Jean Cocteau - Original Drawing In Brown Marker – “the Blind Oedipus”

Original signed drawing by Jean Cocteau (1889–1963). “Blind Oedipus.”

Large drawing in brown marker, size , created around 1960, with the studio’s stamp.

Dimensions: 37.1 x 30.5 cm. Listed in the Guédras archives and accompanied by a certificate of authenticity from Edouard Dermit dated May 5, 1995.

Oedipus, with his blind man’s staff (or that of a deposed king—the scepter of exile), leaves behind the minimalist silhouette of a burning acropolis, evoking the city of Thebes ravaged by plague and scandal.

Oedipus, along with Orpheus, constitutes the quintessential myth of Jean Cocteau’s universe. As early as the 1920s, the poet took up this figure from Greek tragedy to explore the themes of fate, the gaze, and truth. He dedicated Oedipus Rex (1926), the libretto for Igor Stravinsky’s opera-oratorio Oedipus Rex, 1927), and later his theatrical masterpiece, La Machine infernale (1934).

Around 1960, during the final period of his life—which coincided with his creation of large decorative ensembles on the French Riviera—Cocteau synthesized his personal pantheon through a refined, continuous line. In this Head of Oedipus, the graphite pencil traces a striking visual metamorphosis: the eyes projected outward from the face onto upright stalks evoke Oedipus’s self-mutilation—gouging out his own eyes—but also the birth of a “second sight,” that of the seer or poet who renounces earthly vision to access the mystery.