The sophistication of Mariette's character in the 20s and 30s reminds us a figure that moves from the Belle Époque to art deco, of glamour, from the cinema and from the star system that iconizes actresses, writers and divas. They are with the aristocracy, frequent the bohemian of Le Monocle and live the wartime life with its depressions and tragedies. The hiding of her bisexuality, the lovers, the travels, the triumph in Paris and the escape to America make her an advanced female figure of her time. This room displays a collection of erotic works that catch the attention of the surrealists.
From 1926, Lydis frequented the Parisian scene and settled in her house on Rue Boileau. At that time Mariette met her third and one of her greatest loves, Count Giuseppe Govone, with whom she married two years later, ending the relationship with Bontempelli. From the '30 Mariette shows her work as an illustrator in L'art de aimer by Ovidio, Dialogue de Courtesans by Luciano Samosata, Contes de Bocaccio, Les Fleurs du mal, by Charles Baudelaire and other contemporary writers who frequented the surrealist magazine Literature such as Pierre Louys, John Delteil, André Salmon and Henry de Montherlant. She got in contact with Phillipe Soupault, who was fascinated with the etchings she made in 1926, and in 1932 produced only 15 etchings of 40 copies, which are known as Fragmentos de Sappho, a lesbian erotic print on imperial Japan paper by the printing press of Maurice Darantiere and under the direction of Giuseppe Govone. The exhibition presents two works belonging to the book.
In 1939, she also illustrated the pages that relate the life and adventures of the young Claudine, the novel saga of Colette, a great writer and actress of the Parisian bohemian of those years.
During the 1930s, Mariette consolidated affective bonds with different women. The testimonies of these conversations are in a set of letters that she kept which give an account of her free-sex-affective perspective. Her personal archive includes correspondence with Erica Marx, Carmen Jaubert, Margaret Wollman, writer Colette and Raquel Abrisqueta in Argentina. It is with Erica Marx with whom she clearly expresses a lesbian relationship and, in the last years of her life, she establishes a strong bond of complicity with Raquel.
In this context, we are interested in highlighting the work Fantasma of the artists Patricio Gil Flood and Paulina Silva Hauyon, which was adapted for this exhibition, evoking the beauty and modulation of the light that bathes the pencil drawing of a superposed pattern of geometric and elegant pointed forms typical of art deco interior design.