Arthur Adamov - Victor Brauner - René Char - René Daumal - Robert Delanglade - Oscar Dominguez - - Le Jeu De Marseille - Jeu De Cartes Surréaliste - Tarot des Surréalistes - Jeu du tarot de Marseille

The Marseille Game - Surrealist Card Game - Tarot of the Surrealists - Marseille Tarot – A work of art, a collector’s item, a rare playing card deck - André Breton.
Collector’s game, very rare. It has not been published since early 2026. The last packs you’ll find on the market are the last on sale. It will become increasingly difficult to procure. This is a work of art and a historical piece with a lot of history. The deck has been exhibited in several museums around the world, including New York. Inspired by the normal playing cards. 54-card deck, 9 cm x 6 cm, under a color-illustrated case. The colored deck was published in Marseille by André Breton and manufactured according to an artisanal process by the Master-Guilder Grimaud in 1983. Created on the model of the Marseille Tarot by the surrealists present at Villa Air-Bel in 1940. An artist fleeing the German regime and World War II. The sixteen court cards (independently of the Ubu joker, by Jarry) were drawn by Arthur Adamov, Victor Brauner, René Char, René Daumal, Robert Delanglade, Oscar Domínguez, Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Jacques Hérold, Sylvain Itkine, Wifredo Lam, André Masson, Benjamin Peret, Tristan Tzara. The trump cards feature Alice, Lautréamont, Freud, Baudelaire, the Portuguese nun, Paracelsus, Novalis, Pancho Villa, etc. A very beautiful mint-condition copy in its blister, never opened, complete with 54 cards, the small folded notice inside and its storage case.
The Marseille Game is a 54-card variant created in March 1941 by surrealist artists who had taken refuge at Villa Air-Bel in Marseille. The end of 1940 and the beginning of 1941 saw the arrival or crossing of various people related to the surrealist movement or in some respects associated with it in Marseille. They gathered at Château Air-Bel where they were warmly welcomed by Mr. Varian Fry, President of the American Committee for Aid to Intellectuals. The game was first published in the surrealist review VVV in 1943 and later exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 1983, the Game was published by André Dimanche in Marseille, and reproduced in the catalog of the exhibition La Planète affolée in 1986. In 2003, Aube Elléouët-Breton and her daughter Oona donated to the Musée Cantini the twenty-two drawings of the game, acquired during the Breton sale, in memory of Varian Fry.
-SIGNIFICATION EMBLÊME:
- Love Flame
- Dream Star (black)
- Revolution Wheel (and blood)
- Knowledge Lock
- The hierarchy, starting from the ace, remains in the following order: Genius, Mermaid, Mage, Ten, etc.
Exhibitions:
- Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1943
- Marseille, Centre de la Vieille Charité, The Frightened Planet, Surrealism, dispersion and influences, 1938-1986, 1986
- Aix-en-Provence, Galerie d'art du Conseil général des Bouches-du-Rhône, On the Quays, Marseille 190-1941, 1999
- Zaragoza, Surrealistas: Exilio y Amistad, Varian Fry and the candidates for exile, Marseille 1940-1941, 1999
- Paris, Paris City Museum of Modern Art, Art in War 1938 - 1947, from Picasso to Dubuffet, 12 October 2012 - 17 February 2013
- Bilbao, Guggenheim Museum, Art in War 1938-1947, March to September 2013.