circle and Square) logo, 1929, pen and ink on paper, approximately 28 x 21 cm (sorry for the poor image quality; for this to work, I'm having to lower my standards a bit, at least for now).

This is only half of the picture. Daura also created a second page of logo designs on which appears the version adopted by the group. The second page is currently lost, a fact that will vex me until it’s found—I won’t say “or until I die” because as naïve as it may be, I’m not going to give up on finding it. It may be bad form of me, as a museum professional, to “rat out” another institution, but I’m an historian first and foremost, so here’s the story:

In 1974, Daniel Robbins, then director of Harvard’s Fogg Museum, was writing a book on Joaquín Torres-García. Robbins wrote to Daura asking for information on the founding of the Cercle et Carré group in 1929/30, and Daura obligingly answered his questions and his request to see Daura’s drawing of the logo. Daura gave him the drawing, asking that Robbins send him a photograph of it. Unfortunately, both Robbins and Daura passed away shortly thereafter, and the photograph was never sent. Worse still, the drawing--and Daura’s answers to Robbin’s questions--have never been seen again.

The Fogg has been helpful in ascertaining that these items are not in their possession, but attempts in the 1990s to track down these documents elsewhere were unsuccessful. The hunt will continue. Possible moral of the story: Don’t take your work home with you if your work involves irreplaceable documents.