Marcel North – Masques apeurés 1940
Original Eau Forte by Marcel North, artist and book illustrator from Neuchatel. Tile: “Masques apeurés.”
Marcel North (1909–1990) was a Swiss painter, engraver, illustrator, and scenographer born in Dorking, England, and raised in Neuchâtel. He trained at the École des arts décoratifs in Strasbourg and apprenticed under Conrad Meili. Over a long and multifaceted career, he created works that ranged from fine art and book illustration to stage design and satire. North illustrated texts by François Villon and Edgar Allan Poe and contributed to periodicals such as Curieux and the Feuille d’avis de Neuchâtel. In 1942, he received a federal art scholarship recognizing his contribution to modern Swiss visual culture.
This striking surrealist work, Masques apeurés (“Frightened Masks”) created in 1940, presents a psychologically charged scene where figures drift through a disjointed, dreamlike environment. Their anxious or frozen expressions evoke fear and emotional vulnerability, as if caught between moments of revelation and concealment. The flattened spatial planes, theatrical poses, and muted tones heighten the tension between inner states and outer appearances. The motif of masks—both literal and metaphorical—speaks to the instability of identity and the fragile boundaries between self and performance, evoking existentialism and the deep anxieties of the WWII period in Europe in a surrealist style.
Sheet size: 320 x 246 / image 178 x 115 mm
Title shown in Plate: Masques Apeures – Signed in pencil and numbered 46/100
