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Title details for Gabriële by Anne Berest - Wait list

Gabriële

ebook
Pre-release: Expected April 22, 2025
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Not available
0 of 2 copies available
Wait time: Not available

The story of a passionate love affair that triggered a revolution.

An atmospheric, exuberant novel from the best-selling author of The Postcard, Anne Berest, and her sister, Claire Berest, about love and sex, art and revolution, experimentation and creativity, and three young people who changed the world.

The year is 1908, the height of the Belle Époque, and a brilliant, young French woman named Gabriële, newly graduated from the most elite music school in Europe, meets a volcanic Spanish artist named Francis. Following a whirlwind romance, they marry and fall headlong into a Paris that is experimenting with new forms of living, thinking, and creating. Soon after marrying Francis, Gabriële meets Marcel, another young artist, five years her junior. Soon, Francis, Marcel, and Gabriële are all involved in a fervent affair that will change the course of art history and redefine the avant-garde.

As the Belle Epoque gives way to rebellion and revolution, and the world descends into the devastation of World War I, Francis Picabia, Marcel Duchamp, and Gabriële Buffet revolutionize art and open up new ways of seeing and thinking, along the way posing a vital question for their age and ours: what is the connection between new ways loving and new ways of creating?

Moving between Paris, New York, Berlin, Zurich, Barcelona, London, and Saint-Tropez, Gabriële is as audacious, uninhibited, intimate, and unforgettable as its central character, the mercurial, pioneering Gabriële Buffet.

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    • Library Journal

      November 1, 2024

      Anne Berest (The Postcard) and her sister Claire (Artifices) jointly write a novel based on the life of their great-grandmother, Gabri�le Buffet-Picabia. In 1908, during the height of the Belle �poque, artist Gabri�le marries artist Francis Picabia. When they meet Marcel Duchamp and all become involved, they change art forever. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Kirkus

      March 1, 2025
      A remarkable champion of the avant-garde, unremembered by history, is rescued from obscurity by her great-granddaughters, a pair of writing sisters. Wife of Francis Picabia, mistress of Marcel Duchamp and, later, Igor Stravinsky, close friend of Guillaume Apollinaire and many other notables, Gabri�le Buffet-Picabia (who died in 1985 at age 104) was an unknown figure to her great-granddaughters, French novelists Anne--bestselling author ofThe Postcard--and Claire. Why was this memorable woman lost to both her family and the world? The Berests set out to explain the mystery in a curious biographical novel which traces some of Gabri�le's story, drawing on archives, interviews, and historical works. A student of music, first in Paris and then Berlin, Gabri�le took no interest in men until, in 1908, her brother introduced her to Picabia, already a star of the art world. It's a meeting of minds, "conjoined intellects," and Gabri�le inspires the artist to discard Impressionism and paint differently, in a style reminiscent of music. They marry and have four children, Picabia remaining "a flamboyant hotshot": impulsive, promiscuous, socially voracious, nervously unstable. The novel becomes an account of this union, the art movements (Cubism, Dadaism) Picabia and his friends explore, and of a colorful, creative circle. The couple forms a very close friendship with younger artist Duchamp, who falls in love with Gabri�le and folds her into his work. Similarly, writer and critic Apollinaire becomes an intimate, as do others, both in Europe and the U.S. The artistic ferment is interrupted by World War I, by which time the marriage is becoming strained. And there are glimpses of the future: Gabri�le's decline, and an explanation of the family mystery. Throughout, the authors emphasize Gabri�le's intellect, but also her preference--unlike her husband's--for "remain[ing] in shadow." This flavors the book, too, which extols but doesn't fully animate her. An atmospheric excavation of an unusual woman and marriage, both intriguing and remote.

      COPYRIGHT(2025) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

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