Bertrand DORNY

Bertrand Dorny (1931-2015) – Biography, Embossed Aquatints, Collages and Artists’ Books

Bertrand Dorny (Paris, 1931 – 2015) was a French painter, printmaker and collagist whose whole career was played out on paper. He engraved some 650 plates, most of them colour aquatints with a pronounced embossed relief, then gave up the press in 1991 for collage, driftwood reliefs and the artist’s book, a form he shared with writers such as Michel Butor, Bernard Noël, Michel Deguy and Charles Juliet. The Centre Pompidou and the Bibliothèque nationale de France both exhibited him, and his work is catalogued in two catalogues raisonnés of the engraved œuvre.

Le Coin des Arts currently holds around a dozen works by Dorny, chiefly unique pieces: several untitled collages (among them sheets dated 1988 and 1989), the wooden relief Xylomorphose n°113 (1983), an oil on canvas and an untitled mixed-media work. Two prints complete the group: Warangal (1970), a large colour etching and aquatint published by L’Œuvre Gravée, and Maine-Alésia (1990), an aquatint from his final year of printmaking. Each has been chosen for the quality of the impression or the assemblage, the edition, its provenance and its condition.

Early years: from painting to the Friedlaender studio

Born in Paris in 1931, Dorny trained first as a painter, passing through the studio of André Lhote before joining that of Johnny Friedlaender, the Paris studio devoted to intaglio and colour etching. There he learnt intaglio alongside the artist Anne Walker, who became his wife and, decades later, his partner in a long run of artists’ books. Printmaking soon overtook the canvas and became, in his own practice, the basis of everything that followed; a few abstract paintings of around 1963 still turn up on the market.

The relief print: a signature technique of the 1960s and 1970s

Dorny’s innovation was to build a print rather than simply bite a plate. He cut and assembled separate metal elements, each inked in its own colour and texture, and drove them into dampened paper at varying depths, so that the finished sheet reads as a shallow paper bas-relief. Leading Paris publishers took him up. Nesto Jacometti’s L’Œuvre Gravée issued Warangal in 1970 in an edition of 65; the bookshop-publisher La Hune brought out the four-plate portfolio Jeu de construction in 1972, colour etchings on Arches wove. Dorny taught drawing at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière and printmaking at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris from 1975 to 1979, and was a member of the Société des Peintres-Graveurs Français and of the Jeune Gravure Contemporaine.

Driftwood, card and found paper: the 1980s

In the 1980s Dorny turned to humble materials – driftwood, cardboard, used and discarded paper. The ‘topomorphoses’, wooden reliefs, were shown at the Galerie Erval in Paris in 1985, and large panels of assembled driftwood at the Galerie Gimaray in 1987; the gallery’s Xylomorphose n°113 of 1983 belongs to this strand of unique reliefs. Robert Herbert’s survey Dorny, vingt ans de gravure appeared in 1987. Two years later, his folded and cut-paper collages prompted Bernard Noël’s Le Roman de papier (Éditions Ubacs, Rennes, 1989), while Éditions Biren published Charles Juliet’s Tant de chemins with three original lithographs, limited to 70 copies.

The book as collage: Butor and the later years

Dorny stopped engraving in 1991 and pursued collage in themed series – Vitrines, Le Musée manipulé, Architectures. Above all he developed the ‘livre-collage’: from the 1990s onwards he made more than fifty books pairing original collages with writers’ texts, often in tiny editions; À demeure (2005) exists in just seven copies, one of them in the Koopman Collection of the Koninklijke Bibliotheek in The Hague. The University of Edinburgh’s research site on Michel Butor lists over fifty Butor–Dorny titles, from Chromosome (1992) to Double foudre (2013); for Caractères (1993) Dorny drew the lithographs himself. He also made some forty books with the American poet Ron Padgett.

Exhibitions and public collections

In 1995 the Bibliothèque publique d’information at the Centre Pompidou mounted Les mots miroités, a retrospective of Dorny as a maker of artists’ books. The Bibliothèque nationale de France followed with Bertrand Dorny, l’homme papier. Estampes et livres, from 3 June to 24 August 2003, and the Bibliotheca Wittockiana in Brussels also gave him a solo show. In 2013 the municipal library of Angers presented Fidélités, devoted to his books and those of Anne Walker with Butor. He died in 2015. His prints are held by the Centre Pompidou (given by Bernard Gheerbrant in 1987) and, across the Atlantic, by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Princeton University Art Museum and the Chrysler Museum of Art.

Dorny’s printmaking: techniques, publishers and catalogues raisonnés

Almost all of the printed work is intaglio: etching and, above all, colour aquatint, generally on Arches wove, with embossing produced by the assembled plates. Some impressions were pulled by the printer Jacqueline de Champvallins; the plates for Gilles Plazy’s Autres terres (c. 1985) were printed by the Atelier Dutrou. Lithography appears mainly in the books. The standard references are Bernard Gheerbrant’s catalogue raisonné of the engraved work (Paris, 1981), covering plates up to 1980, and L’Œuvre gravé 1962-1991 (Angers, 2002). A citation such as ‘Gheerbrant 172’ gives the plate number in the 1981 volume – the reference the Centre Pompidou uses for Jeu de construction IV.

Collecting Bertrand Dorny: a buyer’s guide

Edition. Published prints are numbered in pencil, usually in editions of 50 to 65, plus a few artist’s proofs and ‘bon à tirer’ impressions.

Signature. Expect the signature ‘Dorny’ in pencil, normally lower right, often with the title; a publisher’s blindstamp (L’Œuvre Gravée, for instance) helps place the sheet.

Paper and relief. The embossing is part of the work. Make sure it has not been flattened by pressure framing, and check margins, light-staining and foxing.

Catalogue raisonné. Ask for the Gheerbrant number for plates up to 1980, and the 2002 Angers catalogue for later ones; compare dimensions and colours.

Unique works. Collages, reliefs and collage-books are one-offs, or editions in which every copy differs. Look at the adhesion of the papers, the folds, the state of the wood and whether the date fits a known series.

Artists’ books. Check the justification in the colophon and that every print or collage is present; beware plates removed from a book and sold as separate prints.

Provenance. Documented provenance – publisher, the Jacometti estate, an institutional gift – is an asset. As Dorny died in 2015, an unsigned impression needs a clear history. See our authenticity guarantees and, for reliefs and collages, our framing service.

The gallery shows Dorny alongside the printmakers of his circle and generation: Johnny Friedlaender, Arthur Luiz Piza, René Carcan, André Lhote and Zao Wou-Ki. Browse our engravings and lithographs, our illustrated books and the contemporary art movement.

Sources and further reading

Bernard Gheerbrant, Dorny, catalogue raisonné de l’œuvre gravé, Paris, 1981 · L’Œuvre gravé 1962-1991, Angers, 2002 · Bernard Noël, Bertrand Dorny ou le Roman de papier, Éditions Ubacs, Rennes, 1989 · Marie-Cécile Miessner and Marie-Françoise Quignard, Bertrand Dorny, l’homme papier, BnF, 2003 · University of Edinburgh – Michel Butor’s collaborative works with artists (D-F) · Koninklijke Bibliotheek – Bertrand Dorny · Centre Pompidou – Jeu de construction IV