Les Mains Libres (Free Hands)

In these drawings, my hands are dreaming. So noted Surrealist artist Man Ray when he described his pen and ink drawings for Les Mains Libres. He produced them in Paris or while traveling in the south of France. Intrigued by his friend's haunting compositions, the French poet Paul Eluard wrote a poem to accompany each drawing. The result was Les Mains Libres (Free Hands). On its publication in 1937, Ray said: They are the sum of all my experience, in photography as well as painting.