Nuns and Doves, the Family, 1939: Avant-garde Woman Artist Yo Mayer, Marcel Duchamp's Daughter Oil on Canvas

In 1910, having separated from her first husband, the artist model Jeanne Chastagnier Serré had a relationship with the surrealist Marcel Duchamp: you know, the one of the porcelain urinal fame.

Young Yvonne, nicknamed Yo, was born nine months later, in 1911. Her mother Jeanne

told Duchamp neither about her pregnancy nor the birth: she only mentioned his paternity

to him in passing, when one day she ran into him by chance eight years later. And she

asked nothing of him.

Jeanne remarried a Monsieur Mayer, who adopted little Yo. Duchamp was clearly not at

all interested in a domestic life, but it is believed that he kept an eye on young Yo’s

development. It was Yo’s mother however who encouraged Yo to become an artist. Yo

studied at the Academie de la Grande Chaumière, and subsequently with William van

Hasselt and the cubist André Lhote.

In the present work, dating from 1939, Lhote’s infuence can be lightly felt in the use of

primary colours and very pure lines.

I do not know if our “Family” is based on an actual gathering. Men are

(almost) conspicuously absent. One young lady is holding a scroll – might this

be self portrait of Yo, having won and award or obtained a diploma? The house depicted must have

had its own dovecote, and the birds add a very special lightness and serenity to the scene.

But what happened with Yo and her father? They met for the first time in 1966, when

Yo is 55 and Marcel 79. Yo was not looking for a new father at that point – and so they

talked about art, not family. Visiting Yo’s studio in Montmartre, Marcel was impressed

enough to suggest a joint exhibition with her at the Bodley Gallery in New York, where

Warhol, Ernst, Leger and Picasso were showing their work.

Yo would continue to thrive: aged 72, she had a solo show at the Kunsthalle in Bern,

which revealed her to the general public. At almost ninety years old, she also had a show at

the Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Geneva. She became known under a number of names: Yo Mayer, YoSermayer, and Yo Savy.

Our oil on canvas on to board is signed at the lower left, and dated 1939. It came from the collection of the French surrealist painter Lucien Mathelin (1905-1985). Measuring 60 x 80 cm, the overall framed size of the artwork with its original whitened oak frame is 71 by 80 cm.

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